How to Start a Diesel Tractor

History
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From when TV didn’t suck.

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It’s still running believe it or not on ME TV.

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Lot’s of aircraft used to be started similarly using a blank 30 or 40mm cartridge.

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I can think of a easier way to start a diesel engine - it’s a round button with ‘Start/Stop Engine’ on it just behind my heated steering wheel. And mine sounds better than that one too. It’s music to my ears.

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Many diesel trucks used to have air driven starters, just like the air wrenches you hear at a tire shop taking off and tightening lug nuts on wheels.

You’d hear the loud whirring noise with an increasing frequency and then hear a running diesel engine. Electric starters just weren’t strong enough to spin the engine through the firing cycles fast enough.

The only drawback was that you had to have a full tank of compressed air on the truck to start it.

I have a friend that owns an old 2-cylinder John Deere tractor. It has finger grips all the way around the large diameter exposed flywheel. To start the tractor, you’d open a small brass petcock on one of the cylinders to open it to the atmosphere (to keep it from compressing), spin the flywheel by hand until the engine started on the other cylinder only and then close the petcock.

The sound it made while running on one cylinder and “hissing” on the other was almost comical.

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When our community garden grew rutabagas, I sent this to everyone involved. (They grew very well, BTW.)

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True. Some of our old dozers had a small gas driven “pony engine” as well. You’d start the pony engine, hit the clutch and it would in turn get the big diesel to turning over.

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Everything I post is true…needs no confirmation! :innocent: