I got a os .46 LA for my trainer and it's pretty stiff to turn over.

Stiff enough that with a glow plug in you can't turn it over with my sullivan starter. The same starter/battery combo I use to flip a .40 FP over likes it's not even there.

Even with the glowpug out spinning it over with the electric starter has little rough spots that make it hard to turn over when it nears TDC.

Is this common to the tapered piston/sleeve engine or is something else wrong.

I took the glowplug out and with a tough of fuel in the crankcase flipped it over by hand for a few minutes to make sure everything was lubbed up and it's still pretty hard to flip over.

As of now there's no way to start it since even with an electric you really can't get more than 2 revolutions out of it before the starter will jump off from the friction. I bench mounted it and it "might" be possible with a chicken stick but I didnt' want to keep pushing it while it was that tight.