Typically this works (with both new and old cars) if there is still some juice left in the battery, but not enough to allow cranking. Since the spark for the ICE depends not only on the engine turning but also electric power and the alternator will not deliver power if its control circuit does not get at least a little power to activate the electro magnet that causes it to generate power in the first place. So, if the kid's battery was not connected or really dead, then you cannot push-start the car - except when it has an old style (mechanical pump and injection) diesel engine. I have driven a Diesel home which had a bad alternator, so slowly the lights were fading and eventually the last mile I had to navigate in the dark, but the Diesel engine kept going. It is exceedingly hard to push-start a cold Diesel engine however, due to the need to pre-heat. I am suspecting that the kid you found had left lights (hazards?) on and the car's battery was too dead to power up the alternator (and all the other electronics). For example in the Classic (2001-2003) Prius a weak battery still needs to run the pump for the brake booster and it often needs to finish before the voltage comes back up and the car will allow you to start, so if the battery is too dead you cannot get it going. Sometimes it helps to turn everything off, wait several minutes and then try starting twice, first to fill the brake booster and as soon as that pump stops, to try starting the car (booting the computers). Regards,
Cor van de Water Chief Scientist Proxim Wireless office +1 408 383 7626 Skype: cor_van_de_water XoIP +31 87 784 1130 private: cvandewater.info http://www.proxim.com This email message (including any attachments) contains confidential and proprietary information of Proxim Wireless Corporation. If you received this message in error, please delete it and notify the sender. Any unauthorized use, disclosure, distribution, or copying of any part of this message is prohibited. -----Original Message----- From: EV [mailto:ev-boun...@lists.evdl.org] On Behalf Of Robert Bruninga via EV Sent: Thursday, August 18, 2016 7:28 AM To: Electric Vehicle Discussion List Subject: [EVDL] Pop-starting a stick shift? This is the only car group I know. So pardon the off-topic post. A young kid with a minicooper flagged me down to jump start his car. I told him, I'd be happy to if he could figure out how to use my 400V pack.... Then I asked, well, have you tried just rolling it and popping the clutch to get it started. He looked at me with blank stare. I smugly said, sure, it's a stick shift, so we just get it rolling and pop the clutch and it will start. It wouldn't. Then I began to realize, that all the cars I have done this with in the past DID NOT HAVE ANY CPU's in them. IE, all you have to do is get a spark, not power up and entire network of computers before the motor will even begin to consider the "starting process". So is this true? That we can no longer pop-start a modern car with a dead battery? My son (too cheap to buy a new battery) still does it frequently with his pre-cpu Geo-Tracker, in fact we just did it last week. I'm just too old for all these newfangled hurdles... Bob -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://lists.evdl.org/private.cgi/ev-evdl.org/attachments/20160818/8d07 6b7c/attachment.htm> _______________________________________________ UNSUBSCRIBE: http://www.evdl.org/help/index.html#usub http://lists.evdl.org/listinfo.cgi/ev-evdl.org Read EVAngel's EV News at http://evdl.org/evln/ Please discuss EV drag racing at NEDRA (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NEDRA) _______________________________________________ UNSUBSCRIBE: http://www.evdl.org/help/index.html#usub http://lists.evdl.org/listinfo.cgi/ev-evdl.org Read EVAngel's EV News at http://evdl.org/evln/ Please discuss EV drag racing at NEDRA (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NEDRA)
