Somebody was talking to me about hand cranking the
Land Rover engine the other day, and that got me
wondering if any of the popular engine swaps people
have been doing on the Series retain the ability to hand
crank the engine. Granted, it's not a big liability if they
don't- modern batteries and alternators just
about eliminate the need to ever hand-crank an engine anymore,
and if the battery does die, you can almost always get a jump start.
But the hand crank does come in handy on the 2.25 when
adjusting valves, and back in the '70s I had to resort to hand
cranking occasionally when my finances precluded the ability
to buy a new battery until the next paycheck. Can you put the
Land Rover's dog clutch crank pulley on the engines you're using for
conversions, or has anyone had a machine shop make up a dog-clutch
crank pulley? Of course it may not even be possible to hand-crank
a V-8, 300 cu in. six, Iron Duke, etc., in which case creating the
hardware to do it would be a waste of time.
Higher horsepower does not necessarily preclude the ability to
hand-start an engine. On rare occasions we have to resort to hand-
starting the nine-cylinder, 450-hp Pratt & Whitney radials on the
Beavers I fly, but they are very low compression engines, and are
actually quite easy to get going by hand.
___________________________
C. Marin Faure
(original owner)
1973 Land Rover Series III-88
1991 Range Rover Vogue SE
Seattle
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