- Hey, this is Davin with Hagerty. (engine revving) Woo. And today we got something new for ya. (country music) Okay, so here's what we have. We have a 1958 Ford
Country Sedan station wagon in all its glory, well, as it was parked in the mid '70s. And today, Jeff and I are gonna see if we can get the motor to run. Why? Because we can. Well, maybe we can. - Mm, that's a possibility.
- Yeah. - Ford block 150. This is it. - Is that it?
- That's it. - Really? We got that lucky the first.. (Jeff laughs) The first third of these keys? Well, I can't beat that. - [Jeff] Yeah, that's it. - All right, what's our plan? - Well, the first thing
we're gonna have to do, is see if we can get
the engine to turn over. - Okay.
- 'Cause we'll be dead in the water if the
first step doesn't happen. - Makes sense. - Pull the plugs, get some juice down the cylinder walls. - Okay. - And we'll start from there. - All right, cool. I got a battery too. - [Jeff] Yeah. - [Davin] Battery. Put a battery in it. Here you go, man. Look at that. It had fresh a oil change, at some point. I bet you it ran when it parked. You think? - Absolutely. Or at least when it was new. - I think the majority of the
cars on this property did. Is it moving? - Nah. - Yeah.
- Oh, yeah. Give that a little kick, cool. All right, well, then we
can move forward, let's-- - Yeah, I'll start pulling plugs. - Yeah, I'll tell you what, a little air would've been a good idea. - Little bit, yeah, 'cause there's a little bit of crud sitting on top of the-- - Yeah.
- On the car which-- - We didn't think about that. We didn't bring a-- - That might not be hard for me to be able to take the top off and just flip it upside down and shake it out. - Oh, gotcha. - Might be a gasket for it
in the back of the truck. (both laughing) - [Davin] I'll pull a few
more of these leaves up. Just so we can see it. One's on your side, right? We gotta remember of the firing
order when we pull them off. - It's probably on the inside. - What I meant is more on the cap. - Oh yeah. - I think I got a marker with me. Oh, look at that. Because Ford messed up the order. They couldn't even order
spark plugs right, right. (Davin clears his throat) Right? Because isn't this five over here? The passenger side? (Davin murmurs) - [Jeff] Yeah, you're probably right. - All right, so let's do it this way. This is the one I can label easy. Call that seven. Seven, there. Got a point of reference that way. Ford, you silly Ford. - Hmm, that odd. - [Davin] What's that? - This one boot. It don't have a boot. Probably rotted right off. (Davin humming) Let me take this outta the way. - [Davin] Ooh. - Shit, that doesn't look very well, wow. It's pretty tight. - [Davin] Mm. Boom, boom, boom, boom. - You know what? I do have compressed air. A little black. - [Davin] A little dark? - A little bit. - [Davin] Oh, it means it was running. - Yeah. Wow. - I knew this is just a (murmurs). - Yeah. - There, I like that. (Davin grunts) (Davin grunts) - We need a longer pry bar. - [Jeff] I can probably
find one laying around. - Yeah, I got it. I really don't wanna take
my knuckles off today. You can see it's already been a bad week. Okay, got mine out. Only one, only one bad one. You got the spray over there? - Sorry.
- It's all right. All right, we have our
plugs out and like I said, we're gonna put a little
lubricant in there. This happens to be Deep Creep and it was something I just snagged off the shelf at Thirlby's. And we're gonna put it in each cylinder and it'll help basically
just lube things around and move it as we're trying to turn it over
with a starter eventually. And I got this fancy wiring. Check this out. Almost got the camera over there, that was perfect. Down the hole. Two, three, four, five. Is that how many you put on your side? - [Jeff] Yeah, about that. - [Davin] Two, three, four, five. See, you'd never get a can down there. - [Jeff] No, even with the nozzle that comes with it.
- No, no way. That's why these things
are so nice to have. Yeah, I say we hook the battery up. We got that little jump starter button. - Yep. - Instead of using a
screwdriver to cross terminals, we could do that too, but-- - We could. I like the trigger better. - Yeah, it's a little fancier. So yeah. Let me grab that trigger
and set that in there. - [Jeff] Like a glove. - This is how we launch the rockets, pew. Now, so all this is is we're gonna jump across
the big line on the battery and then feed power to the solenoid. And what that'll do is
it'll trigger the solenoid, pew, without using the key. And 'cause we're right
here underneath the hood, but it eliminates, you know, any issues from wiring
being chewed up by mice between the engine and the key. But doing that, we can bump this over and we'll spin the motor over, pew, assuming the starter works. That's kind of the next thing 'cause we know the motor's free.
