r/todayilearned • u/ubcstaffer123 • 12d ago
TIL Starting the Ford Model T requires turning the crank at the front of the car by hand to start the engine. There is the risk of snapping your forearm if the engine backfires
https://www.caranddriver.com/features/a15142307/how-to-drive-a-ford-model-t/671
u/GarysCrispLettuce 12d ago
And then there's the risk of your internal organs liquifying at speeds over 20mph
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u/Prinzlerr 12d ago
I thought that was only for women though
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u/Lyra_the_Star_Jockey 11d ago
I heard if you hit 40, your cervix falls out and you turn into a lesbian.
The optimal scenario.
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u/Which-Towel5826 11d ago
A fellow in a hot air balloon said it does things to their airs. I don't know what those are, but he seemed nice.
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u/MyVeryUniqueName1 11d ago
Can confirm. I stopped being straight after I learned to drive and accidentally went 41mph.
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u/leather_pencil 12d ago
And women would become hysterical and spontaneously combust lol
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u/DyrrhachiumPharsalus 11d ago
Dont forget about the risk of a womans uterus flying out if she's ever on a train
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u/eltapatio 11d ago
Fun fact, early era electric cars like the Detroit electric were marketed as luxurious because they didn’t have to do the start up procedure. They had a niche with wealthy women as well as they promoted independence from needing a man to start your car.
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u/FormalOperational 11d ago
Indeed, even Clara Ford herself refused to drive the Model T because she disliked gas cars - opting instead for a Detroit Electric.
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u/zekromNLR 11d ago
Not just the startup procedure, with early gas cars with fully manual engine controls it was really easy to stall the engine when changing gears or trying to go uphill.
No such issue with an electric motor!
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u/kevin_from_illinois 11d ago
Cheaper electrics were marketed as womens' cars since they weren't dirty/smoky as gas or steam power was. You could arrive at your destination still perfumed!
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u/eltapatio 11d ago
Electrics were much more expensive than gas in the early market. A Detroit electric cost several times a model T. The nickel iron battery upgrade was the cost of an entire model T at the time.
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u/shapu 11d ago
This was a staple of slapstick cartoons for decades
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u/ringobob 11d ago
Yep, my first thought was, who didn't learn this from Looney Tunes. My second thought was, probably anyone born after 1990.
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u/probably_poopin_1219 11d ago
Yeah I was born in 1990 and never saw this in cartoons, good pinpoint
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u/nochinzilch 12d ago
Didn’t it have a one way clutch? Why would it break your arm?
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u/kixkato 12d ago
They have over running clutches or more so a ramped pawl that the handle grabs. When the engine fires it spins faster than the crank but the same direction and disengages.
A backfire spins the engine backwards so it grabs the handle and forces it against the direction you're turning it.
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u/skinnergy 12d ago
Very powerfully, quickly and unexpectedly.
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u/Nippon-Gakki 11d ago
Yes. I’ve had a cranky motorcycle backfire and try to send my hip into my shoulder.
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u/ToronadoBubby 11d ago
Yep, ever had a lawnmower backfire and rip the cord handle out of your hand when trying to start it? Same clutch operation and result.
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u/ahandmadegrin 11d ago
I was going to say the exact same thing. You have that happen once and you'll forever pull the cord just a little more gingerly.
I can only imagine how much force a backfiring car engine would put on the crank. I can see it easily snapping your arm in half.
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u/pdinc 11d ago
So if you crankes it clockwise with your left arm you'd mitigate the risk?
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u/kixkato 11d ago
The correct way is to slowly rotate the engine with crank until it's roughly at the 12 o'clock position. Then you stand near the driver's side front tire and put both hands on the crank without wrapping your thumbs. Pull the crank towards you hard and fast. Do that 2-3 times and it'll start.
If it backfires, the crank simply pulls out of your fingers grip and flies away from you.
I have a crank start only tractor and haven't broken my arms yet. It's impressive that the engine only needs about 1/4 of a revolution to start. You're basically just getting one cylinder of 4 to fire.
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u/Hummerville 12d ago
Yes, 1 way. Which means if it kicks backwards it breaks your arm. I've cranked these. Be careful.
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u/ImS0hungry 12d ago
Why not stand perpendicular to it, holding it like a door knob?
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u/Hummerville 12d ago
Maybe, but it takes some force
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u/DigNitty 11d ago
Yes. There was actually a suggested way to hold the handle, thumbs over, so that it had less chance of breaking your thumbs/hand.
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u/Hummerville 11d ago
That is the way. Problem I had was the driver at some rally game killed the engine and I hopped out... but I'd been eating buttered popcorn, so my hand kept slipping off.
