Ether

Thanks to all.

Rod

WD-40 is absolutely useless as a cold starting aid. Mabey the old formula worked but the current WD40 does not. If the engine starts from having used WD40, it was going to start anyway...
I do sometimes use WD40 to feed some fuel to a nasty engine that's been run out of fuel rather than bleed it IF I think there's a good chance of it starting quick. The WD40 will provide fuel to fire it.... it just doesn't provide a volatile fuel to cold start an engine.

Again, a small amount of ether can be beneficial IF YOU USE A VERY TINY AMOUNT. The problem with ether is that most people don't use a tiny amount....

Rod

Before replying on how to use correctly, let's go over "incorrectly"

These are the Wrong Way's according to my opinion and a blurb on what can go wrong)

1) Use too much ether. (broken ring lands)
2) Spraying before the engine is cranking (Too much in one cylinder - broken ring lands)
3) Using glow plugs unsuccessfully, then using ether. (Ether lights in the intake and blows up the intake manifold and air cleaner)

For me, the "right way" is not to use it. But if you must, while cranking the engine and 10 minutes after last touching glow plug switch spray a 1/2 second burst of ether PAST the inlet to air cleaner. Tractor will cough and burble, maybe start. Repeat with 2 squirts of 1/2 second each 1 second apart and 90% of the time it will fire.

jb

diesel engines have to get to 450 degrees give or take to fire off... when the engine is cold, the heat from the compression cycle is sucked away by cold metal and make its very very very difficult to start...

some engine have glow plugs that help by createing an red hot spot in the combustion chamber so the deiesel will ignite.

ether will ignite at 160 degrees so it will flash off and fire much sooner.. so a dab of ether will help the engine start firing and quickly heat up enough to run...

this is good for the starter, the battery and the engine..

early wd40 had a kerosine blend that also was good. due to too many folks burning themselves up and sueing,, new wd40 has dropped the kerosine base and does pretty much nothing to help.. ( change a couple of years ago)

bad.. since ether explodes at lower temps,, it can explode much too soon in some very very high compression engines... exploding too soon means the engine will try to run backwards and this is very hard on the pistons, rods, and very often damages the starter drives then they suddenly run backwards... the little japanese engines are really bad about super high compression where they use high rpms and small engines vrs larger slower engines... so as said earler,, some engines will absolutly NOT work with ether.. as they will either stop or run backwards with ether... so if you have one of these engines,, forget it and use glow plugs, engine heaters and really fast cranking speeds by haveing great batteries and great battery cables.. If you have large displacement diesels with 17 to 1 ratios or lower, a quick shot of diesel will really help to bring the engine to a quick and easiy start.

a large burst of ether can wash the oil off of the cylinder walls, hydro lock the engine bending a rod, crack a piston and other bad things,,

But anytime you get any liquid into a engine and hydro lock it,, you have pretty much screwed the pooch any way.. so NEVER NEVER spay enough wd40, ether, gasolene, oil, diesel, transmission fluid, water, rain, or any other liquid into an engine so that it gets into the cylinder as a liquid form... very very very very bad things happen.. YOU CANNOT COMPRESS A LIQUID!!!!! something must give or break

now... that you have had a ether overview, it is very safe when used correctly, very unsafe when used incorrectly...

another thing,, if you have a red hot manifold heater that heats the air to 600 degrees in the manifold,, and you spray in ether, it will explode and burn in the manifold which does not help start the engine... hence all 65 and later fords with manifold heaters have a waring sticker not to use both the heater and ether at the same time...

hth... bill