You ask which TYPE of engine. Personally, I don't see much difference between 2 and/or 4 stroke. As RCKen and bigedmustafa say, it's mostly in the preparation, tuning and maintenance of the fuel system, not the type of engine.

For today's newbies, one big fault is that the internal combustion glow-plugged engine is still not the perfect science. So many that come to the field simply cannot grasp that there are certain deviations from the instructions which may have to happen. For example moving the Needle Valve just sometimes takes an act of congress to get accomplished. There are times such must be done, regardless of what someone wrote into a computer, printed it up, and sent it out with a mass production engine.

One additional item that causes many engines to quit early, especially on take-off, is that they are simply set too lean. Outside the racers, there is little need to attempt a take-off with less than 700 RPM down from peak using "rich" to get that reduction.

BTW a Dodge RAM with a Cumins Diesel takes all, and I used up a # of Fords, Mercurys, Pontiacs, a Firebird, Buicks, and a GMC.
Edit: Bad fingers!