Starting Procedure

Flooded our car for the first time in 13 years last weekend just in time for first round. normal procedure is pull the car up,driver pulls fuel on, plug in batt, turn main power switch on witch includes mag. mag switch in car stays on all the time unless driver needs to shut it down. prime with gas as motor is turned over, pull gas away when it catches
on alcohol and make our run. Car fired this time and died after 2-3 seconds. gave it small gas prime and would not start.cranked for 4-5 seconds then gave it a big shot of gas and still nothing. towed back to pits,pulled plugs and cranked.spit fuel out #2 like a fire hose. Put junk plugs in and it fired right up. Plugs were 2 runs from new that were in it. New pump for this race. old pump was 6.15 on Adams flow bench and new pump is 80A 7.1 pump. Thinking we need to adjust are start-up procedure with the new pump but not quite sure witch way to go. Maybe fire up on gas with pump off them pull pump on after it fires or maybe use alcohol instead of gas. Any suggestions?

 

starting

If the weather is warm, or above say 60 degrees Use alky. Did you make sure the motor was backed down really good before you took it to the lanes.? I am assuming you were before the water + the car was level Don't know what else to say. But you are not the only one this has happened to. Don

 

We usually fire the car before towing up but had run about 1 hour earlier so we felt there was still enough heat in to not have to warm it up. We wont do that again although we've done it in the past with no problems. We also don't back it down but it was probably a mater of time before that caught up with us. Really didn't see the need with alcohol and we shut the car down with the fuel shut-off. Car was level and before the water. Fuel tank is level with the pump and below the hat so i don't think fuel is siphoning through the hat but i may be wrong. Will fire in the pits, back down and use alky when weather permits. Thanks for your comments,Bob

 

sounds like a mag or coil getting weak.front holes always get alot went you give it a good drink but the rest should have lit. happened to us in the pits was abad coil .good luck

 

Thanks, thought that might be a problem also so the mag and coil went out for service today.

 

just something you might wanna do when a motor fires then dies..always back the motor up use your roll over bar and back the motor several times this could save you some rods or a block..Dave

 

Roll it backward or forward? I haven't heard of this. You just clearing the cylinders so it doesn't hydraulic or what?

-Brian

 

I think what he means is use your rachet that you would normally use turn the motor over with when checking valve lash etc, but rachet the motor over backwards. This pushes any fuel in the cylinders out the exhuast without locking the motor up.
You only do this after your intial attemp to fire the engine and it fails to light.

Another small thing we do is leave the ignition off while cranking for fire up, turn the ignition or kill switch on once the engine is at cranking speed.
We use gasoline to start in all tempertures.

We also have had on irregular frequencices no fires as you suggest, but racheting the engine backwards for a few turns then hit it again with a small dose of fuel at it fires.
If you have a older style mag (non MSD) that is run down a little it also may show similar starting issues as you experienced.
My 10c worth, hope it helps
P

 

Happened to me before, now I start on alky or a 50/50 gas-alky misture

 

We have primed with gas, alcohol, and mix, it all works. Straight gas is easy to over-do, expecially if you have a newer crew guy.

What is your plugs gapped at? The only time we ever had a flooding problem our gaps were way to big, the weak mag theory goes along the same lines.

In my opinion its a ignition related problem not fuel, I dont know what mag you have, but our old tweaked vertex will start a motor with fuel running out of the pipes.

 

Plug gap is 20. Mag is Mallory 3.When we get the mag back we will try some different starting combos at the shop. Most guys i have talked to say they leave the mag off until motor is turning over so will try that and alky after initial warm-up.Thanks for all the comments. This board is a great asset to the racing community.

 

Start Up

We usually give it a squirt of gas and turn the motor over with the mag off, this gets the gas into the cylinders. Then we turn the motor over with the mag off, get it up to speed the flip the mag on. Once it catches we just hold the bottle to the butterflys and let the engine pull fuel from the bottle untill it sounds like the alky taking over.

I am from Canada so its pretty cool here all time so we always use gas.


My 2 cents
Corey

 

20 is a bit wide

 

This use to happen to us all the time. We were waiting to long after we gave it a squirt and it would find the open valve and fill that cylinder. Now when the driver see's the throttle come back up he starts to crank. Once the pipes start to vapor he is given the signal and he turns on the mag. We keep feeding a little fuel into the hat until the pump takes over. I for some reason it doesnt light up right away we stop and crank the motor backwards with the rachet to pull the excess fuel out of the cylinders. This proceedure has worked great for us. I hope you find something that works for you as well.

 

I agree with Dave, 20 is a bit wide on the gap - definetly could have contributed to your problem.

Like Mopar said, it's REALLY easy to over do it with gas, alcohol is much more forgiving. There are a lot of guys that are stubborn and want to use gas because that's how they've always done it, but it only takes once over doing it then you're sitting there with a flooded car - and you aren't always going to be racing someone who will afford you the time to back the motor down then try to start again. If you want to be covered in most all weather conditions try a 50/50 mix as Shawn suggested. With our car we use straight alcohol, unless it's a bit cold outside (less than 55 f or so), then we have a seperate straight gas bottle.

 

I have no experience with a mallory 3 so I may be wrong, but I would say that .020 gap is the main problem.

We like them at about .015.

 

I do not recall ever having a problem like this. Even when we ran SM II's, than we went to III's and now IV's. We've always used straight alky. And we ran wider than .016" plug gap until the SM IV's.
We've had a couple different types of starters which I assume to be different speeds, but still no grief.
We just squirt some in the injector, the mag is not grounded at this point, we hit the starter button and bingo, it fires almost instantly. No waiting for this or that to happen before flipping the switch on.
I don't know why it works well for us, but this weekend I probably won't be able to start them.

 

starting

we always started on gas until a few weeks ago we ran out and used alky with no problems. Promag 44 with 24volts. I wouldn't be surprised if it picks up power with a .016 plug gap. I've run weaker mags down to .014 and sometimes they really wake up.

 

After talking to the mag guy ( BR Motorsports ) he said 20 may be a bit wide also so we will make a change there. What would be a minimum gap with a fresh mag 3 and coil.

 

I'd go with .014-.016 like several people have said.

Joad Donnelly