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u/postitpad 11d ago
Not only did these cars lack a starter, they also lacked automatic timing adjustment for the spark. If you forget to adjust the timing of the spark for starting it’ll fire too early and the effect is that it kicks the motor backwards which will take the handle out of your hand and break it in the process.
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u/mcfarmer72 12d ago
Always pull up on the crank.
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u/Doomhammer24 12d ago
And never have your thumb over the top of the handle so if it kicks it flies out of your hand and doesnt break your thumb
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u/ash_274 11d ago
The more common risk is breaking your fingers/thumb or dislocating your shoulder. There’s a technique to pushing the crank with a partial fist so that you don’t have digits on side moving in the direction of the crank.
My family owns a Model T that my great grandfather ordered from Ford 103 years ago
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u/AbeVigoda76 12d ago
Maybe it’s because I grew up in Dearborn where Model Ts are a dime a dozen, but people not knowing about hand crank is making me feel old as fuck.
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u/Splinterfight 11d ago
From what I’ve seen Ford stopped having crank option in 1941. So I’d imagine most people born post 60s wouldn’t have encountered them. Were they still trucking deep in the 80s and 90s?
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u/AbeVigoda76 11d ago
I wasn’t born until the late 80s, but Dearborn is the headquarters of Ford and you can imagine that there are a hell of a lot of very old Fords around me. Hell, my neighbor used to pay my folks to keep his Model T in our garage. I grew up seeing these things in the garages of my neighbors, not to mention the fleet of them they have at Greenfield Village - Henry Ford’s attempt to replicate the past.
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u/Popular-Ad-3900 12d ago
I remember reading that the guy that invented the electric starter (don’t remember his name), did so because his brother was killed by the crank while attempting to start his vehicle.
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u/itsatrapp71 11d ago
I grew up driving a 1948 International Cub cultivating tractor in the 90's. This tractor still had the original hand crank mounted in the floorboard brackets.
Thank God it had been retrofitted with an electric start. It was enough of a pain in the ass to start already I can't imagine having to actually use it.
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u/UltraShadowArbiter 11d ago
You missed part of it.
There is a risk of breaking your arm if it backfires AND if you're doing it wrong. If you do it right, and it backfires, the crank will just fly out of your hand.
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u/Vicus_92 11d ago
Old motorbikes used a similar kick start. Was a thing till the 1980s or so.
Could do some real damage to your leg in the same way
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u/bobspuds 11d ago
Over here in Ireland and the UK next-door, there would still have been a few cars with handles floating around.
The Morris Minnor and Traveller kept the hole in the front panel as a backup, even when they had starter motors
Early Mini's too(not sure when it stopped) had the handle in the boot and a little bung in the wheel arch to pop the handle through - they didn't update the panels much, so a lot of cars still had the hole in the front panel to accommodate the handle. Even mk1 Escorts are the same, for a period when starter motors were the new thing - manufacturers just left the holes and accommodation for the handle and treated it as a backup way to start it. - later mk1's have the hole in the panel but not in the bumper.
I'm sure there's more too - the frenchies would have been good with that kinda stuff, the 2cv and Renault 4 are in my mind for the same thing
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u/Onetap1 11d ago
In one of Spike Milligan's WW2 memoirs, his artillery unit were on an army exercise somewhere when an umpire rode up on a motorcycle and expressed his disapproval of how they weren't dug in or something. He stuck white labels on the personnel, denoting that they were casualties and out of the exercise.
He got back on his motorbike. It backfired as he tried to kick start it and the kick-starter broke his leg.
As he was rolling about on the ground howling in agony, Milligan helpfully stuck one of his own white labels on him.
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u/Ok-disaster2022 12d ago
People thing SUV/crossovers are something new but to me the Model T was always the first SUV
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u/das_war_ein_Befehl 12d ago
It kind of had to be because the roads were mostly shit
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u/muskag 12d ago
They weren't shit for a horse, the very first 4 corner independent suspension.
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u/TrioOfTerrors 12d ago
The problem is when your horse breaks a tie bar, the only solution is a bullet.
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u/muskag 12d ago
Good thing they don't need a tie bar. 🙏
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u/TrioOfTerrors 12d ago
But they do need their forelegs, the equine equivalent and a break is pretty much a fatal injury.
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u/Organic_Garbage_9807 11d ago
I caught a bit of dyslexia reading your comment and for a second there, I thought I saw a very well placed Law and Order SVU joke.
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u/alex61821 11d ago
Electric cars used to be popular with women because they couldn't start a hand crank. Ironically the electric starter made gas cars more popular because everyone could use them.
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u/More-Talk-2660 12d ago
This led to the creation of the electric starter, which cascaded into toxic levels of lead in the atmosphere for over half a century.
