Emergency pull start part #?

[ausnoelm]

The old tower of power had a flooding carb, but being young and silly, rather than fix it, it was easier to just give it a tap and it would stop leaking fuel, I left an old roller shaft (about 12" long and 3/4" diameter) in the motor well for just that purpose, one morning it started OK, and fuel was pouring out of the motor, I undid the terrible cowling, and got the steel shaft and gave the side of the carb a "tap" I don't know what I touched, but there was a flash, then that unmistakable whoooomp that petrol (gas) makes when it ignites, the whole motor and the motor well was on fire, my mate got a flimsy plastic bucket, filled it with water a tossed it at the flames, unfortunately he didn't hang on to the bucket, and the whole lot just flew straight over the fire into the water, not a drop went on the flames! I tried to grab the fire extinguisher, but the bracket has rusted to bits and I tied in down with very thick fishing line that I couldn't break, and the knife was down the back, engulfed in flames, luckily for us, the fire kind of just died down a bit once the bulk of the fuel burnt off, and a nice (older and smarter) guy who maintained his gear put the fire out with his fire extinguisher, he had just launched and saw the "fun" moral of the story? keep your gear in good shape, fix things that are broken and keep safety gear up to scratch.

[zenoahphobic]

The "tower of power" was easy to start by grabbing the flywheel with both hands and flicking a quarter turn or so, when warm though.

I think all forms of manual starting have resulted in injury sooner or later.
I think there are many who have been struck being behind an enthusiastic, or more like getting very angry rope pullstarter!
I used to hate how a pull starter can violently pull from your hands hurting. My steel hand winder for the heavy flywheel generator flicked out once and smacked me in the jaw, the pain, couldn't understand why my jaw was still intact. Worse still my brother snapped his Achilles sidekick starting his BMW. And oh the shin smacking trail bike kick starts!

I am glad everything now seems to be available in electric start. All my bikes are, call me a sissy, press button .....dit dit vrom ...no fuss, engine running! No more Hulk Hogan leaps from the turnstile down onto that wretched slippery kickstarter.