P700 Below -0 starting ?

[Mikey71]

I am a new member here , and this is my first post , I'm hoping That I do this right ! Anyway I bought this 700-2 back in October of 18 brand new , mainly because of the Honda reputation! Had it home about a week the temperature went to about 30 degrees above and you'd have to crank on it quite a bit before it would fire ! I live in Wisconsin and plan on doing a lot of ice fishing , and the way it was starting was terrible ! The dealer had no ideas , so I tried another dealer and their service manager seemed intent on finding out what the problem was , he told me that every 700 on the lot started the same way , and we both agreed that it didn't seem right ! They couldn't figure it out , so he got ahold of a Honda engineer and he suggested not using the high octane and use regular fuel , he told him that the 700 is not made to run high octane in colder weather , immediately I thought that this was bogus , well anyway the dealer siphoned the fuel out put regular fuel in and I couldn't wait till the next morning ! To my amazement the darn thing fired right up ! But now we've had some really cold sub zero and I have no dash lights and the pump won't cycle until I run the torpedo heater for about 10 minutes on the front of the machine ! Has anyone else had this experience! Oh along with the regular fuel I am faithful with using sea foam ! He told me the one lung machine doesn't have the snap to fire the 91 octane , I'm a believer ! Now I have to figure this one out ! Any help would be greatly appreciated !

 

[jwfirebird]

sea foam is not meant to be a continual thing and not necessary anyway, all you need is pump gas any octane will have the winter additives to make it work in the cold. but if the pump isnt turning on the relay that powers it needs to be water proofed or replaced, think there was another thread on here recently where they said which one it was

 

[Gunslingertom]

The service dept. at the dealership where I bought mine, said they have had to replace a lot of batteries. Sounds like there was a bad run of batteries. Might check into it.

 

[Plumber32]

I am a new member here , and this is my first post , I'm hoping That I do this right ! Anyway I bought this 700-2 back in October of 18 brand new , mainly because of the Honda reputation! Had it home about a week the temperature went to about 30 degrees above and you'd have to crank on it quite a bit before it would fire ! I live in Wisconsin and plan on doing a lot of ice fishing , and the way it was starting was terrible ! The dealer had no ideas , so I tried another dealer and their service manager seemed intent on finding out what the problem was , he told me that every 700 on the lot started the same way , and we both agreed that it didn't seem right ! They couldn't figure it out , so he got ahold of a Honda engineer and he suggested not using the high octane and use regular fuel , he told him that the 700 is not made to run high octane in colder weather , immediately I thought that this was bogus , well anyway the dealer siphoned the fuel out put regular fuel in and I couldn't wait till the next morning ! To my amazement the darn thing fired right up ! But now we've had some really cold sub zero and I have no dash lights and the pump won't cycle until I run the torpedo heater for about 10 minutes on the front of the machine ! Has anyone else had this experience! Oh along with the regular fuel I am faithful with using sea foam ! He told me the one lung machine doesn't have the snap to fire the 91 octane , I'm a believer ! Now I have to figure this one out ! Any help would be greatly appreciated !

Cycling the key a couple times always helped mine and running synthetic oil.

 

[jwfirebird]

P700 - Super cold won’t start

 

[Mikey71]

sea foam is not meant to be a continual thing and not necessary anyway, all you need is pump gas any octane will have the winter additives to make it work in the cold. but if the pump isnt turning on the relay that powers it needs to be water proofed or replaced, think there was another thread on here recently where they said which one it was

That relay would make sense , wherever it is , I'm wondering now if that would affect the dash lights ? I had headlights and my winch functioned ! It's one of these things that unless it gets down below zero it won't show up ! I'm going to try and locate that relay , suppose to be sub zero Friday night ! If I can isolate my heat gun on the relay that might tell me something ! Thank You by the way , it's something to look at !

 

[Mikey71]

Cycling the key a couple times always helped mine and running synthetic oil.

Now that it warmed up no problem , it's suppose to get cold again for the weekend . I'll try that key cycling , and I immediately changed over to synthetic shortly after I bought it ! I'll post my results if I find anything out ! Thank you !

 

[Mikey71]

The service dept. at the dealership where I bought mine, said they have had to replace a lot of batteries. Sounds like there was a bad run of batteries. Might check into it.

That's a possibility, I had head lights and my winch worked , but a battery can make everything act differently , it warmed up now for a few days so it's all good now , the cold is coming back for the weekend , -10 Friday night so maybe Saturday morning I could hook up my big battery charger and put it on boost , if the dash lights come on and the pump cycles that would point to the battery I guess ! Thank You !

 

[Chris-Rog]

Sounds very similar to my story. I also just bought a 2018 pioneer 10003 last November and I live in Wisconsin as well. Mine started ( although it did always seem slow to start...dealer said “ they all start like that”) periodically and ran with high octane no ethanol fuel with sea foam until.... 0 degrees last week, it wouldn’t start. Called dealer who said “ use 87 with ethanol and bottle of heat” due to 87 having lower detonation. It worked. I also now keep it religiously on a battery tenders. I am however, a little gun shy about driving out on the ice in really cold weather, at least until I am more confident in it’s cold weather starting ability. The Coast Guard had to rescue 7 ice fishermen and a guide last week way out on the ice due to the utv not starting out here. I wonder if it was a Honda. Curious if you bought yours at Ken’s?

 

[Mikey71]

Sounds very similar to my story. I also just bought a 2018 pioneer 10003 last November and I live in Wisconsin as well. Mine started ( although it did always seem slow to start...dealer said “ they all start like that”) periodically and ran with high octane no ethanol fuel with sea foam until.... 0 degrees last week, it wouldn’t start. Called dealer who said “ use 87 with ethanol and bottle of heat” due to 87 having lower detonation. It worked. I also now keep it religiously on a battery tenders. I am however, a little gun shy about driving out on the ice in really cold weather, at least until I am more confident in it’s cold weather starting ability. The Coast Guard had to rescue 7 ice fishermen and a guide last week way out on the ice due to the utv not starting out here. I wonder if it was a Honda. Curious if you bought yours at Ken’s?

Hello Chris-Rog , To answer your question about where I bought it , I bought it at Cedar Creek Motor Sports , I didn't know there was a dealer in Wisconsin Rapids until after the fact ! The lower octane does work , now they told me that the 1000 like you have can run 91 octane because of the twin cylinder , I don't know what to believe anymore ! Now with the severe weather we've had I had no dash lights and no fuel pump cycling until I ran the torpedo heater on it then she went ! This week end is going to be really cold again hopefully I'll get to try a few things , and figure this thing out ! I'm really sorry to hear that you've got the same problem with the 1000 ! They all have problems my buddies kid bought a can am defender , had a week and it totally quite running , they had to come and get it , they never did get it back to him , he worked out a deal for more money of course and he bought the loaner that he had ! I don't want to get stranded out on the ice like you said , gotta figure this out ! I'll post anything that I find ! Thank You !