I heard from somebody that after you crash a plane you should take the engine apart and clean the whole thing. The crash was not to bad, I just broke off the firewall and broke a prop. When I got it fixed I tried to start the engine and it would not turn over. Did I just ruin it when I tried to start it? Any input would be great.

If the crash only broke the prop you are probably ok. It's when you plant the engine in the ground that it needs to be stripped down because of mud. Look into the carb of your engine. If you see any significant amount of dirt, probably time to tear it down(there will be a few particles probably, but all you need is a q-tip to take care of that). Do you have the prop on it when you are trying to turn it over? If not they are pretty hard to get through compression just by the drive hub. If the prop it on it, will it go the other way? Give that a shot but don't force anything, and just out of curiosity what kind of engine is it?

If you haven't already done it. Close the carb completely and rinse with some fuel. If you did turn the engine with the carb open and some dirt in carb, open the carb and do the samething rinse it with fuel. I would take the back plate off and rinse that also with fuel. After all the rinsing is done, reconnect everything and try running it. If you landed square on the nose you may have tweeted the crank out of position or even bent it. Happy flying!!!!!

I did have the prop on it. The engine is an O.S 46 la on a sig LT-40. I also normally start it with an electric starter but it was out of batteries so I tried a chicken stick. The guys at the field started it like that so I know it can be done. When you try to start in manually is there else you need to do? I choked it and made sure there was fuel in the line like I would with the electric starter.

When you say it won't turn over, do you mean you can't physically turn the prop or that it wont fire? When you said it wouldn't turn over that lead me to believe that the prop wouldn't move. If it just wont fire, I'd say make sure the glow plug is working, and prime it more than you would with an electric starter.

If you have already started the engine, even turned it over several times, the benefit from cleaning the engine and removig the dirt is now for the most part, past. The grit will have permantly done all the damage it's probably going to do it and already scored everything and exited the engine.

If you suspect dirt got in the engine from the crash, you should clean it "before" turning the engine over or starting it.