Starting a small diesel, manually...just how hard can it be?

My Yanmar has a token hand-start facility: the alternator belt runs right across the socket for the starting handle. What's the point of that then!?
 
Back in my misspent youth, I worked for a landscape gardening firm. We had one of those little dumper trucks with a single cylinder diesel. I never managed to start the thing, despite frequent, often abusive, coaching. It was always started by the oldest member of the workforce, an enormous bull of a man in his late fifties who would casually approach the thing, apply the decompression lever, wind the thing up to speed and crop the lever to be rewarded with a merry tonk tonk tonk and clouds of smoke as the engine caught. It was then left running for the rest of the day to avoid the pantomime of getting it started again.
As to yacht engine, I carry an emergency starter pack. Even if my engine had a hand starter handle, there's no way my ancient fear of hand starting a diesel would let me use it.....
 
I suffered an inguinal hernia trying and failing to start my MD2B by hand :o

I now have a little MD2001, which I'm not even going to try to start by hand unless I absolutely have to.

I was surprised at my failure with the MD2B as I'm not a puny midget, so I expect it's largely a matter of correct technique. But I'd rather invest my time and effort in proper maintenance and battery management than suffer a failure to start.
 
hmm, I used to have a dump truck like that on the farm. Very useful indeed, but it was also a hand start.

I had a go one frosty morning, and was rewarded with the engine backfiring, catching the starting handle and spinning it back for a cycle. The handle whacked my hand, breaking the index finger in three places and tearing off the nail. Blood everywhere. Off to A&E who sorted the fractures and trauma out with two elastoplasts. To this day I have both little feeling in the distal phalange of my R index finger, and a loathing of handstarted dumper trucks (I gave mine away).

If ever starting a diesel with a handle, I would make very very sure that the engagement spline was well oiled and free to rotate when the engine started.
 
When I was a junior site engineer we had a wingett dumper for getting around.it was hard to start in winter so we lit a fire under it on frosty mornings. The trick was to get it spinning very fast the drop the decompresser. Easier with a helper but just about possible on your own. But that was forty years ago!
 
In our IP23 fishing boat we had a Petter PJ3
http://www.solveigs-song.me.uk/images/PJ3Aircooled.JPG?584
The starting handle fitted on the PTO shaft which was an extension of the cam shaft. This meant that 1 turn of the handle resulted in 2 turns of the crankshaft.
We got the technique off to a fine art. Dad would lift the decompressor, prime the injector pumps and I would wind the handle (anti clockwise) once up to a good speed, Dad would drop the lever as the handle passed the lowest point in it's arc so that the first compression would be about the 3 o'clock point while heaving upwards. The first cylinder firing would then get the next ones going.
I was still very happy when we got a starter motor! Even then, we would decompress to start so that the load on the battery and starter motor was reduced.
 
Thank you for these many interesting, instructive, occasionally appalling accounts.

Pladdatoo said:
This bit of kit has been referenced in a previous and similar discussion...
Click to expand...

Here it is...(the sprung manual starter)...described in full, worth a look:


I don't know what the size-limit for that bit of kit would be, nor whether it has to be semi-permanently bolted onto the engine...

...but it looks like a good alternative to the hit-and-miss path most folk take, of waiting for the ghastly day when the battery-bank isn't up to the job.
 
The last diesel I hand started was a Volvo 2002. I could start it single-handed even though I am a ten stone weakling. I was sad when a new engine had no starting access. Starting an RCA Dolphin was fun. You had to wind a cord round the centrifugal clutch and pull it from ahead. Owing to the dynastart's feeble 8 amps, I got quite good at this.
 
There is a lady I know who in her youth in the 1940s regularly started by hand the generator for their big house-a rusten diesel.
She would get the big flywheel spinning and let in the decompressor.
My dad also used to tell how during the war two of them would start up by hand the then equivalent of the aec matador.Thats two of them on the starting handle!
 
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dancrane said:
Here it is...(the sprung manual starter)...described in full, worth a look:

I don't know what the size-limit for that bit of kit would be, nor whether it has to be semi-permanently bolted onto the engine...

...but it looks like a good alternative to the hit-and-miss path most folk take, of waiting for the ghastly day when the battery-bank isn't up to the job.
Click to expand...

Spring starters need to be bought to match a particular engine, and aren't generally available for small yacht engines. They are not a very practical idea for yachts, as you need to remove the electric starter motor and bolt on the spring starter in its place before trying to start the engine. A much, much better solution is simply to ensure that the engine start battery is kept fully charged.
 
The engine on our house generator in Africa had no electric starter so I had to start it every day using the handle.

It had a huge external flywheel and once you had built up a bit of speed it would usually start first time when you flipped over the decompressor lever.

Can't remember the make but probably built in the 1970s and this was the early 90s.
 
dancrane said:
I've heard that when batteries or starter-motors fail, or if for another reason it isn't possible to turn a small diesel engine over electrically, it can be done by hand.

I've no idea, but I'd like to know whether it's a question of judgement and familiarity with the technique, raw muscle-power, sheer luck, or a combination of these.

Maybe it's worth practicing the manual start, for those days when battery-amps don't oblige? Does anybody prefer their own manual-starting procedure, over electric starting?
Click to expand...
In my early thirties, Angola, had a shit pump that pumped the overflow from the septic tank to the River Congo. It was a two cylinder Lister. Job was to set decompressor, bust balls to get some inertia in to the flywheel via a big two handed handle, then pull off handle and hit decompressor. If it didnt start first time I was knackered! My skinny lads would try it, they were too skinny, it was paunfull watching them!
S
 
pvb said:
In days gone by, when small Volvo Penta engines used to be supplied with starting handles, I tried to start mine by hand. Total fail - even using the decompression levers!
Click to expand...

I regularly started a 7 hp MD1 by hand, very easy, and once a 35 hp three-cylinder MD17, though that was really hard work from cold. All the old-style big-flywheel diesels with decompressors should start by hand - the problem comes with more modern engines with no big flywheel mass. The little 6 or 9 hp Yanmar 1GM has a starting handle but is a vicious little brute to start.
 
My dad and I hand started the original 23hp Volvo in his Centaur and the 13hp Volvo in my Carter 30 quite easily, using the ' drop the decompressor lever once it's spinning ' technique, several times, singlehanded as the decompresor valves were easily to hand directly on top of the engine, one did not have to use the handle pulls in the cockpit.

I did crew on a Frigate 27 where this would have been fine except the cabin sole had been put in at such a level that the starter handle and one's knuckles filled the painful gap inbetween so we didn't bother with that option again !
 
We regularly had spring starters on the winch engines for towing bridles on barges. When at sea, these winches spend a lot of time washed by waves and spray. Electrics are a no-no.

I had a big Gardner 6L3, six cylinder, 17 litre, 3 ton job in a previous boat. When I got it, it still had most of the hand-starting equipment on it. That was an overhead shaft, with a handle at each end of the engine, and a chain drive down to a crankshaft sprocket. The instructiom manual for the engine noted dryly, "The engine driver may require assistance with this operation". I took it off. Reckon it would have needed six gorillas. I could start that engine, using the six decompressors, by sailing, or getting a tow, but it started vey easily by pressing the button.
 
I would have thought with modern engines it would be easier to have an emergency electricity supply. Whilst at the recent motorcycle show a friend of mine has bought a small battery pack that is about the same size as an old VHS video tape and not that much heavier. It's supposed to have the power to start up to a 2l diesel car, or you can run a laptop off it for several hours etc etc.... It came with a set of jump leads and numerous "connections" for various applications, and cost him in the region of £100. I can think of various emergency marine applications it might be useful for.
 
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