I read about this trick about four months before the input fitting on the fuel pump in my little car decided to just pop out of the pump. Tow truck left it about ten feet from where I wanted it, on soft ground so pushing was gonna take all my roommates. Or take a few months’ of life off the starter motor.
I had a friend who drove a 79 Datsun. Stalling and not starting was a surprisingly common occurrence. He would often go out of his way to park on a hill to avoid problems.
I was told this was a potential last-ditch way to escape if you stalled while crossing railroad tracks.
In hindsight, stalling while crossing railroad tracks, like quicksand, is a much less common danger in adulthood than I was lead to believe as a younger person.
I was born in 1980 and it seemed people would get stuck in quicksand on tv regularly when I was a kid, but it seems a kind of danger that has almost disappeared from the collective narrative.
Why was it popular before? Why isn't it anymore? This baffles me.
TV Tropes suggests the idea whilst even existing in fiction for hundred of years before TV, is now "discredited".
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Personally I prefer more interesting madcap cultural theories. Here's one from the top of my head:
Quicksand refers to anxiety about the natural world from an increasingly urbanised and ecologically disconnected population. Or maybe Quicksand represents an increasing urban populations attitude towards nature. It represents the opposite of a safe, technology, capitalist, consumerist industrial world of the post WW2 era. Nature was literally seen as hostile. Nature can make a person stuck, capture them, and kill them. It's allied with getting lost in the woods stories, a trope which emphasizes both physical and existential disorientation in the face of nature's indifference
Quicksand on TV existed throughout the early ecological hippy inspired new age of the late 20th century but the seeds were being sown. This changed in the late 20th and early 21st centuries as we witnessed the convergence of environmental concerns (e.g. plastic bags, straws, global warming) with the logic of neoliberal capitalism, together with an increase in bureaucratic management on behalf of people. Nature is not scary but something to be protected from harm. Nature is reconfigured from a place of danger to a place of stewardship. Avatar, the movie represents the change the most.
Thus, the role of cities and technology as agents of death and destruction have changed. It is not nature that entraps or destroys, but rather the infrastructures of urbanization, capitalism, and technological progress. Ironically this valorisation of nature is happening at the same time as increasingly technological manipulation of the rural environment - mechanisation of farming, house building, terraforming, weather modification. Nature is no longer wild, is not even tame, it's another resource to be shaped and used.
Quicksand not only is discredited as being inaccurate, it's ideologically impossible for nature to be dangerous anymore.
I like this theory, especially connected to how few shows deal with open nature anymore (stuff in the savana or jungle or old west with pumas everywhere etc). We seem to have become thoroughly urbanized even in imagination.
You still can very much die in quicksand but the problem is that you get like your foot stuck in a way that you just can't escape and then you just die out there like that. But the idea that you sink down and drowned is some kind of weird combination of a swamp and not really quicksand but is much more filmable.
You get your foot stuck in and then the tide comes in and you drown.
Most quicksand I'm aware of is in tidal flats [0] [1] and it really is dangerous to take a short cut over them. Come to think of it, most normal sand I encounter is in tidal flats, too.
I did it daily with a car I had bought for 50 bucks and that was not worth a new battery. Just make sure to park it on top of a hill. Push it off with a foot out the door, gain momentum and now you have one attempt.
In my old Audi sometimes the clutch wouldn’t work so that’s how I started it. Also learned double clutching and to anticipate traffic lights so I didn’t have to stop.
I've done that, with an old Volkswagen. It wouldn't start, but I was able to use the starter to move it maybe 30 feet uphill in order to reach a position where I could coast-start it for a couple blocks. Got it running.
But I came really close to getting in trouble with a 1948 Chevy pickup. I backed it into my grandfather's garage, and then found out that it was a bit too far forward to be able to close the door. So I turned the ignition on, put it in reverse, and touched the starter.
Unfortunately, the engine caught with that brief touch of the starter, leaving me frantically stabbing for the clutch before I pushed through the back of the garage...
Fortunately, it idled very slowly, and I had (of course) given it no gas.
Funny you mention VW because the 914 is a VW. In fact, the name was originally VW-Porsche 914 from what I remember. A buddy’s dad bought one for $4K when they came out.
You should still be able to push start a newer manual transmission car. Put in the clutch, put the key to run, put it in 1st (or so), get it up to speed, let the clutch out, and now the engine is turning, which should turn the alternator/generator which should now be able to run the engine. If your electrical system is really bad, maybe the alternator can't get the voltage high enough to run everything; if your car is very modern maybe the engine control computer won't start up and control the engine before the engine stalls out because of lack of fuel and spark (or the fuel pump doesn't develop enough pressure in time); or maybe the computer just won't do it.
In a traditional automatic with a hydraulic torque converter between the engine and the gearing, you've got a problem: most transmissions use hydraulic pressure to actuate the gear selection, and hydraulic pressure is typically developed by turning of the input shaft. Some older automatics had a secondary pump to develop hydraulic pressure from turning of the output shaft. In those cars, you could select first gear, turn the ignition to run, and if you got it moving fast enough, it would develop pressure, actuate first gear, and then the transmission could turn the engine and off you were. Some references suggest pushing in neutral and selecting first when ready to start. References say you need to get up to about 15-25 mph for that; my VW Vanagon which shares the same engine type as the 914 (and is therefore a rear-engine sports car) can start the engine from a much slower roll; the speedometer rests at 10 mph, so who knows how fast I'm going, but probably walking speed.
...which should turn the alternator/generator which should now be able to run the engine.