- Absolutely. - We can see that. Now, is it free all the way
around is another story, right? - Yeah.
- 'Cause it could have a bad-- - It could have a stuck bell. It could have--
- Right. - Couple of things.
- Yeah. - All right, moment of truth? - Moment of truth. Let's see what we got.
- Here we go. (engine starts) - Oh, yeah. - I have compression on this side.
- I do, too. We got pistons in there. - Wow.
- Man, it turned over pretty well.
- It did. (engine starts) - Oh yeah. (Davin laughs) - Oh man, check that out. There's a small victory. - That is a small victory.
- Okay, cool. So evidently we've... Out of all these cars, we did manage to pick the
one that's gonna start. I should say it turns over.
- It turns over. - Let's not jinx ourselves.
- Yeah. - I mean, I liked it just
'cause it's a station wagon, but... Ah, sweet, okay.
- It is a cool car. - All right, next step. - Yeah, next step. See what we have for ignition, right? - Yeah. - Pull the cap. Clean the points. I guess we can just, we can ohm stuff out. - Yeah, I'll throw new plugs in it. - Okay. - Do you want to try it with the key? - Yeah, why not? There we go.
- Yeah. - We did find the key. - [Jeff] Okay. - [Davin] Okay, key's in the ignition. Next to all the spider webs. Hey, I got a dome light in here. - Do you really?
- No doubt. Okay, ready? - [Jeff] Yeah. - [Davin] Ooh, I got
lights that flip on but... Does this have any kind of neutral safety? It seems to be in gear. I'm not getting anything.
- Okay. - I mean, I'm getting stuff on the dash. - [Jeff] That's pretty crazy. - [Davin] Got headlights? - [Jeff] You got-- - Some?
- One. Nice. - All right well, that would've been easier. I guess all that really means is we don't have key to the starter. We don't know that we
don't have ignition, right. Hot to the ignition. So we can put the key back in it. But let's get the test light and we'll check for
power going to the coil. And if not, we'll just hot wire the coil. And the coil might not be any good either. - [Jeff] It might not. Do we have a coil? - We do have a coil. So we're gonna use a test light on this just to see if we have
power going to the coil. The point of a test light, it's truly a ground wire. Goes to the positive. It's got a light bulb in between. If you have power on that wire, then obviously the bulb should light up. Yeah, now ground, boy. Or would you like to use for a ground? Got enough cable there to
go right to the battery. That would be best. Let's use that. Okay. I shouldn't have anything here right now. That's grounded there, should be all here. Say what, you wanna throw the key in, Jeff? And turn the... Just turn it on to run. Yeah, we got power to the coil. - [Jeff] Excellent. - It's just not triggering-- - [Jeff] It's just not
catching the starter. - Yeah, which we can jump
with the remote button. - [Jeff] Yeah, as long
as you have ignition on. - Yeah, have the ignition on, we're good. Okay, that'll be helpful. All right. - [Jeff] Yeah, you're right, It's a little wonky. The switch but-- - Yeah, everything... Yeah, there's like a... 'cause like, you turn the turn signals on, they make and break. - Yeah.
- So obviously all the contact points
are gonna be iffy, right. But we'll use this for
our start of the key. - Yeah, that's great. - 'Cause it does the same thing. So we'll throw that back on-- - The debris down the carb kind
of concerns me a little bit. - Yeah. It's not like it's gonna
plug up any injectors. - Yeah. (Davin giggles) - We're not gonna get too worried about I don't think running any fuel right now at least through the carburetor. - Okay. - Well I think what we want to do is we got that squirt bottle of fuel. We'll just see if we can get it... Verify we have ignition, you know, spark to the plugs. - Mm hmm. - And then we'll just dump gasoline right down the carburetor. And then if we decide we
want to go further than that, then we'll pull the carburetor off and run fuel to it. Flush it a little bit and run fuel to it.
- Okay, yeah. - But right now I think if we can make it cough
hack and go pah, pah, pah. - Oh, that'll be amazing. - That'd be awesome, right?
