OK, here's my thoughts on this thread:
You can't do much more good by cranking the engine over before starting
it, at least not much in the oil department.
Even though it has a pressure, oil is an incompressible medium. If you
circulate it using the engine combustion or the starter motor, it still
gets squeezed about by the oil pump.
The only way to get oil up to the top end of the engine is by using either
an electric oil pump or the pressure gadget previously mentioned.
Or you can peel off the dizzy every cold morning and spin the oil pump
with an electric drill... that's what you do after an engine rebuild to
build pressure. But it's also a bit of a chore to reset your timing ;-)
Personally I like to hear an engine turn over once, maybe twice, and fire
up... I don't like the sound of a laboring starter motor. I also don't
beleive in the snake-oil products that you can put in your motor to keep
everything slippery.
I notice on one of the ads for a miracle oil, they take the rocker cover
off an American inline 6, drain the oil out of it, start it up and spray
water at the exposed valve train, much to the astoundment of the watcher!
But if you've ever figured out how a trombone works, WATER lubricates the
metal parts... it's not used in cars because they'd rust. So spraying the
engine with a fire hose doesn't hurt it a bit; it probably helps keep it
cool.
Rant mode OFF.
-Malcolm
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