Today I was changine the oil on the bus, and sez what the hey, I'll put the
hand crank stuff on, its only been laying around for 9 months or so...

So, I installed the nut and tin, put everything back together, and gave it a
whirl.  It worked!  

This engine is a 1600 single port, with 25,000 miles on it.

The only "kick back" I got was some resistance when I prolly got close to
tdc on compression.

It only takes one turn of the crank to start the motor, heres's how I do it:

turn key on and set the brake. make sure its out of gear!

prop open the engine lid

kneeling facing the passenger side, insert the crank thru the slot and
engage the nut.  

using both hands on top of the crank, thumbs outside, start cranking.  The
trick is to sense the compression and give a little extra oomph right at
that point.

If you get her to start, the crank will automatically stop moving, and you
can very carefully extract it.  If not, try again.

It really helps to have a well-tuned engine!

Thom Fitzpatrick
thom@calweb.com - http://www.calweb.com/~thom
Visit _The_ VW Bus Page: http://www.calweb.com/~thom/vw.html