- Yeah, totally. - I mean, we're talking how many years? - 50? - Unfortunately, yes, I know that. (both laugh) Yeah, I mean, anything sitting in this condition for that long to be able to fire, make some noise is really pretty impressive. We got free rotation so far. We have power to the ignition. Chances are this coil's no good. We'll ohm it out and
see if it has an open, at least that's a good place to start. So we've got 1.6 across the terminals. Okay, yeah. Just compare it to... So I add 1.6 on that one. Might not getting it too. This one's open. Wow, 1.3. It's pretty good. So I'm gonna say that one's fine. - Yeah, yeah.
- Yeah. That coil's still good. - Okay. That's cool. We are gonna pull the cap right away and clean up the points. That's a given. I mean, shoot, they'd corrode up sitting in the shop in a couple months, so I'm sure they're corroded here. And then we can check across them and make sure they're just getting spark and blah, blah, blah that way. And then of course we'll run plugs in it. And next thing we really wanna do is check for spark coming off a wire. You can do that one of two ways. I'll say, you can just take a spark plug, put it in the hole, you know, put it on the ground, hold onto it. Hope you don't get electrocuted. Or you can use one of these fancy deals, which is basically the same thing. You have... It's gonna jump the gap right here just like it does on a spark plug. But this clip's on and well, might have less curly
hair before you're done. We're gonna try this first 'cause we all know what happens when... Ooh, that one's not real tight. - [Speaker] It's sad, I think it was a car from here in that-- - Oh yeah, it was a pickup truck. Bit me. Ooh, that one snaps on nice. Now where would we like to find ground? I think I can get ground here. I guess I could check with ohm there. - Maybe I could do a car bolt. - Well, let's try that. Here we go.
- Sure. (engine starts) - Hey, we got spark. (Jeff laughs) Look at that. I mean like immediately. Boom, wow. - [Jeff] Okay, so let's throw
some plugs in this thing. (Jeff laughs) I'm gonna die laughing when
this thing starts running. - [Davin] Nice, shiny plugs. Heck yeah. Oh, this head design is interesting how--
- Yeah, it is. - [Davin] Two plugs angle
forward and two angle back. - [Jeff] Yep. Center too, face each other. It's kind of-- - [Davin] Yeah. It's a little different. Plugs are installed. Jeff's got his wires on. I gotta catch up. Get my wires put on. And then we're gonna throw
some fuel down the hole and see if it fires up. - That's right. - I can't see the date on the oil change. It's all washed out. It's... Well, eight. That's it. Sorry, so I diverted to the glove box just to see if we could find a registration date on it where there's a 62 plates in the back. The registration shows... What'd I say, '63?
- 1963, yeah. - Yeah, 1963. So who knows? Interesting if it's that. That would only be a five years old. Stop driving it. Keys on, dome lights on. - It's amazing that dome
light switch works still. - Shoot, the dome light
don't go off of my pickup. All right. Moment of truth here, boy. You ready? - I'm ready. - Hmm, okay. Okay, no stage fright now.
- Yeah. - Let's do it. Well, let's... The carb's free enough to open. I'm just gonna leave it open. It's a little sticky. Okay. Suck some of that beautifulness
down in the throat. Okay, you ready?
- Yep. (engine revs) - It tried.
- Yes, it did. - In fact it tried,
the starter kicked out. That's what that... Right? - Yeah.
- Okay, hit it. (engine revs) (Davin laughs) This thing's gonna run, man.
- That's amazing. (Davin laughs) All right, roll it a little bit. (engine revs) All right, flood it. (engine revving) That probably flooded it. I got too anxious. Okay, it's wide open. (engine revs) - It didn't have enough fuel.
- Didn't have enough. - Okay.
- We can fix that. Have at her (voice gets
drowned by engine noise). - Starter kicked out.
- Yep. (engine struggling to start) Come on, baby. (engine struggling to start) One more. (engine struggling to start) - Woo. - There it is. Always promise a fire. - Yeah.
- Sucker it back down. (engine struggling to start) All right. Got a piece of... - What is that inside there? - I don't know but looks hot.
- A gasket? (Davin laughs) - Yeah--
- It does look hot. - It's hot. - Yeah, that's a piece of gasket. - Okay. - Here, I'll just crack
this rod on, try it. (engine revs) Just one case. Stay running. (engine struggling to start) (engine struggling to start) It's weird but it's still firing. - Oh, it's firing.
