What's the point of placing the kicker on the left side?

Fair comment

after a left knee ACL reconstruction theres nothing worse I could think of than trying to kickstart a lefty bigbore 2T or 450/500 4T. makes me cringe just thinking about it. im totally against e-start on 2Ts(4Ts too really) but id have to go the e-start route if she was a lefty. spose like anything youd get used to it though

Shawbagga - re metric vs SAE for carpenters and builders...yep, mm and meters would likely be simpler if the whole materials and trade wasn't built on inches and feet for centuries in the U.S. Lumber even named for inches and "board feet". Sheets of everything from plywood to sheetrock only in 4' widths. Heck even US truck beds are dimensioned at 4x8 feet for sheet material. Framing laid out on 16" "centers" to accommodate, goes on and on. Likely seems complex in a milli-centi-deci world, but comes pretty natural when you live it.

And since 1/8 inch is pretty much as close as anything's ever measured in construction, except for maybe millwork, there are only 4 "eighths", 2 "quarters", and 1 "half" to need to think about, other than inches and feet (yards, fathoms, etc never used...oh, except for floor coverings and dirt...never mind). So you see, for lengths we really only have 7 increments plus inches and feet...So much easier than all those hundreds of messy millimeters, centimeters and meters!

As you say a millimeter is about 1/25 of an inch. Or its 1/25.40 of an inch, I believe .. I say a millimeter is about .040 thousanths, actually its .03937 so how is it easier? I have to work with both anyway but some think to the thousands of an inch all day long.. Like my race car engine builder does. I won't let him touch my metric stuff. He would kick me out and he won't work on it anyways.

It's like figuring out Newton meters and Kg or PSI on spring rates. Its all on a chart somewhere and if you can't find the conversion chart to know what your working with its all over for you anyways.

I used to have an engineers tape measure that reads inches on one edge and tenths of a foot on the other edge. It was white with black lettering. 36 inches was 3 ft. but the other edge read 3ft. in 30 tenths for example.

I still have a reel up type tape measure that is a "Lufkin" "Pie tape" that is for Boilermakers pressure vessel work and it reads diameter in inches when its wrapped around a rolled cylinders circumference like when its laying on its side and its wider than it is tall because of its own weight collapsing it somewhat. It reads 3.1416 inches as an inch so you can immediately determine diameter without doing the math. Its cool and confusing at the same time. I like to hand it to people just to mess with them. Try to buy one of those nowadays. Its about 45 years old.

i live and work both all the time what sucks is when mixed together in one machine

i got a thing like that it was my granpa's its a sheet metal workers rule he used it in the bomb plant @ oak ridge TN in WW2 he built part of the [BOMB]didnt know it for 50 years till he got a thank you letter from the goverment telling him what he did

Here in Deutschland (the home of metric), inches are still to be found almost everywhere. Plumbing and metal pipes are all in inches and the usual wrenches and spanners are metric AND inch.

left kickers, cus the shafts were made out of expencive heavy steel so to save cost and weight, tends to be the main reason in any design of production COST.

inches and millometers man you guys fight hammer an tong! good read.
i use inches, 1/8th which is roughtly 3 mm but i dont care as unless your using machines and dam sharp drills then more than likley your going to be out slightly, whats the tolerance on a tape measure as those rivited ends are always loose?

most husky riders are well hung and dress to the right...right kicker catches on the old fella.
this is just my personal experience and may not apply to everyone.

the loose rivets on the tape measures are so it measures the same if your pushing or pulling on the tang so the thickness of the tang doesn't come into play.

yeh I still say im 6'4" not 192cm & a lot of feet/inches still over here(timber=4x2 or 3x1.5, box trailers 6'x4' or 7'x5' a lot of the time etc). just the fact that you have to say 4 feet, 8 & 3/4 inches seems a mouthful to me. 1 'mil' or 0.03937 thousandthsthsths(lisp) easier?! what ya used to I guess! as you were you crazy SAE talking Yanks(whats SAE stand for?)

....Society of Automotive Engineers!

u sure i though the french did that

... but then came Wellington and Waterloo (so some stuff was left out)

Funny you should say that about your Grandpa. I got my Pie tape from my grandfather as well and he worked all over the world building some of the first nuclear power plants, The King Khalid airport project New Ryihad Saudi Arabia, Korea #5&6 nuclear plants. The first ever Space Simulator in Houston for Nasa, Desalinization plants, Copper concentrators at Bouganville etc. He was brilliant man but couldn't make Jello without burning himself yet he could explain the Critical Mass over a steak dinner and he died a paranoid schitzophrenic always looking over his shoulder because of his atomic bomb work..He mostly worked for Bechtel for years and when I went into the Boilermakers union in the late 70s he gave it to me.

He also worked in Oakridge Tennesee on the Atomic Bomb. I'm looking at his certificate as you have described your Grandpa has right here in front of me it hangs right here in my house.

Its from the United States of America-War Department Army Service Forces- Corps of Engineers, Manhatten district. It is to certify that he had participated in work essential to the production of the atomic Bomb, thereby contributing to the successful conclusion of World War II. this certificate is awarded in appreciation of effective service. Dated 6 August 1945 Signed by the Secretary of War, I believe the signature was of Henry L. Stienman but can hardly tell his handwriting. Washington D.C. It has a large symbol in the background that says Manhatten Project A-bomb its one of my prized possessions.

Oh yaa, and for drill bits we have letter drills, number drills and fractional drills. They all convert to outside diameters in thousands of an inch so you always have the right drill size, for example when drilling for aircraft rivits like a number 30 drill measures .128 so it doesn't scrub the anodizing off your 1/8 dia. rivits which are .125 dia. These type drills are great for drilling the proper size hole and tapping threads also.

Unless your still doing Whitworth threads over there across the pond. I just love my old 67 GT-6 Triumph. It drives me nuts.

WOUNDER IF THEY KNEW EACH OTHER? I DONT HAVE NOTHING BUT THAT RULER DO YOU HAVE ANY RECORDS OR PIXS HIS NAME WAS CHARLES HARTMAN LIPPOLD AND I KNOW HE WAS THERE AT THE END CAUSE MY MOTHER WAS BORN THERE 8/22/45

His name was "Vicente "Vic" Antonio Pardo". He attended Cornell University and then worked on the Atomic Bomb project. He returned to Cuba his birthplace with my Grandmother and my deceased Stepmom and our Govts. CIA extracted him out of the Country of Cuba 24 hours prior to the Castro Regime Govt. takeover and returned him to the U.S. because of his nuclear knowledge. He's been gone now for about 18 years.