remember boats without electric start?

[bobski]

maybe thats why i to this day hate boating.
being the kid....it was always my job to wrap the rope and pull. i hated it.
rope would break, wouldnt start....and we'd end up rowing back home.
you?

 

[Fox Mike]

I still like the water but I do vividly remember the air cooled outboard we had when I was a kid. It was much better exercise then any machine invented since. Wrap the rope and haul it and get hit on your back with the knot. Repeat numerous times while inventing new and 'colorful' words to call it till it finally started.

 

[T.A. WORKMAN]

I remember well suffering your experiences as a young boy fishing with my grandfather, :wink:
That motor would make him turn the air blue! :mrgreen:

Terry

 

[bobski]

so im not the only one. that makes me feel better!

 

[bobski]

and lest we forget the lawn mowers of same design. geeash.

 

[6GUNSONLY]

Kid sees an older man pulling on the rope on an old outboard motor over and over. Little boy says to the old man "when my dad's motor won't start he gives it a good cussing." Older man says, "well son I quit cussing years ago, and I wouldn't even know how to cuss anymore." Little boy says "keep pulling on that rope it'll come back to you."

 

[Watchman]

Maybe you should have taken up sailing. No motor required.

The cussin' starts not when the wind dies, but when the beer runs out...

 

[RSIno1]

Cleaning out the shed a couple months ago I took great pleasure in tossing my old 1950s 7.5 Mercury out for the scrap guy that comes by. My 9.9 Honda doesn't miss it's shed mate at all.

 

[Wyandot Jim]

Yep I had a 71/2 Wizard before I bought our 100 HP 6 Cyl. Mercury.
Pulled on the Wizard a bunch. When the battery on the Merc. would go dead I would hand start it. Easy to start and it was the last big Merc to have an arm strong starter on it.

 

[Jimbo357mag]

I had an old 25hp Evinrude on an aluminum boat and it took quite some pulling to get it started. My dad had an old Johnson 35hp on his boat with electric start. Sometimes the starter or battery might go out and that Johnson 35 was not easy to pull through with the rope.

 

[Gator89]

In the early 80's I had a 9.8 Mercury that was a pull start.

My 200 Yamaha V6 might be a bit much for a pull start.

 

[WAYNO]

As a kid, everything was pull start. And pull start didn't always work so well.

A lawn mower may or may not have started, and then we'd try again later.

The neighbor kid would make a date to let us ride his mini bike. Until we couldn't get it started.

Another neighbor had a riding lawn mower with a crank on top you'd turn to wind up a big spring. Push a plunger and this spring was enough to give the motor a couple spins to get it started. When that didn't work, we'd wind it up again, and again. Sometimes it would start.

I miss the old days. I don't miss these old hard-starting motors.

 

[gunzo]

They still sell boat motors with pull start............

:mrgreen:

 

[kmoore]

I'm spoiled even my 9.9 has an electric start. Besides only a push of the start button, on the Mercury they have a alternator if it's a electric start. That keeps the battery topped off when running GPS/Sonar/Radio for hours if the 200hp engine is off. All those things none of us had as youth.

 

[Colonialgirl]

GEE; My 36 ketch (The CONCHITA) had a 22 hp Faryman diesel engine (2 cylinders) it had a starter, but I use to pull the compression release ,spin it with the hand crank several times and as it was coming to TDC let go of the compression release and she would cough a couple of times and fire right on up. Remember the old WW2 movies where the allied pilots were escaping back to England aboard a fishing boat? Yeah, that's the way she sounded.
Only ran it to get out of the slip and started up the channel while we got the sails raised; same thing headed back to the slip, crank her up , drop the sails and call our friends on the radio to meet us at our slip and take our lines.
We lived aboard in the old Henry Ford Ave Marina as did several other people, That was my daughters first home when she was born in Feb, 1972. It was a good life !
All gone now and turned into a container terminal.

 

[redhawker]

Just about the only time I couldn't pull start a boat motor was when it was a junk rental boat. The few small boat motors I owned over the years I kept tuned and in good shape, and they were one or two pulls every time. I had, at one time in the 1990's a 1950's era Johnson 5 hp and that thing was always a one or two pull even at that age.

 

[jgt]

I had a ten foot jon boat with a 6 hp Evinrude. It started every time and let me go places I could not go with a larger set-up. Was also a miser on gas.

 

[bobski]

issue we had with pull ropes is we hated to shut it off....because we knew what came next. so repositioning the boat fishing was limited!

 

[kmoore]

Of course there are many reasons a motor will not start easily. Been around enough to say that if the operator has done the correct start up and it does not start. Than old gas, old squeeze bulb or, old fuel lines with unseen cracks and the "I forgot to open the vent on the fuel tank." Cause lots of problems at the boat ramp.

 

[Fox Mike]

issue we had with pull ropes is we hated to shut it off....because we knew what came next. so repositioning the boat fishing was limited!

I totally understand. If I shut down mine I was always near some shore somewhere (in case I had to walk and find a phone) or back home. Rowing the 'barge' was not an easy thing if WAY away from home.

 

[Big John]

It was in northeast Texas, late fall of 1971, 14’ aluminum boat probably with a 20 HP Merc. 3:00 a.m. going duck hunting. Rick is circling in the boat to warm it up while Fred is parking the truck and trailer. About 50 yards out the motor dies. After a couple of fruitless pulls Rick stands up to get a better yank. He forgets to take the motor out of gear, it starts and he goes over the transom. He’s already in his chest waders, nobody else is launching, it’s completely dark. He manages to ‘swim’ back ~ 40 yards. Drowns. In 10’ of water. Several mistakes were made that we would have thought nothing about when we were 17 and invincible. Could’ve been me, I guess I’m lucky and passing this on.

 

[bobski]

wow.

 

[chuck]

If your bored and want to have a bunch of laughs, go to a boat launch place.

 

[graygun]

I remember the rope-start days.

 

[bobski]

my jim dandy garden farm tractor has a rope start option!

 

[kmoore]

Boat ramps are always good for entertainment.
3 weeks ago 2 guys loading and as many do they wanted to pull the boat onto the trailer. Outboard was still down, I reminded the loader about raising it. Guy gets boat almost all on the trailer tells other guy to pull forward. The guy throttles the truck engine over and over and nothing moves. He finally releases the brake as stepping on gas. Other guy in water between truck and boat gets knocked down as truck pulls boat up about 5 ft. The guy came up near the trailer wheels.
Last week, I had just tied up at dock, next boat comes in hits dock and continues up on dock until half of a 18 ft fiberglass boat is on the dock behind me.
People do the dumbest stuff to launch and recover a boat. That's one reason I stay away from most boaters while on the water, I doubt their driving skills are any better.