The other day, I posted my thoughts on cranking safety. Many of you wrote in that you appreciated the advice of us "old timers."
The instruction books that came with tractors "in my day" (we old guys always talk like that when we get older and, of course, wiser) always spoke of the danger of not using the drawbar to pull with. I guess some people thought they might as well hook a rope or a chain around the axle. That might be OK for pulling the kids around the back 40 on the ol" Flexible Flyer, but not for any kind of heavy load. If the axle is the fulcrum, then the drive pinion is going to climb right up the differential gear and throw the tractor over on its back, especially if the clutch is engaged in a hurry. It"s a common notion that jerking the clutch will help loosen something that doesn"t want to come out, like a stump. Every once in a while, you hear of people who did this, and they usually didn"t survive four or five thousand pounds of castiron coming down on them.
I"d defer to engineers on this one, but it looks to me like the drawbar "geometry" (got a B in high school) brings most of the load ahead of the rear axle and tends to pull the front end down. This is especially obvious with a swinging drawbar, but I"d bet that even a solid drawbar does the same thing because of its placement below the plane of the rear axle. I"ve noticed this with my little utility tractor and rear-mounted rotary mower. When the mower is raised off the ground, the front wheels are really light and there is very little steering traction. A little too quick on the clutch and the front end tends to raise off the ground. When the mower is down on the ground, steering traction returns and the tractor does not tend to rear up if the clutch is engaged too fast.

Another common danger is using a tractor on a steep hillside. The old tricycle tractors are probably the least stable, because they are so high off the ground. Still, I"d guess even a low utility tractor can be turned over if the hillside is steep enough, OR if the tractor hits a bump while traveling at a good clip. I actually know a fellow who upset a W-6 on a hillside. I don"t know the circumstances. He
somehow got away from the thing, and went on to
spend 30 years flying in the Air Force. Luckier than some.
Another danger is fueling a tractor with the engine running--a VERY common practice back when tractors did not have starters and cranking was considered a chore to be avoided whenever possible. An especially dangerous arrangement is a low exhaust pipe, like on the old McCormick-Deering standard tractors of the 20s and 30s. Some of them exit UNDER the gas tank!!!!! I witnessed a fire that erupted like a bomb when a teenage boy was holding the fuel hose when the tank overflowed. He spilled gas on himself and you can guess the sad rest of this story. He died a couple of days later. I will NEVER forget this. It happened 65 years ago, and it is as fresh in my memory as something that happened yesterday.

Guess that"s all the old-timey advice I"ve got in me. Back to the rockin" chair and the pipe. Don"t smoke, but it makes me look wise. Least that"s what my wife says (she knows better, but likes to make me feel good, "specially after I tell her how amazed I always am that she can come
up with a gourmet meal in ten minutes)(sounds like flattery, but it"s actually true, especially compared to what I can do: I make grilled cheese sandwiches when I get to feeling guilty and decide it"s my turn to "cook.")

> I"d defer to engineers on this one, but it looks
> to me like the drawbar "geometry" (got a B in
> high school) brings most of the load ahead of
> the rear axle and tends to pull the front end
> down.

Most importantly it brings the load in below the plane of the axle. Pulling back on a point below the axle tends to pull the front of the tractor down. You want this because the engine is trying to lift it up.

Another tip from an old manual: if you think there is any chance your tractor is frozen to the ground always back up to break it loose. If you pop the clutch in forward with the rear tires frozen down they may stay fixed while the entire tractor rotates around the axle. Guess which way it rotates and who ends up on the bottom.

What about proper handcrankin procedures? I have to haul a Farmall A about forty miles from home saturday, the 6-volt battery is shot. I dont really want to buy a new battery right now because of winter coming on. It is just for a photo shoot for a wedding. thanks ,Brad

That last point brings to mind the most important part of sharing a trick I learned as a kid from Grandpa.

Pulling fence posts. He'd throw about three turns of chain around the base of the post and pull the rear wheel of the H up alongside it, then loop the chain around a spoke of the wheel. The trick was to hook to the wheel AHEAD of the axle, so that it pulls the post up when you put the tractor into REVERSE.

If that post doesn't budge and you're hooked up at the rear and try a forward gear, that tractor will climb its gears and flip.

Saw him use the same trick to pull up the dead-man on a corner post once. That squatted the front tires on the old H some before it gave way.

Another dead-man he never could budge, we wound up diggin out about two feet around it and down and cuttin' off the rebar.

Three basic things.

Keep your thumb alongside your index finger and palm. Do not loop your thumb around the crank.

Only pull upward. Reset the crank for another pull. Do not push it down, or try to spin the motor. Only pull upward, one-half turn at a time.

Position yourself forward enough to stay clear of the crank if it should kick.

talkin bout gas fires I have ferst hand no how bout this. 10 yer ago I was hepen my brother with his car his motor wuz hot the carbuarator blewup on me an I wuz on far. He throwd me down an got the far out but it burned off part of my ear nose and lip the docs sad I got off lucky I said it wuz tha grace of God. I wuz heeled cant hardly tell it ever hapned now sept for when its cold my ear tends to hurt ifin its not covered. To this day the smell of gas makes me sortof sick. letum cool before gasin

Why dont you loop your thumb? just curious? never crank started a tractor before

If you have have your thumb wrapped around the crank and it kicks back it bends your thumb backwards.

If the engine kicks back on you (possible anytime, but especially if the spark is advanced) it will either lift you (if you're even able to hang on) or pull you down so that the crank hits you in the head before it stops, or break a bone or a joint.

