no no no.... my engine won't start~!! if you guys remember my last post, i posted about the pull start rope didn't come out smoothly. my last run (2-3 days ago), it took me 30 min of pulling to start the engine. PLUS i couldn't even finish ONE tank. I cleaned out everything as much as i could today, and retried... umm.... still nothing... what's wrong with my engine?? I want to take it to my LHS, but it'll cost too much money and don't have lots of spare time. I guess i have to go to LHS this sunday for help... but before sunday comes, i would like to try whatever i can to fix this. i have HPI RS4 3 SS with .12SS engine that came with the kit. Thank you very much

btw, i'm a VERY Nitro Newbie... so please explain as much you can. Thanx.

Well it helps if you tell us as much as you can about what's going on, what you did and didn't check and that sort of thing. Maybe then we can help you, but the question was a bit general.

ok run down the list.....

did you primer the fuel so that there are no air bubbles in the line going to the engine

try giving it about half gas and try pullstarting it.

heat up the engine with a hair dryer until the engine is hot to the touch.


these all should work

The only thing I would add.

Take the glow plug out and put it on your glow plug ignitor. I assume that your ignitor is fully charged, and if it is and the glow plug doesn't turn a bright orange then change your glow plug.

Glow plugs that go bad is your worst nightmare as a newbie, becasue it's the last place you look.

Glow plugs that are bad make your engine impossible to tune, trust me from experience I spend 1 1/2 hours trying to tune my buggy at the track to finally figure out it was the glow plug.

Also is the motor broken in yet...... Because there's different advice for that.

Thank you very much for all the replies.

Here is what i've done so far:
1. I switched to new glow plug last weekend. And today was my 2nd run with it
2. I took off the heatsink head and sprayed some wd40 since i don't have after run oil yet.
3. I took out some case (i think piston case.. do not know what it's called...) and cleaned it as well. There are three holes on there. one square looking and the other two thin rectangle shape. After i cleaned this, i hear some squeaking sound from engine or pullstart. I can't tell... gosh... did i just make it worse??? (i think i switched the position of holes....)
4. I charge my ignitor after each day run.
5. air filter gets cleaned once every two day.

Hmm... Since it's night, i'll try again tomorrow. shoot, i gotta take out fuel from tank. Thank you again for advance.

oh yeah, one more thing. I used to have this problem, but not nemore

When the glow plug is taken off from the engine, the pullstarts can be pulled very smoothly. BUT when it's on, it's hard to pull as i described in my first post. This problem is solved, BUT now it makes squeaking sound. i'm scared that i messed the whole engine.

If the engine is fairly new then it should be hard to pull with the pullstart when the glow plug is in. Even when its not new, it should still be hard to pull once every rotation. It shouldn't be easy to pull. And correct me if i'm wrong, but I don't think that WD-40 is the best thing to put in your engine. Also, you shouldn't have to take off the whole heatsink, just the glowplug.

its also not necessary to put after-run oil in unless your storing for more than a month

Well, I put it in everytime. If anything it keeps it fresh and oiled in case you can't run it for some reason(in my case lots of rain). And if you run it everyday and know you're going to run it the next day it certainly can't hurt anything to put ins some ARO everytime.