>WHAT? No ether in an aerosol can?
We used to call it canned ringburn for a reason -P
>had no idea how hard older engines were to cold start until recently when I started driving the '65 Ford daily
In some respects it is amazing they started at all. The starters were slower, less vacuum, low excess horse power at slow speed , less air to atomize the fuel, weaker spark,(There is a reason magneto's were used on old cars long after ignition spark worked well).
And then there is just the cold air...fuel just doesn't like to evaporate in cold air...
Diesels and kero engines were even worse off, diesel is all about temperature, below a certain starting temperature, it just isn't physically possible to compress the air/fuel enough to get it to the explosion temperature. The gas start/kero run tractors at least had something that would ignite...
Lots of folks back in the day just put their cars in the garage every winter and took the train to work, then took the car in the summer....just the way it was..
Even after cars were reasonably well behaved in cold weather, I remember my grandfather having fits because his Ford tractor refused to start and he wanted to plow the snow off the driveway....
We are very spoiled ;P