Talk Morgan Forums Community Vehicle Talk (non-Morgan) Hand crank an engine

Two videos on starting a Ford model T disagreed on how to crank the engine. An Australian with a 1925 car warned to use left hand & keep thumb clear to crank as a backfire could break your wrist. An American used right hand only warning to to keep thumb clear. Where he had his knee looked vulnerable to a backfire. I have always used my right hand keeping my thumb clear on any engine. Is there something about the T to use left hand?
There were also differences in gear changing. The 1925 car the hand brake fully back disengaged clutch & operated brake. To get low gear hand brake in mid position & press left pedal fully. For high gear hand brake full forward & release pedal. .With the 1915 car the left clutch pedal has a mid clutch disengaged position. Hand brake fully off press left pedal fully for low & release for high. Both cars centre pedal is reverse & right is brake. Throttle is on the column. Either would take some getting used to.

TimG, Only tried hand cranking a car once as a kid and failed... though since then, have many times hand cranked an old diesel single cylinder Lister generator and a few larger four cylinder diesel pumps.. Learned the thumb thinking very early on and I RH cranked standing to the side where if there was a backfire the direction of the handle would be away from my wrist.... Each to their own I guess.... Spinning props to gain an engine start... now that must be something else...? (-:

See video on hand starting a Lister JP2M (marine) diesel engine (1434cc/pot, 26" flywheel). Cunning method employed to flick single decompressor off.

https://youtu.be/H5deIvEbA4A

I have similar 1936 engine in my narrowboat but only hand started once

We used to swing the Lister HA6 units we had in RSA back in the 1970's if the battery was flat, they had a ganged decompression lever and it was a bit of a knack to hit the lever without losing momentum at the crankshaft, happy days.

My first car was a Bedford HA van....based on the Viva.
In winter I used the cranking handle to turn the engine over before cold starting.
Ignition off, right hand grip. Never actually tried to start the van with the crank handle though.

Richard, now I get the 'Old Thumper' avatar

Offshore we had small 2 cylinder diesels for pumping up the air start reservoirs on the 2 emergency generators. The small engines had priming cocks & decompression levers with hand crank. They were a bar steward to start. One of the pair was bolted direct to the deck & the vibrations were horrendous, you could not stand near, your legs would have been liquefied.

Richard, That engine is about half the size of the four Listers I used to fire up on occasion... (-: Each engine had a VERY heavy flywheel and four cylinders with individual de-compressors, it only needed the one nearest the starting handle to be flicked off for that cylinder to fire up and give enough time to then flick the remaining three to get the whole show on the road.... I have had to fire up all four engines in quick succession by hand cranking, as part of a semi regular test process, given they were for emergency service duty.... though all had automated battery start facilities too.... I doubt I could manage that process today.. In time they were all scrapped and replaced with self destruct Italian turbo diesels of the half the physical size.... sigh..! And they ask why I choose to call myself a Luddite...!!!

Had a twin cyl 2 litre Volvo marine diesel on my little yacht, with no hand start facility, a situation which ever perturbed me, but to fit and use a hand start was just not practical, but we ever had either an anchor, dingy or sails, should it fail to fire up, in over 20 years of sailing it never ever let us down.

A few years ago we were in Tenerife on a holiday.
Return flight.....through terminal and boarded the plane. Captain came on the intercom.
Ladies and gentlemen, we will have a 5 minute delay as the flight engineer has to go to the starboard engine to start it.
I looked out and there he was. Using a cranking handle. Engine started fine and trouble free flight.

Yes that was a take off of Ringwood Breweries bottle label for same name brew. They later changed the label in disgust

Note on video the compression change over handwheels being operated into low compression mode. The Ricardo design heads have an extra chamber to allow lower compression when running hard for less engine stress, or high for easy cold starts without need of heaters.