With winter and severe cold starting to make it appearance around the country and especially in the Midwest, you might like to try this to your plane on cold days.

People have tried various preheat schemes and I will not address all of those here. They all apply some heat to the engine and battery to assist in starting, but what when you have none of that?

Here is what I learned when flying in Alaska.

First, make sure that your mags are indeed grounded. You can verify this with a ohm meter on each mag.

Now you are ready to begin:
First give a full shot of primer to the engine.
Now pull the engine through on blade (this will load one cylinder with fuel)
Give another shot of primer.
Pull one blade through
Primer shot
Pull one blade
Last primer shot
Last blade through.

Now every cylinder is loaded or about to be loaded with fuel/air.

Now hit starter, plane should start on first or second blade.
With it very cold there will be no endless cranking. In the cold at 20 degress F you might get 20 seconds of cranking, this makes everyone count.

Cheers

Roscoe
http://www.yankee-aviation.com/
513-519-7008