Some 2 stroke and even 4 stroke garden machinery engines are a pig to start. A blast of 'Easy Start' is the simple cure but it involve remoting the air filter or the spark plug. A removable cap to allow 'Easy Start' be sprayed directly into the carburetor would be very convenient, no ?
My stuff is all very easy to start particularly compared to kit from a few decades ago. I'd wondered whether they had rare earth magnets these days (this is talking about points-free stuff). I did have to strip and blow out the jets in a carb a couple of weeks ago, but that's the first problem I have had in ten years.
Back in them old days of model aircraft with glo plug engines etc, we used to squirt some stuff in for an easier start, cannot recall what it was after all this time though. Brian
Yes, that's my experience too. Anything that's not easy to start has something fundamentally wrong with it that needs fixing, not a squirt of magic spray.
I agree - It can actually cause extra damage, by washing the film of oil from the cylinder bores, so really its use ought to be for emergencies only. I've kept a can in the boot for the past ten years, just in case, but it is still unused.
I used to just 'choke' the engine with my thumb / finger over the inlet as I turned it over and / or squirted some neat fuel into the inlet, or even straight into the cylinder if there was a suitable pressure take off on the exhaust manifold.
The Webra Speed 61R (Marine) in my catamaran wasn't so easy to get to the carb (because it was on the back of the engine near crankshaft level) buy that then normally started quickly enough on my electric starter and belt. ;-)
My mate had highly tuned his engine (we were Factory sponsored drivers) so it was far more difficult to start and temperamental in use. ;-(
Given that it was supposed to make 1.6 bhp (at 16,500 rpm) I didn't really see the need for the extra tuning, especially if it made it less reliable.
Cheers, T i m
I think like most things it all depends how you use it.
If you squirt enough of it that it enters the cylinder as a liquid then yes I guess it could dissolve / thin any oil coating inside the cylinder (for one cycle anyway) but it shouldn't if you only allow the vaporised ether to enter the cylinder, as they would enter if they were vaporised petrol?
Agreed, ideally all engines should start easily using their own solutions.
I keep a can in the kitcar that may only get started once every few months and because it has a mechanical fuel pump, *sometimes* needs spinning over for quite a few seconds to get some fuel to the carb. A puff of Easy Start into the air filter intake is generally all that's needed to get the engine to run for a few seconds and take the load off the starter / battery long enough to get some fuel pressure up.
I also had an old Bedford CF Ambulance Campervan conversion that hadn't been run for years and needed a puff of Easy Start to get it to fire up. It weaned itself off Easy Start over the first 5 or so times I fired it up.
Cheers, T i m
I had an early Leyland Roadrunner horsebox, probably a bit younger than the CF. That actually required "easystart" for any cold start, there was an official Leyland product and IIRC some sort of port in the cab for injecting it. But you could get away with generic easystart into the air filter.
They'll only be a pig to start with a poor spark or the mixture not rich enough (assuming a cold start).
Afair, that would have been ether (diethyl ether to give it its full name).
it was raw fuel with a glowplug. they were always easy to start.
ether was a constituent of model *'diesel'* fuel - and still is
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