What's that widget on the rear hull of a Tiger in between the exhaust shrouds? It's mounted close to the top and is an oblong thing with four rounded corners. I've never known what that is.

Ola IDhunter

I believe that part was for when the tank didn`t start from itself you could stick a rod in that hole and do an alternative start that worked with an external motor

Not an expert at this but I believe I have seen pictures of this. Can`t find the picture though but I believe that was it

Rob is correct, the thing I think you are referring to was for crank starting the engine. It led directly to the front hub of the crank shaft. Tamiya has a cool video of them crank starting a Tiger II like this on it's website where they sell the 1/16th scale RC armor.

Rob

Cool! Thanks guys!

Bein a mechanic, Id like to know just exactly the compression ratio of that beast... And what it would take to hand crank it... *L* Sounds a bit much like work to me...

I'ld say it was probably at least a two man, full body type crank unlike the old one handed cranker on the ford model T

Id hate to see what kind of damage the kickback on that crank would do to a guy!

Relax,gents.It was an inertial starter.Crank a flywheel for a few revs to get up speed,then they pushed a rod or some such to engage it onto the crankshaft.You can see this in the aforementioned videos on the Tamiya site.

Holy smokes...I watched that video. It pretty sweet! It is a two man operation and although it looks pretty safe one of those guys gets out of the way pretty damn quick.
Now that's a back-up system to an electric start? I can't imagine what the size of that starter is. :-)