May I give you all a piece of advice as a former
physiologist and professional coach. Instead of fussing with any of these motors smaller than a BIGTWIN. Take an electric battery drill gun you can find at any hardware big box chain, buy the 20V version such as RYOBI (about $80 bucks), switch it to the high torque mode (they have a speed and torque setting), spend $2 at walmart to buy a hex bit, and use the drill gun on the flywheel nut as an electric starter. Let me say the older BLUE model RYOBI drill guns are substantiallu better than the current GREEN ones. Ebay sells them cheaply; the batteries are what cost money.

I started doing this 5 years ago on any motor where the drill gun will handle the stress. This works in general on any OMC 22 c.i. or smaller from my experience.

I processed 35 motors over a 2-day period last week and only pulled over 3 by rope because they had powerheads bigger than 22 c.i. My shoulder still feels fine 🙂

Make sure you put your free hand on the base of the drill gun to minimize the kickback initially when you pull the trigger otherwise you might hurt your wrist. The high torque mode of battery drill guns will twist it right out of your grip overboard depending on how strong your grip is, or possibly hurt your wrist.

I do recommend trying this slowly – pull the trigger slowly – until you understand what I am talking about. Once you do, you wont go back to trying start any of the old motors without a drill gun. Even rowboat motors or any of the old iron with exposed flywheel nuts – just use a battery powered drill gun where applicable. Of course in a test barrel/tank where you have access to an outlet, just use your favorite electric drill gun for more power. Same philosophy applies to fogging motors too. If it’s a small motor use the high speed low torque setting and you dont have to worry about injury in general.

The nice thing about this is your cranking speed is generally going to be faster and constantso with magnetos you should know right away if your ignition is correct or wrong, and if you are doing an initial carburetor calibration you can play with your needle settings after a pop or fart until it is running on it’s own without having to pull and pull and pull in frustration. Most the time a manual starter is going to give about 3 turns of the flywheel on a pull. So on a cold motor the first pull or two just gets a fuel charge into the cylinder(s), the 3rd pull igniting the charge. If it doesnt happen with a drill gun after 2 seconds YOU AINT STARTING IT BY HAND.

I mean – when the settings, ignition, and fuel systems are set up right all of these motors should start on 3 pulls cold.

You can just pull the drill away. No big deal. Ive had rhe hex bit stay on once in awhile but you just shut the engine down and remove then restart the motor easily by hand or the drill again. Usually once its running already, one turn of the flywheel should get it restarted anyway.