Mm. I do believe you are right on VW flat fours.. As I said, apart from deezils, many of which would run with no battery or alternator connected at all, I can not recall that many mechanical pumps beyind early 70s vauxhalls.
yeah. never had a problem with 60s and 70s fords. Never liked the escorts and cortinas to drive, but the engines usually started.
Rover reverted to mechanical pumps for the P6 models - the previous P4 etc were SU electric. But carried on with SU carbs. It may have been to do with using a return fuel line, though. But when back to electric on the SD1.
Sounds like your garages weren't too clever. Even the ones with 6 volt electrics started OK in an Aberdeen winter.
Our 1959 Morris Minor had an electric fuel pump. You'd hear it go "clop" every half minute or so.
Robert
I don't have to turn the engine over to get fuel into the carb on my
1968 Land Rover which has a mechanical pump, as it has a priming lever on the pump, as have almost all the mechanical fuel pumps I've encountered on cars, lorries and coaches over the years.
They also gave you a couple of miles warning before you actually ran out of fuel, by going into Brrrrrrr... Brrrrrrr..... mode.
My 1988 Sierra had a mechanical pump.
My kit car (with a Sierra engine) has had its pump replaced with an electric one - much easier to start after it's been standing for the winter.
SteveW
My 72 Viva HC had a mechanical pump Also 66 Ford Corsair (I think)
ISTR having a Humpty Dumpty Hillman Hunter with a mechanical fuel pump. About 1970.
As a general rule for UK cars of that age, it was only those which used SU carbs that had electric pumps. So mainly BMC and purely UK car makers. The multinationals wouldn't pay out for decent carbs. ;-)
Your ride-on lawnmower has manually variable ignition timing? Like a Manx, a Goldie, or a Thruxton?
In article , you say...
Cough, Triumph, cough.
Ben
Some Standard-Triumph group products used SU carbs, some not. Same with SU pumps.
That's assuming there is a decompression mechansium. I don't think any production cars, diesel or petrol, have that.
The pull start on our small diesel genset is impossible unless you operate the decompression lever, then as you say you can spin up the fly wheel, let go the decompression lever and hope it fires.
Aye, one thing my old Dad was very insistent on when teaching me how to start the Austin A40 with the handle was to not grip the handle.
chamber.
Read what I wrote and think about the four stroke cycle, float chamber carburetors and chokes.
I think that you misunderstand. I was giving an example of how an engine could be designed to start without a battery. This is not spinning the engine and flywheel (with the need for a decompression lever) it is spinning up a separate flywheel to store enough energy to then start the engine when it is engaged. This was a common feature for starting aero engines, which of course also feature magnetos. For instance
SteveW
In article , charles scribeth thus
It was a 105E and I often thought they can't all be like that but this one was!. It was seen to by the ford dealer and a few indy garages and other mech's at that time but no one could find fault with it!..
He got rid of it and bought a Ford Corsair which was much better in that dept...
I'll bet they didn't do an accurate ignition timing check on it. The actual pointers on the engine were often miles out. That also accounted for the performance between examples varying considerably.
The 105E being so oversquare was less tolerant of poor tune than the earlier long stroke engines.
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