If you have no way to pre-heat it, you are in for a world of hurt.
There is just too much thick hydraulic fluid for that little starter to have to spin the engine through without some assistance, like heat and a booster battery, and the Robin engines are (from everything I've read from owners here) not easy to start in the cold.
I've never had to pre-heat my Kohler and I've started it at -10. It didn't want to, but I made it. I had to use a battery booster plugged into the wall. I could have used jumper cables, too.
This is what I do with my Kohler with no pre-heat. Maybe it will work for you.
- Change the engine oil to a 0W30 synthetic (I did this the first oil change. Mobil 1. 15 years :thumbsup
.
- Change the hydraulic oil to 0W40. I've been adding a quart of this to the factory hydraulic oil at every 50 hours filter change, so I've got it diluted with about 15 quarts by now. If it were me, I'd change the entire tank out at once. 10 gallons is 40 quarts. You can get 5 quart jugs at Walmart for $25. So you'd need 8 jugs. That's $200. Ouch, but might be worth it in the long run. Some folks would suggest even 0W50 for a little more wheel power in the summer heat.
- Drive a truck or car back there and put jumper cables on it before you even try to start it. Don't try to start it without doing this at those temps. If you try it without enough battery power, you're just going to get a slow cranking machine and might frost the plugs. Then you're screwed. You'll have to remove the plugs, clean them off, crank the engine with no throttle to clear the cylinders, put the plugs back in, and get the jumper cables anyway, so just start with the jumper cables and save yourself some grief. :laughing:
- Remove the air cleaner.
- Give it a 1 second shot of starting fluid.
- Then full choke and NO throttle.
- Start cranking it. As soon as it fires off the ether, start increasing the throttle until if fires on the gas.
- Once it fires off the gas, stop increasing the throttle and start decreasing the choke.
- Eventually you'll find a happy medium between throttle and choke and it'll keep running.
- If it doesn't fire off the ether, shut off the key, shut off the throttle, open the choke, wait a minute, give it another shot of starting fluid, close the choke and try it again.
- If after the 3rd or 4th try it doesn't fire off of the ether, it isn't going to start. Go home. Make cocoa. :licking:
- If it fires off the ether it should fire off the gas after a couple seconds.
- Never crank the engine for more than 5-6 seconds at a time or you'll eventually do starter damage.
- Once you do get it started, get it up to about 1/3 throttle and remove the jumper cables.
- Replace the air filter.
- Let it run at 1/3 throttle for at least 10 minutes. This will circulate the hydraulic fluid through the PTO and the steering/FEL/aux-PTO pumps and warm it up nicely.
- Keep a listen to the engine. As it warms up, you'll have to decrease the choke.
- Before you take off, cycle the FEL arms and the dump/curl motions a few times full stroke.
- Then go to full throttle and do your chores.
- Don't run it at anything less than full throttle. These engines are meant to run at 3600RPMs and it not only provides the best power to go, it also helps with braking (remember, we have no brakes) and also keeping the engine cool. A lot of folks forget about engine cooling in winter, but after 20-30 minutes of hard plowing, my hydraulic cooler fan will come on even at 0 degrees air temps. So the engine need a constant flow of cooling air and that's provided at 3600RPMs.
