You always hear these stories of the old timers with broken wrists from a model T kicking while hand cranking, but a lot of it was the fault of the person turning the crank. I have started T's numerous times with the hand crank, including my own which had a starter. Never once did I have one back fire. I suspect the fault was most likely that the person cranking in the old days forgot to retard the spark. I also had two AA Ford trucks, one of which I drove as my transportation when in high school. In the 1970's I was not the only one around here driving an unrestored Model A regularly. Wallowa county Oregon was surely the land time forgot back then. Anyway, I have hand cranked a lot of various old tractors and industrial engines, but the only one that nearly dislocated my elbow and shouler was my own AA truck. Being unrestored the wear factor was great. Running it sounded like the pistons were trading holes. The standard intended method of timing the engine with the special pin headed bolt that you would turn around and engage into a hole in the timeing gear didn't work because there was so much slop in the timing gears and the distributor drive. One of my main mechanical mentors started out as a White steam car mechanic in Mich., was offered the western distributorship for Ford by Henry himself before he had a real company going, which he passed up, and basically mechaniced through all the automotive advances up through the 1970's. He tought me to never hand crank an engine all the way around, but only a stiff jerk upward and never never wrap your thumb around the crank. The worst you will get is a good jerk and the crank will pull out of your hand. If you crank all the way around as one might be tempted to you risk the crank being jerked out of your hand much later and the crank then hitting you in the back of the wrist which surely will result in a trip to the emergency room.
Hope no one is offended by the diversion from trains.
