Jp, nice mod. A hand crank A friend has 2 I'm trying to get him to share....
Heh... if he's got 2 then he should share!
My particular one is a later model with a late style carb and intake. It's the only single cylinder air cooled engine with a cast iron head I've ever seen. Unfortunately I don't have a fuel tank or air cleaner for it, there's also no governor inside (how it was when I bought it). Beneath years of dirt and grime I found the remains of some red paint, with bare metal underneath it, so it got a fresh coat of red paint, cooling fins got a coat of heat proof black. Breather and hand crank mechanism also painted black, getting that hand crank mechanism black while on the red fan shroud took a LOT of painters tape!! Following the original operators manual, I painted the oil fill plugs blue and the oil drain plugs yellow.
The only task now is to modify the hand crank I've got so that it works with the engine and doesn't break my hands when I start it! It's an old tractor hand crank and I just need to grind it down so the slots are shallower, and then cut slopes into it so that once the engine starts the crank just slides up over them and off without harm. I'll have to rig a temporary gas tank to start it.
As you can see, I've got plenty of pictures of it
