who thinks that doing away with starting handles on cars was a bad thing,?

Question

That was such a short sighted thing! so practical they were. . .

Answer 1

They're not that ancient .A friend of mine had a-mid 60's Peugeot 403 that could be hand cranked. I think the engine was 1600 cc w/ a 8:1 compression ratio. If you look at the grill of the old Peugeot's, the ones that can be hand cranked have a half dollar sized hole in the lower portion of them .
We were going to school in the Adirondacks which have some of the most brutal winters in America and having the ability to hand crank a car was a godsend .
Combine that with a manual choke and you may actually get thru winter.
Edit:
It must be getting late because I know some of you guys are more on the ball than this. Why the assumption of a direct connection ? Stick a gear or two in there and even a V-8 should be able to be cranked by hand.

Answer 2

back in the day, hand cranking an engine that had around a 5 or 6:1 compression ratio and was only 4 cylinder wasnt that hard. but when high compression V8's hit the market(high compression then was something on the order of 8.5 or 9:1) things got tougher to hand crank an engine. if a model "T" engine kicked back on you while you were hand cranking, you could end up with a broken arm. if the V8 were to kick back on you, things would be even worse. fast forward to 1970, and try hand cranking something like a boss 429, or ZR1 chevy big block. sorry but even some of the strongest weight lifters would have a hard time hand cranking one of those engines.

Answer 3

What! are you a weightlifter or something. No average person could turn a modern engine fast enough to start it. Even a small low power 4 cylinder. Let alone the engine in my truck.
In order to turn it I need to get out a tool with a 2 foot handle and put all my weight b4ehind it and it barely moves.
Hand cranked engines had much lower compression than modern engines (and therefore polluted much more, and we can't go back to that)

Answer 4

Have you ever tried to turn a modern engine by hand? It is pretty near impossible to spin it fast enough for the engine to start. It would actually be far more practical to compression start (push start) cars than it would be to hand crank them.

Answer 5

Only problem with what americans call cranks was a tendency to break arms if engine backfired when cranking.
And that is pretty common if you are low on fuel but don't realise it. Or fail to retard the spark timing before cranking.

Answer 6

Good luck hand-cranking a modern high-compression engine. Not to mention the number of broken arms that would result.

Answer 7

The whole "push-button" ignition still seems weird to me.