Detroit Diesels have the well-deserved nickname of "screaming Jimmy". Probably, the 71 series was the most popular high speed diesel engine in the USA, if not the world, for many years.
We have a mess of Detroit powered maintenance of way equipment on our railroad, all of it being the 53 series engines. These seem to be fairly bulletproof.
I like the starter switch arrangement on the welder in this thread. As foolproof and simple as it gets. I think some old cars, trucks, and heavy equipment used a direct push to work the starter contactor. I recently had some intermittent starting issues with my Harley. I did the obvious, changed the starter relay, and the problem remained. I went online and discovered a lot of Harley owners have the same problem. So much so that there are aftermarket end covers with "plungers" for the starter solenoids. These end covers have a plunger to enable the solenoid core and contact disc to be manually pushed in to make up and fire the starter motor. I replaced the solenoid core and contact disc, cleaned up the contacts, and installed a new core spring and one of the aftermarket solenoid covers. Now, I have the same starting arrangement on my Hog as a backup, as is on the welder's Jimmy.
Years ago, I was on a job where some dredging was being done. In one barge, there was a steel deck house. In the deck house, there was a 71 series Detroit diesel driving a generator. It was an ex WWII US military genset. What made it unique- at least to me- was it had a hydraulic starter motor. There were some hydraulic accumulators and a hand pump. One of the dredger crew pumped up the hand hydraulic pump to charge the accumulators. He then spritzed some ether into the air cleaner and hit the starter valve. The Detroit diesel spun right up and popped off. I thought that was about the slickest starting system I'd seen. No batteries, no external source of compressed air or other energy other than a guy's arm to pump up the accumulators. Between the bulletproof and forgiving nature of a Detroit Diesel- they seem to run despite minimal maintenance or no maintenance- and the hydraulic starter, it seemed like the ideal diesel to have if you were needing something basic and dependable.
I like the old welder as it has plenty of copper and nothing electronic. It looks like it could burn some heavy electrode or pull an air-arc gouge all day long- assuming the leads were long enough to get away from the smoke and noise of the Detroit. If those ex-US gov't gensets with the 1-71's were anywhere near here and in reasonably serviceable (or able to be put right without a major outlay), I'd grab one. Probably have to mount it on a heck of a concrete inertia block to keep it from hopping off and taking the slack out of the fuel line and wiring to the generator breaker. Probably need a muffler the size of a semi's to quiet the thing down so we could use it for backup power at our house. But a one-lung Detroit does sound interesting and dependable.