Outer Limits 4x4 Board

Talking to my mother about how she crossed the desert east to west and back in a morris minor with my father. It was after i told her about the Africa special on top gear and the old cars outdid many of the newer ones cause of there light weigh and simplicity. She said she owned 5 of them in succesion and the cars where button start. If the car didn't start you just pulled hand engine crank.


It got me thinking what mods would you have to do to a 1.3l?
Would it work? most morris engines are a similar size (but with a lower compression)

Why? I have tried to push start my car on the flat and it aint easy.
As a failsafe measure it could be handy once in every 5 yearw

More to the point it is probably a tech question that has never been covered.

(This one is more of a ' in theory' tech question, than hey man i got to do this tommorrow for my desert crossing)

hey sweet idea....cool novelty factor as well....i guess if you didn't have a radiator you could possibly hook up something to the crank pulley at the front on maybe a 2:1 gearset in there to make life a little easier.

On the old diesel "putt putt" front end loader thing here at home we have a starter handle that you lock into what looks like a small gearset that connects to the front of the engine...gotta watch out for the compression kickback though...nearly snapped my arm when I was a small kid.

Another possibility is something like a pto setup in the transfer if you can source or get one fabbed up and have a starter set up through the rear of the car...just gotta make sure the transfer is in neutral and gearbox in gear....I reckon its possible.

Would be easy to do.
I've started a few old petrol Landcruisers with a hand crank.
Keep your thumbs on your first fingers.!!
You just need the crank handle and a one way key in the front of the crank so when it fires it ejects the crank handle.
Jas.

Hand start would have come in handy when the old starter was dying hitting it with the terfa winch handle got a little annoying till it totally died getting it to start...

I know a little of topic but I ran out of fuel the other day on way to work in the Sierra, to get of the road without trying to push it and steer on a busy highway I put my car Reverse and just slipped the clutch slightly drove my self of the road in reverse using the starter motor...

Santos wrote:Talking to my mother about how she crossed the desert east to west and back in a morris minor with my father. It was after i told her about the Africa special on top gear and the old cars outdid many of the newer ones cause of there light weigh and simplicity. She said she owned 5 of them in succesion and the cars where button start. If the car didn't start you just pulled hand engine crank.


It got me thinking what mods would you have to do to a 1.3l?
Would it work? most morris engines are a similar size (but with a lower compression)

Why? I have tried to push start my car on the flat and it aint easy.
As a failsafe measure it could be handy once in every 5 yearw

More to the point it is probably a tech question that has never been covered.

(This one is more of a ' in theory' tech question, than hey man i got to do this tommorrow for my desert crossing)

umm i dont mean to be disrespectful, but u are a grown man arnt you? i push started my car on a flat at uni...it is ez, i even made a thread about it lol. other than that i think it would b a awsome idea. it would look so funny watching some1 hand crank there engine at the shops

Big D wrote:
umm i dont mean to be disrespectful, but u are a grown man arnt you? i push started my car on a flat at uni...

Hey i drive a suzuki, not exactly the sort of person who needs to prove his masculinety

Still the one time i tried it on the flat, was 5am in the morning after working the saturday night shift at a bar, 3 BIG bouncers and myself could not pick up speed enough to kick it, we tried it in 2nd,3rd,4th and 5th. (on hindsight i should of disconnected the flat battery)

I usually can solo it if there is a shallow decline in my favour in 3rd.
Hand starting at the shops would be a laugh, i was suprised that they still had them on many late 50's/early 60's model cars !

Push starting a high compression V8 commodore is hard....

Ladas come with a crank handle Even tried to use one once, good old Russian engineering defeated us though, the handle wouldn't engage properly and kept slipping. Mothers of things to try and push start

I wonder if Lj's where hand crank

Not long after I bought my coily I left the lights on and got a flat battery.
After 1/2hr pushing around the empty car park by myself trying to start it I rang NRMA. The guy told my you cant push start it with a flat battery because of the electronic ignition??
Now back to the thread this is interesting.
Nik

The guy told my you cant push start it with a flat battery because of the electronic ignition??[/quote]


why cant you start a car with a flat battery and electronic ignition? whats the other type of ignition???

im interested in this bcos i thought u were always (well most times) able to push start a car with a flat battery????

islandvit [/quote]

you can't push start a car with a flat battrey because you need x amount of amps for the coil to spark. most of the time you don't have enough amps to crank the engine( starter motors need heaps of amps to crank over but have more than enough for the coil.

thats why santos couldn't start his car buy pushing it. to get it started he would of had to pull it be hind another car in gear and get the engine ticking over enough for the altornater to start making power.

