First engine start

12 Mar 2006 First engine start

I started my engine this afternoon. It took about two seconds of pressing the start button, and it fired right up. Nice little rumble. Very smooth.

I used my wife’s camera to take some video, but for some reason the file got corrupted, and is not readable. That’s rather disappointing, since it was such a great first start. Oh well.

To prepare for the start, I’ve been turning the engine over by hand with the prop about 30 – 60 blades every day for the past couple of weeks. Not sure if that helped, but it didn’t seem to hurt.

I let the engine run until I could start to feel warmth on the tops of the radiators – about 2-3 minutes. After shutdown, I figured the coolant level in the coolant tank would have gone down a bit, but it didn’t seem to change at all. Perhaps I got all the air out right away. We’ll see after I run the engine a bit more.