Why have kick starters gone extinct?

[flynrider]

Gentlemen,

Kick starting a big motorcycle engine is a lost art now. My old Honda XL600 single was a b**ch to start when it was hot after a crash. Especially in deep sand or on the side of a steep hill. Sometimes I thought I'd have a heart attack before that thing lit up. I don't miss that. In 1983 I had a new Pitts Special S-1T aerobatic aircraft built with a 360 C.I. fuel injected Lycoming engine. To save weight I had it built without a starter, battery, or alternator. It had two magnetos and needed to be hand propped to start it. It was common back then and most akro pilots were comfortable propping their friends planes but today it seems suicidal. Last football season I found myself with a dead battery in Texas and I had my girlfriend stand on the brakes while I hand propped the massive 540 C.I. Lycoming in my Glasair III to life. The line personnel thought I was insane.

Electric starters are a wonderful thing when they work which is most of the time.

Chip

I got the same reaction last year when the starter bendix on my O-360 gave out while on vacation. I hand propped for a week while traveling around and got looks like I was nuts. My first plane was a '59 172 with the anemic 20 amp generator and tiny battery. I hand propped that almost as much as I used the electric start.

It's always nice to have a backup plan!

My Ural has a kick-start, use it some for the fun of it. Charging system on that Russian marvel of 18th century engineering quite robust. Weight considerations laughable too.
On these retro styled bikes the kick start does add a touch of panache.
There is a documented trick to starting a totally dead EFI system using a common 9 volt battery to power up the system, some simple jumpers and bump starting the dead bike.
Worth learning. Search Utube.

This is usually only necessary if the battery is completely dead. The ECU/EFI computers require very little juice, so this works well if you get the wiring right. Of course, if the alternator is a type that requires juice to excite the primary field it's not going to make electricity, so you better make it home before the 9v battery dies.