Heheh. Reminds me of our old farm truck when I was growing up. It was a '52 Ford F350 with a straight six engine sitting in it with untold eons and miles of hard, hard use on it. It was a black art to get it started - the starter would whirr and barely change note over each 'compression'. My Dad loosened the distributor and put a rod holding it through the firewall - so you could pull it and (I think) retard the timing a lot - it would never start up otherwise. Another trick to keep it running was to pull the coil wire out in its gasket anf force it to jump about 1/4 inch to the wire - this resistance seemed to concentrate the spark a little. After a little cranking and some body english on the gas pedal (not too much, not too little) the engine would shuffle into life and run reasonably well. One time I checked the compression while cleaning the plugs and the lowest was 28 - the highest was 40.