Depends; what's lighting up the field coils in the alternator? A generator, which probably went out of cars in the '60s, sure. But something has to power the parts that create the magnetic field in an alternator, and if the battery's dead...
On top of the fact that the coils on top of the plugs these days are more finicky about the amount of power they receive. A battery with 11.5V probably isn't going to cut it. And as you point out, the ECM may want a healthy 12V, too.
I would hedge the original statement and say you could push start a newer manual transmission car, but don't count on it. Even as far back as 1999, I had a Honda VFR motorcycle that could not be push-started until its battery had some juice in it, for the reasons stated above.
If the battery is dead flat, you're pooched, but you can get way farther than you have any right to push starting a car with an only mostly dead battery because you don't have the (huge) load of the starter motor bringing the voltage down. I've had a couple alternators go and push started the cars they were in until I was able to replace the alternator.
On the basis of this experience, I'm not convinced the alternator actually comes into play in a typical push start. It's usually roll the car, clutch out, lurch and fire, clutch back in and let the engine get to a stable idle. At no point is the engine spinning fast enough to create much electricity with the alternator until after it's actually running. Provided the alternator is working in the first place, of course.
As an aside, in all of the vehicles where I've lost the alternator, the first warning sign has been the radio having a shit fit. I have never once seen the idiot light come on for a bad alternator, which really calls its utility into question.
The inability to do a rolling start in an automatic really bugs me after being used to manuals my whole life.
I switched to an auto a few years back for reasons (UK, still not super popular here), and once or twice I've had the car cut out on me at speed, in traffic; had it been a manual, I could have just restarted it while moving, but it forces you to be stopped, foot on the brake and in park before you can push the button to start it.
As of 2013, manual cars (at least Mazdas) can still be roll-started, as long as the engine computer has enough power to function.
My CX-5 even has a wireless-pushbutton start, not a physical-key-in-the-ignition start, but I've still been able to roll-start it when the battery is too dead to crank the starter motor but still has enough juice for the electronics (lowest I've seen is ~8v if I recall correctly, but don't quote me on that).
The process is pretty much the same: put the car's ignition into the "ON" position (in my case, press the pushbutton twice without touching the pedals -- once to ACC mode, then once to move from ACC to ON), then it's the same as normal: clutch-in, shift to your preferred gear, get rolling, and pop the clutch. Engine computer sees "oh, looks like the engine's spinning, let's add gas and spark" and you're good to go.
Anecdotally, I've seen the described behavior of the engine computer ("detects spinning and adds gas/spark, even if the initial motion wasn't from the starter motor") on automatic transmission vehicles, too. On a 2008 Chevrolet, I found that if you revved the engine up a bit (for inertia), turned the key to OFF, then quickly turned the key back to ON (without turning all the way to START), the engine computer will catch it and keep it running.
I was really surprised when I couldn't push start my 1992 Miata. I had the thing rolling down a hill at like 15mph in first for at least 2 blocks, engine was spinning, but just refused to fire. Jump pack fired it right up. I know the battery was dead after I left the light on, but I figured for sure the alternator would make enough juice to fire up the injectors and ignition...
Some alternators ironically require electricity to make electricity. They don't have permanent magnets inside, but instead use electromagnets. So from a stone cold battery, if there's not enough power to get those electromagnets functional, you don't have a way of converting that rotational energy into electricity.
Use second gear. I have a '96NA, and first gear can't perform a roll-start, but it catches just fine in second. I have no idea why that is, but I remember I was just about of hill when I discovered it.
It's because the wheels can turn the engine more easily and for longer in higher gears. This isn't intuitive until you realize that you've flipped the inputs and outputs of the transmission, and this inverts the gearing relationship. _Higher_ gears are better at multiplying relatively little input (wheelspin) into a lot of output (engine rotation).
You learn the same lesson (2nd gear starts) with motorcycles, which have much smaller batteries and fragile charging systems so the need to push-start is unfortunately common.
Early date with the now-wife, we ride a little way out of town and watch the sunset.
Then I realise in my consideration for the lady to guide her off the bike, I hadn't actually turned the ignition key off and the headlight had drained the battery.
Now a 2006 GSXR1000 idles in first gear at about 20km/hr (~12-14mph?). And a 100m quick-waddle found 1st no good for bump starting due to compression lockup...
Thankfully we'd stopped on a ridgeline and only another 300m away was the descent which allowed me to get to 40kmhr for a second gear bump start.
If you can't push-start a car, it's because it has electronic fuel injection. If the battery is stone dead, there's no juice to run the FI and fuel pump, it will never start. It would work on stone cold carbureted cars because there'd be enough fuel left in the float bowls to bootstrap the whole operation.
Starter motors can die and you can push start a car with electronic fuel injestion in that case. Also a weak starter is often a warning symptom of a dying battery so push starting can help heading to the next shop / service station selling car batteries.
Some old cars had mechanically powered fuel pumps so if the engine is moving the pump is going. Mine just had a little shaft buried behind the mounting bracket.
Probably safer not to introduce electricity to gasoline…
Probably safer not to introduce electricity to gasoline…
Ooookay. I've never even heard third-hand stories of an electric fuel pump lighting the gasoline on fire, if that's what you're getting at, and I was a professional mechanic at one point.
No. The clutch must be in when you start to roll the car--the car won't budge otherwise. You get it rolling, turn the ignition to on, then let out the clutch.
I suppose that a 1980s Corolla was the last car I drift-started, though.
Growing up, a friends dad would use this as a ‘feature’ on his Datsun to move the car out of traffic when it wouldn’t restart.
Put it in first, release the clutch, crank the starter, and move the car out of the way.