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crank starting tractors

A battery that will no where near crank an engine with starter will easily give enough to give a spark for ignition using the crank handle --- provided other things are ok of course. Been down that road many times. Of course there is a point where the battery is too dead even for that! Even then a charger hooked up briefly will often get it started.
 
A battery that will barely cause a starter solenoid to "click" will have plenty of power to make a hot spark. Of course if it's totally dead that's not the case.
 
Even when the battery is too low to both spin the engine and make spark, it will often still supply enough current to make spark without the starter working. This is because the starter imposes a large load on the battery and causes the voltage to drop due to the high current draw of the starter and saturated electrolyte in the battery. I start one of my distributor tractors with the hand crank when the battery is low. Of course, the engine is in good condition and I have enough practice to know what I am doing (and I am still physically able to do it).
 
BE CAREFULL !!! Magnetro has the little thing called a impulse. When I was about 30 my dad had a cub to fix for a neighbor and the battery was low. Had a distributor and the timming was a little tooooo advanced. Second pull that Bit&&^*(^. picked me right off the ground when it kicked back. My arm and wrist hurt for a couple of days after that one. You must lift SHARPLEY and keep your hand open and facing up so if she kicks it will pop out of your hand or slap it away. Depends wich way it kicks. OWW thinking of that my arm still hurts. What gets me is the guys who own real old bull dozers like a HOLT. They use an iron rod or a piece of pipe to turn over the engine by sticking it in the fly wheel!
 
(quoted from post at 00:56:14 09/15/14) How does a tractor start off the crank if it has a distributor and the batterys dead?
Click to expand...

If there is any juice in the battery, it should go. But do yourself a favor.

1) Check the static timing. make sure it is TDC or a degree or so late.

2) Pull dist cap and make sure the advance springs retard it FULLY, to the stop.

3) Pull up in short hard strokes, don't "spin" it. I'm short, and not as stout as I was. When starting my H, with magneto, I actually start the pull at about 7 o'clock and step back and to the right so that I pull thru til about 12:30-1:00. Easy-peasy, and nothing but the back of my hand is EVER in the arc that the crank can reach.
 
You could pull start the tractor if the charging system is working or belt start it if you have another tractor with a belt pulley and your tractor has a pulley. Hal
 
If the battery is not absolutely, completely dead it will have enough juice to supply the coil with enough to put out spark. Distributors are trickier to hand crank than magnito's. They don't have an impulse. Kick backs are alot more likely to happen with a distributor. I would advise that you should have some experience hand cranking a magnito safely, before you try a distributor. It will kick you, and if you aren't doing it safely, it will hurt you.
 
Thanks everyone I asked this question because the tractor I got has not starter and thought I could find a crank easier and cheaper
 
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