Field Marshall Series 2 Single cylinder diesel tractor (starting)
So there's this tractor right? and it's from the olden times (1947 ish). It's got a single cylinder horizontal 2 stroke engine about 6000cc or 6.0 litres.

and it's bad ass and it's called a Field Marshall

On the side of the tractor is a massive flywheel about 3 foot across that you stick a huge starting handle into (the starting handle is the size of the one used by the clown at the end of camberwick green to wind the credits on... but you know, like full sized)

So you stick this massive starting handle into the middle of the fly wheel... then you go round to the front of the tractor and unscrew this big wind in plug thing kind of where you'd expect to find a spark plug (but because it's a diesel engine it's not) so you wind this bit out and the you roll up a bit of blotting paper dipped in saltpeter (that you prepared earlier) and stick it in the end of the plug thing.

You set fire to the bit of blotting paper blow on it till it glows red and then you quickly screw the plug assembly with the now smoldering bit of blotting paper back into the cylinder head...

This is the glow plug to preheat the cylinder and aid ignition.

you then jog back round to the flywheel and starting handle. Running around the circumference of the flywheel (which is about 6 inches wide) is this spiral groove.

You lift up this spring loaded jockey wheel thing (it looks a bit like the deraileur (you know like from before fixies when bikes had gears) that is attached to the decompressor and put the wheel of it into the groove furthest away from the edge of the flywheel.

You spit on your hands.

You grasp the starting handle (ensuring your thumbs are on the same side of the handle as your fingers so that if there's a backfire then the starting handle flys out of your hand rather than snapping off both your thumbs)

And you wind.

There is massive inertia to overcome and the air chuffs out of the cylinder through the decompressor with each revolution

Chuff!

Chuff!

CHUFF!

The Jockey wheel at this point (after 3 complete revolutions) has come to the end of the spiral track and drops free of the flywheel disengaging the decompressor...

and you know at this point it's shit or bust...


If you haven't picked up enough speed with your winding you are going to have a back fire and have a piece of high speed starting handle flip backwards and fire into you and break lots of bones or throw you 20 or 30 feet through the air - no really I've seen it.

If you've got enough speed up with the flywheel and all goes well, it will overcome the compression ignite the diesel (warmed gently by the glowing blotting paper in the cylinder head and...


WHUMP!!


WHOMP!!!

BROB! BOBBOBOBOBOBOBOBOBOBOBOBOBOBOBOBOBOBOBOBOB!

The engine starts with a noise that is quite frankly prehistoric and you pull the starting handle out of the centre of the flywheel with a satisfied smile knowing that you've survived another day.

And that is my very obsolete skill

Alternatively...

The proper high tech way of doing it -if you were rich and fancy- was to unscrew another plug assembly on the side of the engine and insert a blank 12 gauge shotgun cartridge (as specified in the operators handbook)

You then screw this plug back in and then with a large hammer hit the firing pin in the middle of the plug, loud bang and the engine starts as if by magic.

Never did it that way.

When I was 9 I wasn't allowed shotgun cartridges.

Apologies for length

I haven't gone through this process for nearly 30 years but I reckon I'd still get the old girl started first time.

cider anyone?
(cidercomic hasn't finished it yet..., Fri 1 Jul 2011, 19:06, 4 replies)

Whereabouts are you?
Grew up Near Matlock, road was main route to Hartington steam rally when it was still on. 4 times a year (2 rallies, coming and going) we'd get a procession of tractors, traction engines, old lorries, cars etc over a few days. One tractor was Peter on his field marshall, we'd hear him for miles so Dad put the kettle on and he'd stop for a cup of tea. Field marshall sat outside chugging away, bouncing softly on its wheels. Was bloody huge to an 8 year old.
( Greenbat, Fri 1 Jul 2011, 22:49, closed)

ah... the bouncing on the tyres...
fidgeting. Work to be done...

I'm down the West country, Bristol in fact these days. The old man dragged me round steam rallies all my pre teenage years. I have a dangerous amount of knowledge about pre 1960 tractors that I only picked up through accidental osmosis...
(cidercomic hasn't finished it yet..., Fri 1 Jul 2011, 23:26, closed)

Very similar to the Bollinder semidiesels that are in some old narrowboats.
You heat a part of the cylinder with a blowtorch. That's the glowplug. Then you open the engineroom doors and pull out a pin from the flywheel.

You stand on the pin and give it an almighty kick. Either the engine fires properly, or misfires and breaks your shin, or throws you through the doors you luckily opened earlier...

Then, once you're going along, there's no reverse gearbox. To put your boat into astern, to say, stop before your 40 tons of loaded narrowboat crashes into something, you have to pull a cord at the right moment which changes the injection and makes the engine run backwards.

Or, if you've done it wrong, speed up so you hit whatever it is even harder!
(Le Misanthrope last procrastinated on, Sat 2 Jul 2011, 0:22, closed)

This...
...is truly excellent. Have a clicky :)
(Atomised teabagged your mum on, Sat 2 Jul 2011, 6:12, closed)