Agreed. If you have a good seal you should be able to pull the starter cord
and the reading should increase as you pull it until you reach the max
pressure. I am assuming the tester has a check valve to hold the readings,
if it doesn't it may not work.
Your issues are almost certainly ethanol
Each of my lawnmowers and edgers has become increasingly hard to start,
followed by poor running. Using You Tube tutorials, I have been studying how to
clean the various carburetors. I decided that at $19, I could afford to
purchase a HF compression tester to rule out poor compression, and to
I'm guessing that the volume of the tester is far greater in proportion to
the displacement of the cylinder in the small engine. You'd need to crank it
considerable to build up pressure to read - crank till the needle stops
going up.
From what I've heard/read, ethonol in the gas could be the