redsturgeon wrote:My first car, a 1959 Morris Minor came with starting handle and I used it more than once on a cold morning when the battery did not have enough juice to turn the engine over.
It also had trafficators and a dip switch on the floor, together with a rubber squeezy thing for the windscreen washers.
John
My first car was a Mark VIII Hillman Minx (TNN 652 - amazing how you remember these things but can't remember where you last put your reading specs), which was notoriously difficult to start. Using the starting handle was both exhausting and dangerous with a tendency to kick back and deliver a severe blow to the thumb. We had a flat drive with a short 30 deg incline at the end, so pushing it out onto the road on your own was impossible.
My solution was to put it in gear (column change with a label saying '1st gear for emergency only') and wind it out onto the road with the starting handle. From there I had a reasonably long downhill stretch where I could attempt a bump start. Most times it worked - only one occasion when I remained stuck at the bottom of the hill.