Yum - Not So Useless Chick on a NICE bike

There is a bit of an art with starting Harleys - from memory.

They are a more or less vertical twin - with one cyclinder rolled 45* Degrees forward.

The crankshaft spins the same way that the back wheel turns.

The 4 stroke motor - fires once every 2 revolutions, per cylinder - mindful of the additional 45 degrees the front cylinder fires 1 revolution + 45 * degrees after the rear cylinder.

It's a warm day, I can tell by the way she is dressed, and she looks like she set the choke to ~1/4 for starting, because she switches it out of the running circuit after starting.

The idea is that the kick starter mechanisim has a ratchetting clutch - you can roll the engine over until the rear cylinder is coming up from the bottom of the compression stroke which leads to the Ignition point just before top dead center.

So what she is doing is getting the kick starter, rolling the engine over to perhaps prime it - with a little fresh air and fuel... and then setting the rear cylinder to the start of the compression stroke, then she lets the kick starter declutch and rise to the highest point of it's stroke,

And then she gets her left knee up on the seat of the bike, and swings her full weight, through the arc of the kick starting lever, AND with the laws of leverage and the reduction gearing, that full say 180* Degrees of swing on the kick starter, that turns out with considerable leverage, to throw sufficient speed and power into the inertia of the flywheels, to enble the rear piston to rise the last 2/3rds of a stroke, fire near top dead center, and that ignition point, puts enough energy into the flywheels and clutch hub, to haul the engine over to the front cylinder firing stroke, so essentially the engine is now started.

While the video has no preceeding information, with all of this in it, that final - kick to start it - is a well timed, thought out and planned event.

If everything is working well, such as carburettion, choke, ignition and ignition timing - and if more or less done exactly so - kick starter Harleys are comparatively EASY to start.

With her being small and light, she has to use her full weight and the full swing of the kick starter, to get the bike to start.

So she has to climb up the side of the bike on the pegs, to grip the handlebar and throttle and then - resting one knee on the seat and then the other on the kick starter, she has to throw all her weight down on the kick starter from the very top.....

Quite impressive actually.

More so when you consider how fucking useless ALL the women on "Survivor Island" by Bear Grylls were.