First, glad to hear you were not too seriously injured. Hand starting can be dangerous, but I agree with J R Sutton that it does not have to be. We have always crank started all our Farmall tractors, which are Farmall H and M and formerly an F12. The H and M have never been a problem because the spark is set at top dead centre and the motors never kick back. I also drive an old Riley and the starter motor sometimes won't work. It has an advance/retard lever on the dash and I use it for hand starting. If it is ignored the Riley motor WILL BITE! It kicked back once a few years ago when I was in a hurry and didn't pull the lever out far enough; the crank smacked me across the back of the hand - no breaks, but it hurt.
My Dad always taught me:
1. Do NOT wrap your thumb around the crank handle
2. Use quick up strokes to crank the motor where possible, so that the crank won't hit you in the face if the motor kicks back.
3. Use the advance / retard mechanism where fitted.
4. Keep the ignition timing, spark plugs and points gap set correctly.
Of course, electric start is a great convenience. I have fitted it to the H and it is a wonderful device when the motor is being tricky to start.
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Today's Featured Article - Picking Corn - by Rick Nikolich. It was the day before Christmas shutdown at work and I asked our lead engineering expert Scott Andrzejewski what he was going to do over the holidays. He said that he had some corn that he still needed to pick with an antique one-row New Idea corn picker. Scott has a nice farm about an hour north of Lansing in St. Johns, MI. He wanted to get the rest of his corn in by the next day (Christmas Eve). We had about an inch of new snow on the ground and single digit temperatures. So in the bac
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