- It wants to run. - Yeah, it does. - It's like, please let me do it. Let me do it. - Yeah. - Okay. - Damn sun's out again, Ben. - [Ben] Yeah-- - It's gonna be a sunny
day here real soon. Uh, huh. Can you believe though? (laughs) Oh man, that's nuts. I can't believe it. Can't believe it. I don't wanna be discouraged 'cause I won't sit here idle. I mean that's pretty-- - I think--
- Pretty greedy. - Honestly, I think we could
play with it a little bit and make that happen. - You think so? - I think so. At least have it, you know, at least get it to run for 10 seconds. - Yeah, I figured for sure
I could keep it right here. If anyone doesn't believe that this car hasn't been sitting here for a good part of 50 years, well, then I guess they don't see
the same reality that I see. But if you remember... So kind of roll back here a little bit. Let me stand outta the sun. - [Ben] No, you stand
in the sun, that's fine. - Okay, but I can't see you then. All right, so let's roll
back here just a little bit. Jeff and I didn't just roll over here, like out of the blue. We knew this car was sitting here because a couple years ago, I was over here with Tom and doing a barn fine hunt
over here on this property. In fact, if you remember, that 1950 Chevy pickup truck was sitting over here in, well, this T-Bird was not here, but it was dead smack behind this ranchero and sunk into the dirt. All right, you wanna do an another one? - [Jeff] Yeah. - Ready?
- Yeah. (engine struggles to start) All right. (engine struggling to start) (engine struggling to start) - About ready to just pour it? - Yeah. (engine struggles to start) - Woo. Woo. Woo. Woo. - That was a good one.
- There it was. I knew we'd get one. (Davin laughs) (engine struggles to start) - It's weird. It's like as soon as I let off the starter is when she dies. - Mm. (engine struggling to start) (engine struggling to start) You want more fuel? (engine struggling to start) That's what it is. It needs a lot of fuel. - Yeah. (engine revving) - She's running. (both laughing) Huh? Check that out. Victory. - [Jeff] That's amazing. - That's victory right there. That's what it is. It needs a lot of fuel. - Yeah, it does.
- To keep it rolling. I've said it 17 times already, but this car's been sitting
here for at least 50 years or at least has not been
running in 50 years. Jeff and I got it running before noon, by the way. We got here what? About 9:30 ish?
- Yeah. - Not bad For two hours worth of work. It's 11:30. It runs, I'm gonna say. Right? Fire's up. Runs off the bottle. Since it is so early in the day, we're gonna get a little greedy and we're gonna pull the carburetor off and see if we can freshen
that up real quick and make it idle. - I'm all for that. - Wouldn't that be sweet if it were idle? So let's see if we can do that. We can put a little effort to it. It's not a big deal, right?
- Nah. - What's the chance the
gasket for the carburetors in with all the rest of
these gaskets in the, well-- - [Jeff] I think chances are pretty good. - Yeah, if not, Thirbyl's will have one. - Yes, they will. (Davin chuckles) - Cool. Nice, now we might take this back. Should we take it back to the shop or do it right here? - The carb? - Yeah, we can probably do it right here. - I can do it right here. - Let's do it here. - The only thing we're missing
right here is compressed air. - [Davin] Nice and slow. The big reveal. Is that a metal gasket? - [Jeff] Ah, sure. - [Davin] Because we could just glue it. Oh, there's a isolator. Because we could put
just a little RTV on it if it's not broke. Right? - [Jeff] That's not metal. That's what? - [Davin] Yeah, that's a rubber. Almost actually rubber-rubber. - [Jeff] Yeah. - [Davin] Huh. Maybe we'll do that. Maybe we'll just put a little RTV on it just to put it down. There's one at the... That's a phenolic fiber deal here, separator. That's on there pretty good. I know we've made this
far with nothing in it, but I just can't do it with... I can't walk away without
at least plugging these with all the leaves hanging out. So there we go. - [Jeff] Pretty clean inside. Float looks okay. Bad gasket on the top, but-- - Brass float?
- Yeah. I mean, there's a little bit
of sediment in the bowl but-- - Yeah. Is that a needle? The needle will just-- - Yeah, I'll pull the... I'll pull the-- - Spray it right out.
- Okay. - Spray all the, you know, passages. See if we can get all the passages clear and then, shoot, we'll just put it on the way it is. Because again, we don't need
a gasket to seal off the top. It leaks a little.
- Yeah. It won't hurt anything--
- No, I agree. I agree. That's a good plan. I don't think that that
accelerator pumps bad. - Sure feels like it's still good. - Yeah. Spray away I guess.
- All right. - Yeah, that's going
to the main jet there. - Main there.
