The other night I had to wait over an hour and a half at 4.00 in the monring in the pissing rain for sombody to come and recharge my car battery, wouldn't it be easier to have some kind of crank shaft opperated battery recharge unit that would give the car enough charge to tick over and start the engine. Would also be helpfull in areas with no road side assistance.-- Gulherme, Sep 22 2002 Alternate solution http://www.tvadvert...bile/startmeup.html"You will never be stranded with a dead battery again" [half, Sep 22 2002, last modified Oct 05 2004] Optima Batteries http://www.optimabatteries.comI can't seem to run mine dead.. and boy have I tried! [Mr Burns, Sep 23 2002] It would take a hang of a lot of winding to create sufficient charge. Another way to safeguard yourself would be to carry spare battery and a set of jumper leads.-- Helium, Sep 22 2002 I know NOTHING about mechanics, but it strikes me that in them olden days cars used to have a crank start. Why would it be difficult to have an optional crank start now, that by-passes the whole battery/starter moter system, then, once you are under way, your alternator can kick in and repower the battery as you suggest.-- Zircon, Sep 22 2002 Even better then we just bypass the whole battery thing and put a crank handel in modern cars.-- Gulherme, Sep 22 2002 //I know NOTHING about mechanics//
I do, they're smelly and have dirty fingernails.-- Helium, Sep 22 2002 oh hell, why not get some type of a carriage, and attach some horses or oxen to it? then when they stop moving, you can rip some leaves off a tree and they will run on that.
//just continuing the de-evolution of transportation.//-- Wraith, Sep 22 2002 This is to be used only in emergencys for instance being stuck in the middle of nowhere with a flat battery. Believe it or not it has been known to happen.-- Gulherme, Sep 22 2002 Yeah I know what you mean, I like the idea. That's my croissant up there BTW.-- Zircon, Sep 22 2002 (link)-- half, Sep 22 2002 "The other night I had to wait over an hour and a half at 4.00 in the monring in the pissing rain for sombody to come and recharge my car battery..." Be happy you weren't the poor sucker who had to crawl out of bed at 4:00 in the morning/monring because someone else had a bad battery.-- phoenix, Sep 23 2002 I fully endorse Optima batteries... crank? We don't need no stinking crank!-- Mr Burns, Sep 23 2002 I had a Toyota Tercel whose starter solenoid failed. Pending replacement, I would simply take care to park at the uphill side of any parking lot or driveway. It really does not take much of a hill to start a car if the battery has enough juice to bootstrap the alternator (if the battery is completely dead, the alternator will be unable to supply current and no amount of cranking will do any good).-- supercat, Sep 23 2002 <Smiles at the image of someone trying to crank a modern high-compression engine by hand>
I'll mention the optima batteries to my husband, who has an interest in things like that. Thx.-- bristolz, Sep 23 2002 Bristolz: We straight up TRIED to run mine dead, it simply will not happen.. (KC light bar, aftermarket stereo, power inverter...all running for several hours). Lights didn't even DIM when I started the car the next morning.-- Mr Burns, Sep 23 2002 If you can't roll the car down a hill you can put the car into top gear, raise one of the driving wheels off the ground with a jack, then crank the raised wheel by hand. But don't blame me if it falls off the jack and drives off without you.-- 7snottyorphans, Apr 30 2003 I remember having a cranking handle on one of my early cars, it also had a priming pump on the carby, which you had to pump before you cranked the engine (because the electric fuel pump didn't work with a flat battery). But, I generally managed to get the thing moving, dive in a do a "bump" start.-- Micky Dread, Apr 30 2003 what you don't hear about those crank starts was that they were primitively (almost directly) connected to the motor. helloo broken elbow.
it should only take a minute, have the other person rev up the motor.. alternator doesn't put out much power at idle.-- AutoMcDonough, Mar 03 2010 random, halfbakery