Myself, I hold my hand as described and don't even wrap my fingers around the crank -- I make sort of a C with my palm and fingers and just lift with that. If the crank flies back, it will fly right out the open end of the C.

Thanks, Lennh.

I seem to remember a trip to the Henry Ford museum when I was a kid, where they told us that many of the very, very early tractors earned the nickname "widowmaker" because the attachment points for pulling were higher than the rear axles -- flipping the tractors backwards, of course. I think the museum had one or two typical widowmakers on display.

Mark W. in MI

My chains only live at one address now and that is on the drawbar..
Upside down 44H

Won't get into the thumb position issue, because I don't have any real "data" to argue with, Still, I THINK that if you're pulling up only, the crank will pull itself out of your fingers and the thumb position won't really matter.
Any thoughts on this, anybody? The question of retarded spark is really important. I have never cranked a tractor with battery ignition, but I imagine that the weights in the distributor retard the spark enough for cranking. OR IS THAT NOT TRUE? (in other words,better to jump start than crank?). I DID crank an old Chevy truck when the starter bendix didn't work right, and I always pulled out the spark knob (like a choke knob, on the dash). Never kicked.If a magneto is timed right, the impulse coupling is supposed to hold the spark until the piston reaches TDC or maybe just a little past (somebody with info, please fill in on this). Still, I always retarded the spark on the tractors that had a manual spark control (10-20, F-20, F-12, "Regular," Oliver Hart-Parr RC). The letter-series did not have a retard lever or knob and I have cranked several of these without incident. I guess the impulse coupling retarded things enough. Any comments, anybody? People who spun the crank probably though that this would give them a hotter spark. Again, I can't prove this, but I think the impulse coupling, which spins the mag shaft after it releases, gives a plenty hot spark. Another guess is that this habit came from cranking Fordsons and Model Ts, which had no impulse coupling. The flywheel mag depended on speed for a hot spark, and spinning the crank would have helped (think about the weak spark from your lawn mower's flywheel mag if you don't give it a good tug. My father broke his arm doing this on a T. Probably forgot to retard the spark.
One more thing: Make sure that impulse is manually engaged (manual type, like earlier E4A), or that you can hear it engine if it is automatic (most of the ones I worked with made a little clinking noise when the pawl dropped into the notch inside the coupling housing).

I consider the thumb thing to be kinda optional. No different than your fingers.

The thing most missed by these posts isn't about what happens. It's what happens that isn't supposed to. If you crank them enough times, you will eventually have a dirty distributor cap or crud in the points or a coil that didn't get discharged, and surprise! It will fire into the wrong cylinder or experience a delayed burn.

Scotty,
Your "three basic things" are exactly the same things that my Dad told me when I started cranking our A when I was about 10 or 11 years old. The only thing Dad added that you missed was that if I forgot to position my thumb right, the mean tractor would rip my arm out of its socket, and if i tried to spin the motor the old girl might surprise me and keep me singing soprano forever. "boy that handle is gonna come around and strip your gears one day!" I developed a healthy fear of the equipment.

Sorry fopr the late reply, I didn't get back down to this thread the last coupla days.

You've got the basic concept down. It's not "entirely" correct to say that the mag or distributor retards the spark for start up. They're typically set up by what's called static timing, which is nothing more than setting them where they need to be (TDC) with the motor stopped. A slight retard at static doesn't necessarily hrt much, but a slight advance is where there can be trouble.

The mag, whether it is an impulse-coupling type like the H4/J4 or the earlier types with the manual advance, are set up so that from a dead stop or at the paltry speed that hand-cranking delivers, they are tripping and firing at TDC. On the H4/J4s, once it's running, the impulse coupling takes over and delivers a constant advance that varies only with the tractor. On a given tractor there will be either TDC or a constant advance.

On a battery ignition, the concept is pretty much the same at low speeds -- i.e., firing at TDC. Once running, the weights take over in the cenrifugal advance set-up and deliver an increasing advance with an increase in engine rpms, with the maximum advance usually achieved at somewhere between 1/2 and 2/3 of the rated max rpms for the motor.

The danger in hand cranking with any advance is if the spark touches off the gas in the cylinder before the piston gets to the top. The aim in starting is to get the piston to go back down on the combustion stroke, with the crankshaft going in the same direction as it was turning, whether by hand or by electrical starter. If it should fire before the piston gets to the top of the compression stroke, it can actually drive the piston back down the path that it just came up on the compression stroke, reverse the crankshaft and the handcrank. That's the kickback that can get John Q. Armstrong into trouble.

A starter motor is considerably stronger, enough to overcome that early ignition and keep everything turning in the proper direction, even if it makes for hard starting. Even if it weren't any stronger, it has the advantage of not having bones or reproductive parts that can be damaged my a reversing handcrank.

Given what Scotty has to say about the impulse and TDC: Does it add any additional safety to retard the spark on the old tractors with that
possibility? I always did it on the 10-20 and
F-20, "just in case," but don"t know if it mattered. Appreciate the clarifications.

I shouldn't thing a slight retard to after TDC would hinder starting much. It's certainly safer than any significant advance. Still, my knowledge and experience is pretty much limited to the letter series, and I don't know a thing about the static timing of the earlier, manual advance mags.

Some of it just may be nomenclature, and I think that that was part of your question earlier. If a tractor with a manual advance was shut down while running then, yes, one would want to retard the spark from that setting to start it the next time, back to somehwere near TDC. Whether "near" means a slight retard ATDC, I don't know.

I'll be watching with interest for replies.