Cars way back in the early 1900s had a mechanical starter. It was called a “crank”. For some reason people hoped for a better solution.
And BTW it is difficult to push a car out of your garage with the door open, and get it started before you hit the street.
And Whitey, you’re right and if a person would just lose about 10#, it would make up for the “heavy” battery.
George, my shoulder hurts just thinking about your idea. I doubt if you’d sell any.
Besides, a spring sufficient to hold enough energy to turn the avarage engine over sufficient to start it (it would have to be spinning fast enough to generate enough electricity to fire the spark plugs) would either be too strong or take too much hwinding to be practical.
And then there’s the cold days…like the -40F morning in North Dakota. How many people could do that much cranking at -40F all bundled up in an arctic parker?
One of the best inventions in the history of automobiles was the electric starting system.
A small battery, necessary to keep the electronics awake, could also power the spark plugs & fuel injectors etc.
Like the aux battery in a Prius.
However, with a spring loaded starter: what if the engine doesn’t fire up on the first (or second) try? And you unwind it?
Also you need to re-wind the starter right away. Otherwise, what if you need to shut off the motor right after starting?
I believe some engines have used compressed air for starting.
Remember the explosive starting cartridges in the movie “Flight of the Phoenix”?
Not practical…You only get one chance at a start…Then you must get out and wind the thing up again…And perhaps again…The weight of the mechanical parts to make this work would equal the starter and battery used today…2/3 of the drivers on the road today simply could not deal with it…
Besides, firing the plugs takes more juice than turning the mechanicals, so a small battery just to creat spark wouldn’t work.
One caveat, however. The alternator, water pump, AC compressor, and power steering pumps are an engine’s largest crank loads. Power steering has now gone electric to reduce load on the crank and improve mpg. It wouldn;t surprise me if water pumps and oil pumps went to electric. The AC compressor is already eliminated from the load when the key is in the “start” position, and that only leaves the alternator. If the water pump were electric and eliminated from the “start” circuits, that would leave an electric oil pump and an alternator. IMHO the alternator would be the big problem. It MUST produce enough juice to fire the plugs, even in bone-cold weather. And to do that, the magnetic field interactions MUST be sufficient to induce enough current. That’s one crank load that’s ipossible to get away from. You’d have to have enough energy in the wound spring to run the alternator.
Try an experiment. Add a bicycle generator powered headlight (the kind that runs off the tire) to a bicycle. Now see how much oomph it takes just to light that little bulb. Then imagine, if you will, how much energy it would take to create enough juice to fire sparkplugs.
@EllyEllis … the problem with the “crank” method you mention is that if the car backfired, it could be dangerous, even breaking the arms of a few owners of crank start cars of years past. Ouch! That makes for a bad day! A spring loaded ratcheting mechanism would be much safer and more effective I think. But in these days of everything being high-tech and electric, I don’t see much hope for my vision of a battery free, starter motor free, and high current wiring free new car on the market any time in the near future.
The old John Deere tractors had a big flywheel that you turned to start the engine. This took away the dangers of the crank breaking a person’s arm if the engine “kicked back”. I worked for a farmer who had a Farmall F-12 tractor. This tractor had a magneto ignition and a hand crank. I was about 14 at the time and I regarded a person who had an electric start on his tractor as a wimp. At age 70, I’ve modified my opinion. An electric starter is o.k. on a tractor. However, I still pull a cord to start my push type rotary mower. I think a person is a wimp to have to have an electric starter on a push type lawnmower.
The 1939 Chevrolet my dad owned when I was in elementary school had an emergency hand crank and I saw him start it a couple of times with the crank.
I’ve bump-started my 5-speed 4 banger loads of times, in forward and reverse. Never broke anything in the transmission, although it has suffered from unrelated shifter-cable failures (turns out this car is prone to that). As far as I’m concerned, the greatest risk is that since you’re rolling without the engine running, that means no power steering or power brakes. If it doesn’t start the first time, you might have your hands full wrestling the wheel and mashing the brakes to prevent banging it up. I think the immediate risk of an uncontrolled car rolling down the street is far worse that the long-term stresses of repeated push starts.
if you really needed to, go for it, it’s just going to be a heck of a lot more difficult than doing it going foreward in 2nd or 3rd gear as all the previous entries say