hard starting

we run a blown alcohol small block chevy.sometimes its hard to start sometimes it seems to flood easily,sometimes it takes a lot of gas.is that weather or barrell valve or what?

 

A blown alky motor will flood very easily when being stated with gasoline, your best bet is to start it with alcohol...that is as long as it's warm outside. If it is really cold outside then you may have to start it with gasoline...but other than cold weather, it's always easiest to start it with alky.

 

The best way to start it is to always mix 50/50 alky/gas in the squirt bottle. Alky is harder to fire in cold conditions and gas burns too fast all by itself and can be harder to catch once the prime runs out.

Have a smaller opening on the squirt bottle. Many people think they are putting a fire out while priming. You don't need a ton of fuel. A good size hole would be about .100" which is a little larger than the hole a coat hanger wire would make.

With the starter NOT spinning, open the butterflies of the injector and squirt the top of the blower rotors for about 3 seconds. Close the injector, spin the starter for about 3 seconds and engage the ignition. DON'T SQUIRT ANY FUEL WHILE YOU ARE SPINNING THE STARTER. Let the engine fire and run for a second. Then squirt addition fuel on the closed butterfies until you sense the fuel system picking it up. You can tell when it does because it'll sound like the engine is dropping RPM (at that point the fuel system is feeding the engine and so are you so it gets rich).

If the hole in the squirt bottle is to big, you'll flood it when you prime it and again when your picking up the prime after it fires.

[ September 14, 2003, 04:06 AM: Message edited by: Randy G. ]

 

RANDY;

You so smart

 

Coming from you, that's a real compliment!

Are you guys running Pomona?

 

OH yes...Vegas also..going to go at it real hard too only 2 races left got to get after it you know..

 

Looks like we'll have our car at Pomona, too. I'm passing DT's torch to Ora Vasquez starting at Vegas and continuing into Pomona. We haven't started the car in 17 months, so our intention is to just have some fun and hopefully do well. Stay tuned.

 

We run a quick small block 5.81 and don't use gas or alky due to the problem you have, spin it with butterflies open and ignition off, when the nozzles squirt shut the flaps and light the ignition, works for us just fine.

 

...as long as the ignition is really off. Good way to be wearing a car if it's not for some reason. Seen it happen.

 

A few years back, racing our TAD at the Denver National event (1994 or 1995 cant remember for sure what year), the team who was running beside us in qualifying started their car like that. I forget who it was but anyways, somehow the ignition wasn't off and the car lit immediately while the crew guy was looking in the butterflies. The car took off down the track, that crew guy over, ran another or his crew over and cut his head open pretty good with the rear wing side-plate. Wasn't a pretty deal...I know there are some that get away with it successfully for their entire career, but I would definitely not recommend that method.