A colleague at Nene Valley Railway has about 20 of these canisters of ether used for the Fleetguard Engine Start System.

He is willing to give them away to anyone who would find them useful if they collect them from the railway. Apparently the system was fitted to some buses and the canisters may be helpful to anyone with a preserved bus that uses them.

Any comments of the Fleetguard Engine Start System would be interesting.

My bus number (if any): RMs 238, 471 & 2213. GS 17

Seing that it contains Ether, I suspect it is something like the dreaded "Easy start" or Eazystart", which is to be avoided at all costs!!! Healthy engines should require no additional assistance to start, giving them a sniff of Ether isn't the best option.

My bus number (if any): RM531

I couldn't agree more.It's almost as if your motor becomes addicted to the stuff.
Could it be that he has so many because no one will touch it that has prior experience of it.

My bus number (if any): RML2478

I read an article the other day, can't remember where it was, but it advocated the use of petrol in a diesel engine to aid starting in cold weather, so I doubt a bit of ether is going to cause a problem, if all it does it give some initial heat. I should add this pre-heating is talked about for regions where temeratures are regularly well below freezing maybe north of Watford for example:-))

My bus number (if any): RTL 960 RMC 1458 RM 1585 and several RTs

If people are going to start using ether to help start their engine then they might just as well have the engine rebuilt as ether is not the proper way to get an engine started.

My bus number (if any): rml 2613

The trouble with using ether is that it "drys"the top end of the engine creating exessive wear on the compression rings on start up.This leads to lower compression,hence bad starting, and the idea that the engine becomes "addicted" to it.Ether is very good at starting worn engines with bad compression that are bad starters anyway ie "knackered" but if used on a healthy engine will lead to excessive bore/ring wear.But a healthy engine should start without the need for ether anyway.We just used it to keep worn vehicles going long enough untill they got scrapped or sold when we didn't want to spend any money on them.

My bus number (if any): RML2551

Easystart, also known as the "Farmers Friend", because of its usefullness for starting knackered old tractors which have suffered zero maintainance for 20+ years, on cold mornings. Every machine tended to have a can in the cab.....It's got no place on a vehicle which we are supposed to be preserving for future generations ;-) However I have seen it used, and also on an RM which had a knackered engine anyway, after using a heat gun to send warm air down the intake failed. It certainly has spectacular and instant results.
There is a school of thought which advocated the addition of petrol to diesel for cold weather starting, to raise the octane level. This has been discussed on here or on the other side before. It has generally died out now with the introduction of winter diesel blend and better additives. I worked with an old chap who worked all his life at the huge Shell Stanlow refinery, he had a brand new Austin Maestro with a Perkins diesel, he always added a pint of petrol to a full tank of diesel to "give it a bit of oomph".

My bus number (if any): RM531