Starting a car with a Ki-gas pump (Kigass)
Most of us are familiar with the "choke" starting aid, which uses a pull lever to reduce the air supply in the carburetor and thus supercharge the mixture. This makes it easier to start the engine.
An even more extreme version of the starting aid is the Ki-gas pump. This device can be found on pre-war vehicles in engines with compressors.
The path from the carburetor to the combustion chamber is so long due to the compressor in between that it is almost impossible to start the cold engine normally.
With the Ki-gas pump (in the picture above, the lever is pulled out before the pumping process), gasoline, which sometimes even comes from a separate tank, can be sprayed by hand directly into the intake tract via separate lines and nozzles (shown in the picture below), bypassing the compressor and the carburetor.
This makes cold starting easier. Ki-gas pumps can also be found on tractors and airplanes, as well as on old racing cars.
Hand pumping looks pretty archaic in the age of microprocessor-controlled direct injection, but it works.
