Re: Elgin recoil

[frankr]

Yeah, Elgin’s first attempt at a recoil starter. You would have to admit it certainly was simple. As I was thinking about recoil starters in general this morning, most of them were engineering nightmares. By that, I mean complicated and expensive to manufacture. The green top Mercs with the magnetic pawls were pretty simple, but not inexpensive to make. And you couldn’t rope start it in emergency. The West Bend/Elgin 2hp with the three balls were simple and inexpensive. They even worked sometimes. Probably the prize for success goes to OMC with the oval pulley and plastic pawl. Still being used today.