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SHE’S ALIIIIIIVE.
Car fired right up after all my prep work.
Quick list of what I did prior to trying to start it:
New Plugs all around
New Plug Wires
Cleaned points and rotor in distributor
New Fuel Filter
Ran gas line into external gas tank – as I do not know the condition of the cars gas tank, didn’t want to risk it.
dumped some good old marvel mystery oil on all 8 cylinders to insure they weren’t froze and let it sit for 24hrs.
Turned the car completely over by hand, again to insure it wasn’t frozen.
Filled radiator
attached new carb with new gasket
ran new vacuum advance lines to distributor
Oil change and new filter
checked spark – the old fashion way w/ a screw driver jammed up in a plug wire
New ignition cylinder installed due to lost keys.
Dropped in new battery
She fired right up and idled with no issues. Hell she ran better than some cars i’ve had going down the road.
We then bled all the brakes until i ran out of brake fluid. Need to re bleed them, but noticed almost all of the brake lines have some what recently been replaced. Still need to pop all the drums off and check their condition.I pulled it up and down the driveway – but due to the external gas tank sitting on the fender I didn’t venture to far.
Next step is drop the tank and check the condition of it’s internals – flush and reinstall – then see if it can’t run like it should.Oh and the top went fully down and into the trunk, deck lid even screwed into place as it should – I really feel like this car WANTS to come back to life.
Now that I know it runs and isn’t a garage lawn ornament, i spent some time cleaning up some of the chrome.It’s amazing what a high speed orbital and some heavy cutting compound can do – then finished it up with a lot of chrome polish by hand. 55 years of build up came off in about an hour.
Gave the beast an oil change, replaced the plugs and plug wires this weekend. Also cleaned the distributor points and rotor and found out i only needed to add brake fluid to get some break power – albeit not much – but some. Got a new used 2 barrel bolted down and almost hooked up. Good news was the oil wasn’t full of metal shavings or water , it was old – but clean enough. Also the trans fluid is red and clear – found some paper work that shows the trans was pulled and rebuilt in 2004 – which means?? the engine must’ve been running in 2004, or why would you worry about the trans? so. all good signs. all good news. From what i can tell the 38K on the car might be original miles – the story i’m piecing together is that the guy who bought it new in 61 also had a total of 7 other cars at the time – which meant this never got driven. He sold it to a woman in 1975 and from what i can tell it was last legally registered in 1980. My guess is the transmission blew and they parked it – from what i’m told the trans were prone to go bad on these. Just a theory.
Btw. found two of these in the block – now that is one old ass plug.
