>The damn starter in my TR3 went, and I though I didn't have my hand crank
>with me, I started to think about trying to learn how to start it with the
>crank. Has anyone ever tried this? Is it hard to do? Do you run the risk
>of breaking an arm or thumb if you do it wrong?
Yes. Don't grab the crank handle the way you'd expect to; pretend
you don't have an opposable thumb and curl it around the same way
as your fingers. (If the car backfires, it will break your thumb.
In the first decades of this century, this was called the Ford
Fracture.)
You want to start with the crank handle at the bottom of its rotation
and pull upward HARD, keeping your hand loose around the handle so that
the handle will simply slip out of your grasp if the engine suddenly
catches it and spins it one way or another. (It was people who were
pushing DOWN with their thumbs around the crank who got them broken.)
The teeth on the drive end of the starting crank are beveled so that
once the engine catches, the crank will (or should, anyway) slip off
the engaging nut on the crankshaft. Remember, you want to crank the
engine counterclockwise as you're standing in front of the car (or
clockwise relative to someone sitting in the driver's seat).
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