About four flips with the choke on to get a pop, then about 4 more flips to get it running. After that, one flip starts. Getting 7650rpm with an APC 16x10 right now but this engine has less than a tank of gas through it so far and I'm expecting a good bit of improvement. Dual rings, excellant compression, beautiful throttle response. Only snag, it's got one of those oval shaped intake ports like on the Poulan 46 so building the carb adapter is a little work (understatement)