I just wanted to let everyone know about a sort of freak accident and caution everyone to work safely.  Two friends were working on a 56 Ford recently adjusting the lifters.  The manual transmission car was in neutral.  They had reached in the window and started and turned the car off.  A socket wrench fell while working and hit a gear shift levers on the firewall. unknown to the guys. The next time they stared it, the car was in gear and jumped forward and one man suffered two broken legs.  I guess the message is to set brakes, block wheels and use safe stands.

Paul J. - '57 E Code

In addition to that, my generation was trained to always depress the clutch while cranking or doing anything anything with the ignition switch. I keep pounding this into my driver's head too. A Cummins engine will start, and if the brakes are set, it will either twist a drive shaft or a power divider input shaft.

Kenneth

Fredricksburg, Texas

Interesting subject.



Irrespective of safety considerations, I wonder if disengaging the clutch has any starting advantage (cold lube, weight of disk/shaft, etc)? Or might minor additional friction of parts under tension cancel this?



Most learned (I assume) to leave a car in gear as a form of parking-brake. I have always left mine in neutral. Can't count the times I absent mindfully started a borrowed car without depressing the clutch, and lurched fore or aft (luckily, without incident).

6 VOLTS/POS. GRD. NW INDIANA

Paul, sorry to hear about your friend. Unfortunate accident. With all of the above suggestions I would like to add a couple; Always get in the car and ensure the transmission is in neutral or park and never have anyone in front of the car or leaning over the fenders when bumping and/or starting an engine.

BOB

Dont know if this qualifies as work safety but I am sure it is work stupidity. I was working on my car one day had the engine running checking things. I needed a tool and had to go in the garage to get it . One thing led to another and after about 10 minutes I went back outside and my car was gone! It had rolled down a hill beside my driveway like I had driven it there. Still running . No damage .  Cost me $155.00 to get a wrecker to pull it out. Dumb!

55Birdman  Hickory NC

Same thing happened to my Grandpa years ago with a 55 Olds my Uncles were putting a motor in out of a 53. It was a automatic and go accidently bumped at fast idle after it was started and my Grandpa was in front making adjustments. One broken leg out of that accident.

Michael

Sandy Valley, NV

Another good rule of thumb is to keep the windows down while working in the engine bay. Did that with an old off road truck I had and it rolled backwards down a friends driveway and as I ran beside it trying to jump in, realized someone locked the door and it crashed into a light pole, inches away from his dads cherry old 60's Mustang. His dad was not impressed.



Loving my Y!

Kevin Walshe

Costa Mesa, California