For the cold start difficulty of methanol ignition engine, the pre-chamber jet ignition technology was used to improve the flame propagation speed and combustion stability. The single-cylinder engine bench test was conducted to study the effects of jet orifice diameter, injection timing and injection quantity in the pre-chamber on the ignition performance of methanol jet-ignition engine. The test results show that the first successful ignition cycle does not occur until several cycles after the fuel injection starts in the intake manifold and the alternate transition between successful ignition and misfire cycle exists with a large oscillation of average indicated pressure(IMEP) during the process of first successful ignition to stable combustion state. The total flow area of jet hole is closely related to the ignition performance of cold engine. The total flow area of 2 mm single jet hole in the pre-chamber is so small that the ventilation is difficult, and hence the exhaust gas cannot be effectively discharged so as to produce a long-term transition state. The performance of cold start improves significantly due to the increase of total flow area after using 4 mm single jet hole, 6 mm single jet hole and 2.3 mm three jet holes. In addition, the injection timing of pre-chamber has little effect on the cold start performance, while increasing the injection amount of pre-chamber can significantly advance the timing of successful ignition cycle and hence improve the cold start performance of methanol jet-ignition engine.