Mechanical Starters for Diesel Engines

[nicholastanguma]

Preface: I've already emailed the company with this question, but they haven't responded.

I recently noticed that Startwell in England (manufacturer of mechanical starters for diesel engines, also known as spring starters and clockwork starters) have their lightweight Mini model listed for fitment to the Rover 2.25 diesel, the Cummins 4B and 6B diesels, and the Bedford 330 and 466 diesels. These are obviously truck engines and not typically marine or tractor or generator engines.

An ol' skool mechanically injected diesel fitted with a mechanical backup starter for emergencies such as a dead battery or wonky primary starter would be the ideal overlanding 4x4 engine, right?

But does a mechanical/spring/clockwork starter fit in place of the standard primary starter or does it somehow fit in tandem?

I'm kind of confused because taking away the primary starter just to have manual starting doesn't make sense for a passenger vehicle; and how would you actuate the mechanical starter inside the engine bay anyway, seeing as how a clockwork starter isn't oriented for hand cranking the same way that the crank pulley of a hand crankable petrol engine is?

 

[J!m]

I'm not sure, but I believe these mount to the front of the crank.

 

[plainjaneFJC]

Dual batteries.....dual spare tires......dual 5 gallon aux tanks...… now we need dual starters?

 

[Buliwyf]

I keep my dual starter under my back seat.

I've seen air starters, and electric only. Never seen mechanical, except for hand crank. I condemned a Kohler hand crank engine in the ceiling of a mall last week. Head gasket.

 

[nicholastanguma]

Those take place of a regular starter. As they say ’clockwork’, each start attempt needs a wind up like grandfather clock. What may need an extended winding shaft protruding thru side of your car somewhere. Also access to the starter itself to work its engage & trip lever. Otherwise those functions can be extended too for remote control via rods, linkage, etc.

Fwiw, if wanted as a back-up system.
Dual starter flywheel housings are available for some motors...

Very helpful, Mr V, thanks so much. Someone over on ADVrider just told me about dual starter flywheel housings, too, so now I've confirmation that such things exist. Figuring out the linkages for the winding shaft and access to the trip lever, okay, then, hmmm, I'm mulling this over...

 

[J!m]

I had to crank start my series in Africa. It was plenty warm each day but still sucked...

PS NOT a diesel.

 

[C p weinberger]

J!m
Any broken thumbs?

 

[NatersXJ6]

This reminds me of a story my grandfather tells about driving a delivery truck in the depression era. If I remember correctly it was a model T. He was very proud of figuring out that disengaging the spark while leaving fuel on would cause the truck to stall on the compression stroke, if you were fast enough in the delivery you could re-engage the spark and spark the compressed fuel, starting the truck without having to crank it. He claimed that he could cut hours off of his route that way.

 

[J!m]

J!m
Any broken thumbs?

Nope! All ten are fine! (I got rather good at it by the second week or so)

 

[nicholastanguma]

Nope! All ten are fine! (I got rather good at it by the second week or so)

Does the Rover petrol engine not have a decompression feature? Or perhaps it's just a low compression mill by design?

 

[J!m]

If compression was any lower, it wouldn’t run!

But honestly with a hot engine with hot oil it spins fairly easily. And once you get it moving it’s easy to keep it spinning around.

Cooler mornings were a challenge and the choke was needed.

Engine was rebuilt prior to the trip so all was good there. That probably helped too.

 

[nickw]

Yeah, old LC's used to have them, my FJ40 did. It was pretty cool, nifty little port at the front of the grill and a slip style receptacle on the lower crank pulley. I never actually used it, but based on what I heard, they didn't work that great unless your engine was warm and the carb was dialed in and very well running, which was a very small portion of any cruiser. Cool in principle but I think fairly worthless in the field for most folks, particularly on a 30+ year old rig. But those old cruisers had compression ratios of less than 8:1....I highly doubt you'd be able to manually start a diesel unless you had some sort of flywheel apparatus / gear reduction to overcome it....or maybe a pony engine