[Vwdiesel] Starting a cccccold Rabbit

[mikitka]

 One thing I remember is that when we had our 79 rabbit diesel back in the
cold mountain winters of Pa. I remember one morning when it was -2F out at
my friends house. I got up early that morning to get back on the road to the
base and the rabbit would turn over and seemed to fast enough but would not
start. Since I was on a nice high hill that the driveway went down I just
put it in 2nd gear and started down the hill. I really didn't let it get up
to much of a speed before I let the clutch out and it fired right up. No
problems at all. Since I learned that when ever I had a hard cold start
problem I would just push start it, worked every time. Now this was back
17yrs, when I was just 23 years old, a powerlifter and was doing well in the
gym. I could push start the car by pushing it down the parking lot of the
dorms where I lived and jumping in and popping the clutch in 2nd gear. Is it
because of the faster turning over of the engine by push starting that made
it start where the regular starting with the starter would not work? As I
recall it only had about 100k miles on it at the time so it wasn't like it
was worn out and we bought it new and did regular 3k oil changes with the
dealer running diesel rated oil. Just found it interesting that it would
push start with no problems.
Nick