The Russian way of dealing with a dead battery.

Pull start it.

You will have to fast forward to 10:25 unless you want to watch a bunch of idiots crash their cars.

I don't know how to make it shorter.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&NR=1&v=FVrnZ817BPY

I never would have thought to do that.

http://youtu.be/FVrnZ817BPY?t=10m25s

youtube tip: you can link to any point in the video by pausing it where you want it to start, clicking the "share" tab right below the player screen, checking off the "start at" box, and then copying the link that appears in the box just to the left of it and pasting that here...

Genius, I've always kinda wondered how one could go about hand starting a FF car, never thought to take advantage of the open diff.

that is a great way to start a car... I will have to remember that.

After watching some of the "russians driving badly" videos... you have to wonder if they can drive at all over there

It seems Russian drivers have decent car control skills in general and terrible judgement. A coworker from the Ukraine was telling me his dad made 150 Rubles a month in Soviet times and a crappy Lada was about 5000 Rubles if you were on the list or knew someone. Now you have a bunch of people who haven't been driving relatively long on the roads.

Kenny_McCormic wrote: Genius, I've always kinda wondered how one could go about hand starting a FF car, never thought to take advantage of the open diff.

Apparently this was extremely easy to do with old ACVWs. No compression and no displacement. And with a generator, you don't need no stinkin' field current to make power, so you could have the battery disconnected and still start the car.

Watched the whole thing, and a lot of those videos display driving way too fast in traffic. Lots of turns from the middle lane, too.

Also, snow is slippery.

In reply to Knurled:

The older ACVWs have provisions for a crank IIRC.

I think the hand crank capability ended around 1949 or so, but the KdF-Wagens did have it.

ACVWs = Air Cooled Volkswagen, right?

My hat is off to those guys, I never would have thought of that, either.

The Russian way of dealing with a dead battery is also the Russian way of getting rid of that pesky hand.

In Mexico on ACVWs you could get a pull start crank that was basically a second pulley welded onto the crank pulley with a notch in it. You but the peg on the end of the rope in the notch, wrapped the rope around the pulley, and pulled and hoped it started.

They've done that a time or two.

Pull start a bug: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PI46qVW2WA4

Reminds me of the Russian guy that broke his arm at Mecum attempting to push start his Desoto......

Will have to commit both of those (wheel and ACVW pull start) to memory. If I ever come across reason to use one and don't hurt myself I'll look like a genius. The VW is easy enough to push start by hand that there are few situations where it would be needed though.