I'm not an expert on ignition, but there's mechanical and electronic ignition.
I assume that the moving engine engages a mechanical ignition, allowing it to start, but with electronic- you need a power source to fire up the engine, even if you're push/roll starting it?

I like the idea of a crank start, that would be teh shizzle!
However, then all those years of mates ribbing me about suzuki's being a 'toy car' would actually have some grounding- a wind up car...

Mike

zook4fun wrote:
thats why santos couldn't start his car buy pushing it. to get it started he would of had to pull it be hind another car in gear and get the engine ticking over enough for the altornater to start making power.

Alternators (unlike generators) need current to make current.
If you leave your lights on and totally flatten the battery you will not be able to crank, push or tow start it.
You'll have to jumper start or swap the battery.

"Alternators (unlike generators) need current to make current"

you learn some thing new every day

so confuesd

i had a 98 2L vitara with a flat battery and i was push starting it for a couple days - it has coil packs i know this much because they sat ontop of the motor and from what poeple are saying this is not possible??

fordy1 wrote:so confuesd

i had a 98 2L vitara with a flat battery and i was push starting it for a couple days - it has coil packs i know this much because they sat ontop of the motor and from what poeple are saying this is not possible??

Your battery may have been too flat to start it, but there was enough power to still create the required current to start the alternator charging.

Layto....

Santos wrote:

Big D wrote:

3 BIG bouncers and myself could not pick up speed enough to kick it, we tried it in 2nd,3rd,4th and 5th.

wow i must be really really strong. lol nah im joking. i thought if u disconect the battery (wen its totally pooped) then ucan push/tow/ start the car no probs.

anyways back to topic, i was going to by a lada before my zook. hand cranking would get sort of anoying after awhile though, so it would only b good as back up.

I had a 74 range rover that had a crankstarter... Having a steep driveway id roll start of a morning to get to work, park on a hill and move it half hour before knocking off to flatter ground, its quiet easy to start once the engine is warm, This went on for about 3 months..

Worst incident I had( and what made my decision that I was being a TightArse in not fixing the starter motor), I was down the local shopping center.. done what I had to do which took around an hour or so, went back to car, pulled out 'The handle', flicked ignition on, but I didnt check if it was in gear.... got half a revoloution in, she fired and took off, crossing the 'bump stopper' on the carpark floor and pinning the back of my knees against a barrier while the bullbar tried to force its way through my upper thigh... The engine idling along the wheels turining on the polished concrete floor... Luckily!!

while it wasnt the entire force of the car against me(it sqewed over the 'bum stopper' and the passenger side was hard on the barrier also it was enough to seriously bruise my thighs and make me rethink exactly
'What the F*!#am I doing "crankstarting my car" it almost the year 2000!'

Crankstarts are good and handy...When used correctly

Yes I had left the lights on all day and the dash lights didnt even come on it was that dead!
Sorry for the hijack my input caused but I spose its kind of relevant if you dead flat it wont pull start.
Reminds me of when I was a kid I had no kickstart for my bike which wasnt too bad until I found out how much fun sand riding is!!
Stand on rock stump etc lean bike over in gear and spin the tire by hand, come to think of it zuks arnt much bigger than that old ag bike....
Nik

NIK wrote: Stand on rock stump etc lean bike over in gear and spin the tire by hand, come to think of it zuks arnt much bigger than that old ag bike....
Nik

I once saw an old guy, who wasn't a big fella or very strong, start an EH Holden sedan with a rope.
He jacked up one wheel and put it in 2nd gear. Wound a rope around the tyre and pulled it..
Chugged and clunked a bit at first then sat there idling. He casually stepped on the clutch, put it in neutral and removed the jack.

In regards to the alternator , you need at least 8 volts to excite the diodes .

A mate and i used to push his fiat 124 for hours on end up and down his driveway to get the bloody thing started , then we would tear skids for 20 mins and put the car away for another month.

GRPABT1 wrote:Push starting a high compression V8 commodore is hard....

Try having three Canadian backpackers pushstarting an old SD33 Patrol on the flat while you sit in the drivers seat