Rotate ICE by hand - no tools, hypothetically

It occurs to me that I could have been less snarky in #18, and said something more like this:

Most of the time, when I've seen posts insisting on something "because laws of physics" that turn out not to hold up, it certainly isn't because the laws of physics were wrong, and usually isn't even because the poster misapplied the laws of physics.

It most often ends up being somewhere in the simplifying assumptions and approximations somebody made about the question—and regarded as so obvious as not to need any empirical testing—before applying the laws of physics to them.

 

No worries. I was just saying that the engine can't "fire up and break the slacking chain" because first it has to rotate enough to compress an ignitable mixture in at least 1 cylinder, etc, etc. With all that said, I still turned mine clockwise last (the tensioner is always on the "slack side").
(The potential concern would be jumping timing. Of course not going to happen if the ratcheting mechanism in the tensioner is working, and with a chain probably not even if it isn't, but with a belt it could be an issue).