- Okay. How about the inlet? Spray through the inlet when you... Yeah, watch it. That one's coming at you. Yeah, that one's fine. The small feeds. (country music) - Okay, all looked up on my side. - Okay. Did you lube it? I mean, we got this fancy lube, man. - Yeah, we do. - We can't even choke it, no. - Oh, yeah. Probably wanna hook that back up. - No, I'm gonna put the spring on it. - All right. - Jeff took the carburetor part, kind of cleaned some things up and resealed it with some grease. - Resealed it. - Could be all right.
- Best we could. - And I do have a electric fuel pump here that we brought just in case. We're gonna drag it out of our gas can and hopefully we can get
it to idle for maybe, eh, let's say 10 seconds. I mean, that's a reasonable glow I think. - Yeah. - Hopefully we don't get much of spray. Okay, there we got fuel going and if I read the label right, I'm going the right direction. I hear it. - I don't see anything yet, (murmurs). - Yeah. Yeah, you're completely dry. - [Davin] Okay, so now
wiggle things around. Oh. (laughs) - That work?
- Yeah, okay. - [Davin] Oh wow, okay. Here we go. Want me to shut it off?
- No. - [Davin] Good? - [Jeff] Yeah, 'cause it should. - [Davin] See if it shuts off or floats, actually floats. That's floating. Look at that. What YouTube channel do you see that in action, man?
- I don't know. - [Davin] You actually see
how a carburetor fluid works. Let's see if it shuts off though 'cause it might not. Well, it's gonna pour out the side 'cause I don't have the fill in. Cool, well, let's set this back down. I don't know how that's gonna be. - Yeah, it kind of slides in right there. - Right there. That's it?
- Yep. - All good? - [Jeff] I think we're good. - Okay. Ready, Freddy? - [Ben] I'm ready. - That's two. That enough? - I think that's good.
- Okay, (engine revving) (engine struggling to start) Oh, so close. (engine running) There it is. (Jeff laughs) (engine running) Ready for this? (engine revving) - [Jeff] Look at that. (Davin and Jeff laugh) Wow. - [Davin] Woo. - Unbelievable.
- Look at that baby go. We got exhaust out the pipe. (engine running) It's not even burning any oil. Amazing. Look at that. (engine running) (Davin laughs) - Hey Davin, what's... Is that oil leaking I'm seeing here? (engine running) - Purring like a kitty. - [Jeff] Is that oil leaking right there? - [Davin] Yeah. (engine running) - [Jeff] Look at that. (engine running) You want me to kill it? (engine running) - Yeah, I think so. - Oh, our alternator's no good. Look at that, hey. - Unbelievable. (Davin laughs) Unbelievable. (Davin laughs) - Yeah, it's got a little
oil leak across the front. There's probably a... Either a... I don't know if there's
a line right there, but gasket, whatever. I mean, for God's sakes. We'll give it a break. (Jeff and Davin laugh) Oh wow.
- Oh, nuts. - Huh? You're right. You said, hey, we'll get this. We'll get it purr. Little cleanup of the--
- Little cleanup. - Let let the carburetor do what the carburetor is for, right? - Yeah. - That worked awesome. - I didn't hear any knocks. I didn't hear anything. - None. - I didn't see anything
coming off the tailpipe. - No, yeah. As far as like smoke, you know, like oil smoke or nothing--
- Nothing. - It definitely got oil pressure. - Yeah. - Because pushing right there. That is cool. Man. Wow. What a deal. What a deal. - I never would've thought
that a car sits this long-- - But you know what that means? We got a couple more to try. - [Jeff] Yeah. (Davin laughs) - Well, we set out to start this engine and just have it... I mean, quite honestly, a backfire through the carburetor, I was happy.
- Yeah totally. - We did get that, by the way so.
- Yeah. - Woo. So we accomplished that challenge. But to sit and have it idle and purr, it was amazing.
- Yeah. - I mean, without a doubt. So this is... I was gonna say our first round of this. - Yeah.
- And stay tuned because there's
gonna be a lot more because, well, it's fun. I don't know. I had a great time.
- I know. Say it's a pretty memorable day for me. - Amen. So, hey, if you know the drill, you know it's next. That's get out in the shop, go get your work done. And you know what? The next time you're driving around and you see a car sitting out
in somebody's yard, shoot, ask them if they'll let you start it. You never know. That was neat.
- I can't believe it. (engine running) (Davin and Jeff laugh) Unbelievable.
- Hey, let's head to town, Jeff. (loud bass thumps)
