ENGINE GURUS - First Spring Engine Start - Sum Ting Wong

[G.R.]

All of the above points are well and good advice. Over the years I've read various scenarios along the same line at spring startup. Many years ago I was given a great bit of advice by an older friend of my father, a retired mechanic...if you plan on storing any car for an extended period of time, especially in the winter, always change the oil and filter, replace and gap the plugs, fill the tank to the top and faithfully start and run the engine every couple of weeks until it comes up to operating temperature and on occassion put it in gear and move the vehicle. Remember this was back in the mid '60's. I have followed his advice over the years anytime I 've ever stored any vehicle, especially in the winter months, even V-8 powered ski boats and have rarely had spring restart problems.
Just some food for thought

[wtm442]

Originally Posted by G.R.

... and faithfully start and run the engine every couple of weeks until it comes up to operating temperature ...

I bought a Ariens snow blower about 15 years ago, and the store owner told me the same thing ... especially shutting off the fuel and running the carb dry. He said 80% of all gasoline repairs are from gasoline evaporating in the carb and leaving a "varnish" on all the parts.

I start the snow blower every month ... never had a problem. Changed the spark plug once in 15 years.

Of course, I start the Cobra up at least once a month too, and if its dry roads, I take it for a quick ride.

[CHANMADD]

Yes, If you do not have a decent strong spring contact there, that center electrode will burn away causing all kinds of ignition problems.
John

[jhv48]

It's a fuel problem.

He has spark to the plug.

Getting too much fuel (or bad fuel) to the cylinder to ignite.

[CHANMADD]

I had a similar problem years ago. I had spark when cranking ,there was gas... it would'nt start.. "It's the condensor" this was from my wife ,and of course she could not be right..I had spark. 2 hours later to humour my wife I changed the condensor and the thing fired right up. Go figure!!

[G.R.]

Sometimes our better halves are smarter than we give them credit for

[fsstnotch]

If it's a holley, I'd bet my life on the carb. Happens every year on my buddy's chevelle. Last spring, we took the edelbrock off my truck and put it on his car, it started and ran perfect. Put the holley back on and it spits and backfires.

Carb is stuck

[jhv48]

So, what was it?

[Terry Stapley]

Saturday I changed just the #4 and #8 spark plugs to minimize any changes and turned the key.
It fired on the first crank and runs normally now. I then let it cool and changed the rest of the spark plugs and fired it again and all is well.

It was cold when I started it the first time before the misfire so I guess when I choked it I got enough fuel into those two cylinders to kill the plugs!! I have never had that happen before because the plugs had only about 500 miles on them!!

[mr0077]

Terry, that was my reaction the first time I ran into it. It was on an RX-7 rotary with some sort of injector problem (never solved that issue). It wouldn't start, but literally had fuel fogging out of the tail pipe it was so rich. I put in new plugs and it barely started and ran for as long as I wanted, but then it wouldn't start after I shut it off. Changed plugs again, it would barely start and run, shut it off and it wouldn't start. One time it almost started, died and wouldn't start...changed to another set of new plugs and it started. After 4-5 rounds of that, I gave it back to the buddy and shrugged my shoulders. Not sure why, but I concluded that the over-rich condition just killed the plugs.

Glad you got it fixed.