Did you consider using the pressure washer to clean the parts?

That would require two pressure washers, which I now have. The damn thing blew itself up again this weekend, right in the middle of my deck project.
I heard a pop and saw some smoke, the engine stopped, and now it won't start again. Despite my legendary frugality, I went out and bought an electric so I can keep working on the deck instead of spending the rest of the summer fighting with this engine.

Does anyone have any advice on how to troubleshoot a single-cylinder engine that, I suspect, keeps burning out spark plugs?

well, what do the spark plugs look like when you pull them out after it fails?

The last one didn't appear to be fouled or burned externally. Cleaning and gapping it had no effect. I'll pull out the most recent one later and see if it is similar.

I wonder if maybe it's too lean, or something got stuck due to ethanol?

IG - A friend had a problem with power washer due to not getting enough throughput of water. But not sparks and smoke and stuff.

Is the piston moving?

The Turtle Moves!

Is the piston moving?

I haven't disassembled it enough to check that yet ... but when I was trying to get it started again, I did notice that it turned unusually freely. I assumed that was just because it was already warmed up, but a broken rod might result in the same effect, right? When I have time I'll look.

Yeah, see if you have compression at all.......