Electric start on brass cars

[trimacar]

I'm not a huge fan of adding electric start to early brass cars that didn't have it originally.

I always cringe a little when, on a show such as Chasing Classic Cars, a fine early car is started with the "errn...errn...errn" and not hand cranked.

That said, as one gets older, one's opinion may change. Some people get cranky in their old age, some don't..........

Here's a website of a place that, at first glance of their home page, has nothing to do with old cars. However, looking at what they do, they're right in the midst of early stuff...........

So, if you have starting or other problems, or want a conversion (they apparently do kits for same) to starter, here you go, a website recently discussed on the Brass Buicks forum....

http://www.certifiedautoelectric.com/display.cfm?p=10

[Rusty_OToole]

Off the top of my head, wonder if anyone has thought of taking one of those new battery powered impact wrenches and adapting it to start a car in place of the crank. It would not alter the originality of the car but might spare the old guys a few heart attacks.

[jdome]

A friend of mine uses a 1/2" cordless drill to start his 1-cyl Car. I'm not sure it would have enough torque to crank a typical 25+HP 4-cylinder though. I have some teens era accessory catalogs that show some aftermarket electric motors that were available back then. The motors mounted on the frame horns with a shaft inserted into the crank hole. There was also a starter available that had a coil spring in it. It is about the size of a motor and also made to mount in front of the crank hole. You wound the coil up tight and then released it to turn the engine over. That would probably be a strong coil and I would guess that it took as much strength to wind the coil as it took to crank the engine.

[Dave Mellor NJ]

I remember lawnmowers like that(with the wind-up crank

[trimacar]

The most interesting "cranking to start" I've ever done was on an airplane, a Ryan monoplane.

Andrew King (see attached) is a friend of mine, and he restored this airplane. The only real upholstery on it is the leather band of padding around the cowl (around pilot), so I put my sewing machine in my Surburban and traveled to the hanger where it was being restored and installed same.

He later offered me a ride in it. If you look very closely at the picture, you'll see a small hole in the fuselage, behind the engine area. One sticks a crank in there, which engages an inertia starter. The inertia starter has a flywheel, and the trick is to get that flywheel spinning very fast, a tough thing to do.

Once it's spinning as fast as you think you can crank it, you pull out the crank as you tell the pilot to engage starter. If it's fast enough, engine will start. If not, do it over again.

Hard to describe, but it's quite a workout....the resultant flight over fall speckled mountainsides was well worth it, however!

2003 National Air Tours - Sponsored by the Aviation Foundation of America, Inc.

[R Walling]

A person asked if a battery powered impact wrench could start the car using the bolt on the front of the crankshaft.

This most definitly will snap the bolt off the crank shaft.

(Take my word for it! I know!!!)

Edited July 8, 2011 by R Walling
typo (see edit history)

[Rusty_OToole]

We were talking about early crank start cars that are made to be started by turning the end of the crankshaft.

[CarlLaFong]

We were talking about early crank start cars that are made to be started by turning the end of the crankshaft.

It won't work. I cannot explain the physics, but the impacting action of the gun will not turn over an engine. I've used mine, many times, to remove flywheel nuts on small engines, generator pulley nuts, and the like and have always held the flywheel or pulley with my hand while impacting the nut. Very little energy can be felt at the periphery of the pulley or flywheel. Roger is correct. Eventually the nut or bolt will fail.