Failed to start land rover series… what to do..?

Happened to me…  I was cruising on a road with not so heavy traffic and  Landy suddenly stops…  “No problem… I can just re-start the engine” I said… but alas… this time landy refused to start the engine…trying many time turning the ignition key, but I can only heard… “nguk..” long pause… and that’s it…

There are a lot of things can go wrong…

• The ignition key may be faulty
• The battery may be flat, not enough juice to turn the engine
• The solenoid may be died
• The starter dynamo is not working properly
• The negative ground is not good

Lot of things to check, but so little time… Fortunately the land rover engineer is so thoughtful, they know it going to happen sooner or later to series owner, hence they provide us with a tool for hand cranking. Here is how it looks like

Then off I go to start hand cranking… many of the car are slowing down  (some actually stop)  just want to know if I will be able to hand crank it… and yes… I can hand crank it on the first try… and the show is over… :)

Hand cranking land rover series is actually relatively easy, we do not need to turn the handle 360 degree… 45 degree is enough… here is examples  on how to manually crank land rover series : the dangerous way, wrong way and the correct way…

The dangerous way but works

It dangerous because, if the engine kicks back, he will break few bones… it called  hand crank BTW …. but it works nonetheles, only for a seasoned land rover users

The wrong way

no need to turn it 360 deg all the way… you need 360 deg rotation to prime the carb with the ignition off. and then around 90 deg for the actual crank…

Here is the correct one

just to recap, if you have to manually crank it from the cold engine:

1. Disengage the gear
2. Turn off the ignition key
3. Choke the carburetor
4. Turn the engine using hand crank few times to prime carburetor
5. Turn the ignition key on
6. Place the hand crank at 10 – 12 o’clock position if you are left handed or 5-6 o’clock position if you are right handed (slightly before 12 or 6 is perfect)
7. Hold the crack handle by “cupping” it with your finger (olace your thumb above the handle with the rest of your finger)
8. Pull the handle as fast as you can to 2 o’clock position if you left handed or to 7 o’clock position if you right handed
9. hope that you are lucky if not start from number 2 again.. :)

If your engine is warm just start from number 6 (do not forget to disengage the gear first… one thing that you need to remember: ONLY PULL the hand crank NEVER PUSH..!
thats it for now… please excuse me, I have another landy bug to kill… more on this later