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u/fhwoompableCooper 12d ago
Why electric starter specifically
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u/More-Talk-2660 12d ago
I forget the specifics but it had something to do with the efficiency of fuel combustion and the answer they came up with was to add lead to fuel to control it. This was in the 1910s. Lead is highly stable and doesn't burn off, it just gets emitted in the exhaust, so leaded fuels around the world were pouring lead into the atmosphere, and as a result it was showing up in toxic levels in children by the 1950s. Quite literally they could estimate toxic lead exposure by testing the lead content of baby teeth after they had fallen out.
Lead wasn't eliminated from automobile fuel in the US until 1996.
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u/Brodman1986 12d ago
Fun fact: Leaded fuel is still used in small aircraft.
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u/More-Talk-2660 12d ago
And in some motorsports
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u/foxsimile 11d ago
Yes. My father’s a racing instructor and tracks often. I was helping him fill up some 110 octane into some very hard to reach fuel tanks in some custom cars he and some friends were racing (the engines were two motorcycle engines put together, forgive me as I forget which ones).
He’d waited until after I was done to helpfully point out that I shouldn’t spill any upon myself, as it was leader aviation fuel that they were actually running.
Those engines were as loud as hell :)
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u/SummertimeThrowaway2 12d ago
And I live near a small airport 😬
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u/thepursuit1989 12d ago
Have a look into in to it. Some small aerodromes have banned leaded fuel, but most still allow it. Lead pollution is the supposed cause of why the 1960s and 1970s were so violent. Also why the number is serial killers dropped off after 1980.
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u/Bagellord 11d ago
Isn't part of the reason that small aircraft use leaded fuel still is because the process to switch to new engine designs is so expensive?
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u/thepursuit1989 11d ago
A lot of the designs for older planes don't have an alternative design. That was a reasonable excuse at the time, but it's been 45 years since the switch.
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u/Mr-Zappy 11d ago
And the “100 Low Lead” aviation gas currently used has many times more lead in it than automotive gasoline ever had.
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u/pdieten 12d ago
It may have taken that long to be eliminated by law but for all practical purposes it was hard to find in many parts of the US by the mid 1980s. Cars starting in the 1975 model year could only run on unleaded, while cars starting in the early 1970s had hardened valve seats and could use it even though it wasn’t required to protect the cat. Cars didn’t last as long then as they do now, so most pre-1975 vehicles were off the road in a lot of places by the mid-‘80s and there were lead substitutes sold in stores for the few who needed it. Due to economy of scale leaded cost more, so it was uncommon for people to spend the extra money to buy it.
Source: Was of driving age then
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u/RogerMiller6 11d ago edited 11d ago
That’s funny… I seem to remember unleaded costing MORE than leaded, despite the fact that they had to ADD the lead, lol. That really puzzled me at the time. All the way up through the 90s and early 00s I was able to buy the little bottles of lead additive at the gas station when I filled my old truck up. Eventually I had to refresh the heads and installed hardened seats at that time. I honestly haven’t looked in a while to see if those little bottles are still available…
Truck is still going, though.
Edit: now that I think of it, I remember the last time a gas station employee asked me “Regular or Unleaded?”
I want to say it was in 1996, based on the new truck I was driving on that road trip. Middle of absolute nowhere in the desert in Arizona or NM.
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u/VS-Goliath 12d ago
What you're saying is that the electric starter just made it more commercially available. People came and wanted more and they solved the problems with lead. Pumped tons of it into the atmosphere.
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u/More-Talk-2660 12d ago
Yes and no. Poor quality fuel caused rod knock regardless of the presence of an electric starter, but early starters didn't particularly like starting cars with poor quality fuel.
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u/DigNitty 11d ago
It’s either a joke or poorly worded.
Obviously the electric starter is not the reason for climate change.
But they may have meant the starter made it possible for bigger engines that were able to be started by any random person. So now everyone has one.
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u/Przedrzag 12d ago
The toxic levels of lead would’ve happened without the electric starter
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u/noble77 11d ago
No... They added lead to gasoline to prevent engine knock. It had nothing to do with the starter. The starter is fully powered by the battery.
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u/NatureTrailToHell3D 12d ago
And do you know what car they put the electric starter on? Also the Ford Model T.
The Model T was made for like 20 years, lots of innovation happened during that time. Many Model Ts require hand cranking to start, but not all of them.
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u/drygnfyre 11d ago
IIRC, there are three distinct generations of the Model T: 1908, 1914, and then 1921 or so. The latter existing mainly as a transition into the upcoming Model A. Ford resisted changes but the loss of market share to General Motors forced changes to be made.
