One of the line crew at York THV showed me this method today. He uses it before starting many of the fuel injected rental planes on the field, including several that have no prime capability. I figured that this morning would be a real test since my plane was outside last evening and cold soaked at around 20F.
1.) Turn on Batteries and boost pump…mixture to rich. Move throttle forward to full fuel and back to Off 3 times. Turn the boost off and batteries off.
2.) Hand turn prop through 2-3 revolutions
3.) Repeat step 1
4.) Hand turn prop through 1 more revolution.
5.) Prime for about 15 seconds
6.) START…mine started IMMEDIATELY with absolutely no coaxing. I was frankly amazed!
Having to get out of the cockpit twice in twenty degree weather to hand prop a $300+k airplane may work , but is equally as embarrassing as running the battery dead starting it the conventional way.
I always made a habit of turning the prop over on my Skylane in cold weather just to be sure that I got oil up onto the cylinder walls. It is really not too much more of a deal than that…but it sure beats cranking on the battery and priming the hell out of the plane (most of which ends up on the runway anyway). The real problem is that almost none of the prime ever mists into the cylinders. This method at least puts some gas where things will crank over, and it seems to do it very effectively.
As a Lancair depositor I am also curious about your cold start difficulties since the same engine is shared by both planes. For those of you that have had problems starting a cold engine, has any form of preheat solved the problem? I must say that I have always done a preheat for my C172 when ever the temps drop below 35F. It seems to reason that a larger engine would certainly need a preheat at such temps.
I have just added a Reiff preheater. However, the problem really seems to be the way that the primer does (or does not) spray fuel into each cylinder through the fuel injectors. This technique seems to mitigate the problem. I have used the method posted for the last 4 mornings. It works flawlessly, with or without preheat. However, even without preheat, I would still be turning over my prop to get oil up into the engine…
My SR22 sat out on the ramp last evening in NC. It was about -3C, but as always, it turned over the very first time. Glad that it works well for you too!