Hey Gang,
Renember me? Many of you might not as I have been kind of sporadic in my participation. Finally got enough of life's gotchas and my own procrastination out of the way enough to get the old beast fired up. I very carefully setting my 17 year-old's expectations that it was going to be a while before we drove it and we were just going to see if we could get the motor to start. We rigged a small plastic gas can as our temporary tank. Had our fire extinguisher at the ready. Cranked the engine without plugs to get some oil moving. It finally rumbled to life and we drug everybody in the house outside to see it.
My son, Alec, asked - should I turn it off now? I though for a moment and said, "No! Let's find something to keep the gas can from moving around while we drive around the block!"
We got it to the library parking lot near my house so my son could work on learning how to drive a manual transmission. It died.... Short version is that the distributor was not fully engaged. Took a while to figure that out, but eventually we got it going again and drove it straight home. Well almost straight. Alec let me make a video -- see link below -- and I had to give one of my neighbor's a trip around the block.
Now 'Al' is back into the garage while we go through the rather large checklist I made including but not limited to re-torquing the head, finish cleaning and sealing the gas tanks, going back through the brakes, fixing the electrical creativity of one or more of the POs, addressing the clutch hydraulics, etc.
I'll probably post about the distributor issue. It's no doubt something many have seen, but the lockdown clamp had been so overtightened that it actually lifted the distributor to where it was barely engaging. All it took was a big lurch from a missed shift to make it where the rotor stood idle while the motor turned away. Much thanks to Steve Silverstein for some clues he sent my way for the permanent fix.
I guess all in all it was a success because 'Al' made home under his own power and we didn't have to resort to using my last year's Christmas present of a tow strap.
Happy Motoring and will try to keep plugged into the community a little better.
Bill
P.S. This was Alec's second attempt at driving a manual. I though he did pretty well.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5x_8r6TJqDQ
Renember me? Many of you might not as I have been kind of sporadic in my participation. Finally got enough of life's gotchas and my own procrastination out of the way enough to get the old beast fired up. I very carefully setting my 17 year-old's expectations that it was going to be a while before we drove it and we were just going to see if we could get the motor to start. We rigged a small plastic gas can as our temporary tank. Had our fire extinguisher at the ready. Cranked the engine without plugs to get some oil moving. It finally rumbled to life and we drug everybody in the house outside to see it.
My son, Alec, asked - should I turn it off now? I though for a moment and said, "No! Let's find something to keep the gas can from moving around while we drive around the block!"
We got it to the library parking lot near my house so my son could work on learning how to drive a manual transmission. It died.... Short version is that the distributor was not fully engaged. Took a while to figure that out, but eventually we got it going again and drove it straight home. Well almost straight. Alec let me make a video -- see link below -- and I had to give one of my neighbor's a trip around the block.
Now 'Al' is back into the garage while we go through the rather large checklist I made including but not limited to re-torquing the head, finish cleaning and sealing the gas tanks, going back through the brakes, fixing the electrical creativity of one or more of the POs, addressing the clutch hydraulics, etc.
I'll probably post about the distributor issue. It's no doubt something many have seen, but the lockdown clamp had been so overtightened that it actually lifted the distributor to where it was barely engaging. All it took was a big lurch from a missed shift to make it where the rotor stood idle while the motor turned away. Much thanks to Steve Silverstein for some clues he sent my way for the permanent fix.
I guess all in all it was a success because 'Al' made home under his own power and we didn't have to resort to using my last year's Christmas present of a tow strap.
Happy Motoring and will try to keep plugged into the community a little better.
Bill
P.S. This was Alec's second attempt at driving a manual. I though he did pretty well.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5x_8r6TJqDQ