i have this model on a zodiak purchased from florida 2 years ago. have been having upper rpm range difficulties. runs great at idle up to about 2500 rpm. when between 3800 and 5500 and running for not that long a time, it will loose cylinder #1. i will come back to idle, shut engine and restart. many times this resolves till the next occurrence. sometimes i have to restart multiple times. honda certified service rebuilt carbs, flushed fuel tank, tuned, swapped coils to no avail. he is now thinking it may be a bent valve that is intermittently sticking which is a lot of time and $ to repair. any other thoughts from anyone?

It's hard to say, the best way to find it is to be there when it drops cylinder and test ignition and fuel system at that time.

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i will be doing an inline spark check shortly but when i removed the plug wire during failure, i got a shock so im pretty sure im getting at least some spark. how would you suggest to do a fuel system check to that cylinder during failure?

Disconnecting choke linkage and closing the choke plates one carb at a time is the easiest.

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yes. thank you. we already did that with no success. im thinking to remove plug during failure while underway and installing compression tester. if the valve is stuck open, i will not get compression. not sure how it helps if the valve is stuck closed though. any other thoughts?