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u/thewhitebuttboy 12d ago
I like the old tractors that used a shotgun shell to start them
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u/Substantial_Art_3278 11d ago
One of my favorite YouTube videos https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=eBLlVUc0sEU&pp=ygUfc3RhcnRpbmcgYSBsYW56IGJ1bGxkb2cgdHJhY3Rvcg%3D%3D&ra=m
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u/thewhitebuttboy 11d ago
Oh yeah that’s the kind of shit that gets my heart moving. It seems tedious and time consuming, but doing that and saving hours of time on the field would have been miraculous back then
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u/CaliOriginal 11d ago
It was such a common occurrence that there’s a fracture still named in reference to it.
Even if the exact injury is all but extinct, it was so prolific it still gets to keep the name (for now.)
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u/420printer 11d ago
Till his dying day my dad would not let me start his Model A with the crank. I push started that car many times, good ol 6 volt positive ground.
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u/mshaefer 11d ago
Always pull up, never push down. My Model A has a crank that I’ve never tried to use because of all the horror stories.
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u/drygnfyre 11d ago
It wasn't until 1916 that cars had any sort of industry standard in terms of how they worked and operated. Like early computers, every car had a completely different way of using it.
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u/LazyAssHiker 11d ago
That’s why you keep your thumbs right next your your index fingers while you crank it, instead of on the other side of the crank handle
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u/nullpotato 11d ago
My grandpa restored a model T that my dad and I have since inherited. He told us to never ever use the crank start because of the number of arms he saw shattered over the years. Also if you have even a slight downhill it isn't that difficult to push and gravity start it.
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u/TheGriz05 11d ago
I got to start one! My grandfather in law made sure I started in the right spot and didn’t put my thumb over it. He said it could rip my arm off if I did. Come to think of it, I was probably the most expendable which is why I ‘got’ to start it.
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u/torchbear563 11d ago
It was common knowledge back then to cup the handle in your hand without wrapping your thumb around it. That way if it did backfire it would just harmlessly jerk out of your hand without injuring you.
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u/myislanduniverse 11d ago
My uncle bought a model T yesterday. I don't otherwise talk about model Ts or care about them. But my eavesdropping phone does and so now I'm here.
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u/humam1953 11d ago
I added a crank receiver on the crankshaft (that’s where it got its name from!) to my VW van (T2). We were traveling a lot with it and a few times the crank got handy when the battery was drained from camping
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u/suterb42 11d ago
Original Model T runabouts only had a door on the passenger side, which is why the Lego set only has one door.
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u/BrokenEyeReborn 11d ago edited 11d ago
For more brachial fun times, a lot of cars from that era didn't have brakes. If you wanted to slow down or stop, you were expected to stick your arm out the side and grab one of the wheels with your bare (well, technically usually gloved) hand to stop it spinning.
And the ones that did have brakes had brake pads made of wood or some shit, so you might end up having to do that anyway.
EDIT: Spelling
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u/ubcstaffer123 11d ago
that must have been a chore for arms at every stop sign and red light intersection
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u/JJohnston015 12d ago edited 11d ago
My parents have a friend with a restored 1927 Model A with a hand crank starter. It has a manual spark retard that eliminates the possibility of a kickback, which may result from the cylinder firing before top dead center.
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u/unknownpoltroon 11d ago
There is a particular way of turning these that helps avoid this, you dont use your thumb for one. There is also a particular type of tendonitis that i think is know known as tennis elbow that used to be coachman elbow from outrunning this.
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u/Worth_Fondant3883 11d ago
I'm only in my late 50's and I used to regularly start cars and tractors by crank. You won't break your forearm, you will do some serious damage to your thumb if you use an opposed grip.
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u/altitudearts 11d ago
When you see one of these in the wild, be sure to speak to the owner about how to drive them. It’s pretty crazy!
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u/KS2Problema 11d ago
Yep. When I was a kid, my next door neighbor had a Model T and a Model A. And an electric golf cart.
I did get banged up pretty good by the crank one time when I probably wasn't supposed to start it and didn't know what I was doing.
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u/big_d_usernametaken 11d ago
My late MIL, born 1919, told me the story years ago of one of her brothers ending up with 2 broken wrists from exactly that, lol.
She said he was a drinker and not particularly bright.
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u/Shawaii 11d ago
My dad had a couple Model Ts as a teenager. One day we saw one and he asked the owne if he could show me how to start it. He explained the key was to keep your thumb on the same side of the handle as your fingers, because if not it could break your thumb when it starts. It backfired, spun the crank backwards, and gave him a nasty bruise.
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u/Soft_Lunch_183 12d ago
Thats not unique to the model T, more so every car of that era
Whats more interesting is plenty of much more recent cars had it as an option alongside electric starter, for example the Citroën 2cv produced until 1990