Hello,

So i'm back from a long 15 months deployment, the s2k is been in storage,
my question is, whats the best way to start the car for the first time? what steps should i take?

Thank you

 

Make sure the battery is fully charged

 

Less important but if you have some spare time:

You could take off the valve cover and pour some oil over the cams, etc.

Take out the spark plugs and pour half a dozen drops down each piston and hand turn the crank a few rev's.

 

1. Hopefully you ran sta-bil through it.
2. A shot of wd 40 (instead of oil) in the plugs

Let the wd 40 soak for a little bit then fire her up.

 

Maybe more important was what you did to the car before you put it in storage? At winters end one year (5 months) I took the valve cover off to do a valve adjust and there was still a film of oil on everything. I think I had dino start-up oil in there. Other than that I agree with the turning the crank by hand.

 

Just start it up and go for a drive. You should be fine, I was gone for 13 months to the gulf and when I got back I took my S for a cruise and she ran fine.

 

I recommend putting fresh gas in it before starting the car. bring a container or something with it. Also along with the hand crank.

 

Honestly it is overkill.

But I trickle charge my battery when it's stored for 6 months and the car starts up like it was shut off over night.

It will need all the cold cranking amps it can get on a cold startup

 

Thank you for the help,

before i left for deployment the car had a full gas tank with amsoil fuel Stabilizer, each piston was manually lube, and i using a brand new battery.

can i just turn on the car and drive it?

 

Battery/voltage as others have mentioned, obviously check your oil level (consider changing it again if you didn't before you left), pull the spark plugs, give a quick blast of your favorite light lube spray (Sea Foam, any engine fogging spray, or WD-if nothing else is around), leave the spark plugs out, disconnect the injector connectors, then turn the engine over until the oil press light goes out, reconnect the injectors, reinstall the spark plugs, and button everything back up - then start her up.
This procedure is relatively simple, not too time consuming, and gets the oil circulating throughout the engine - without loading up the engine (there's no compression load with the spark plugs pulled - which allows the engine to free-wheel; and of course the engine is not running - which prevents all sorts of load related, zero oil wear). Cold starting the engine after it's sat for a while causes significantly greater wear because it takes about 6 seconds for the oil to fully circulate; all while the engine is under load (idle load is still not good without oil pressure).

That's my take on it.

And for those who throw the "ah heck don't worry about it, my car runs fine after just starting it up with no prep"... remember, it's not your car.
The issue is minimizing wear associated with long storage periods - not whether or not the car will run normally - because it will.
My car was stored for almost exactly 3 years while I was deployed to the Middle East - I used this procedure - and my car runs fine - in fact my car has maintained extremely low leak down test results (less than 2% in every cylinder at 55,000 miles), burns very little oil (around 0.25 qt per 3,000 miles), and my cam bearings look factory new (cams were pulled when I had the intake retainers replaced with AP2 retainers).
Do as much as you feel you need to for your car - but only suggest things that can benefit.