Barn-find woodie wagon: Can we get the engine to run after 55 years? What obscure parts did it need?

welcome back to tempting fate tours John normally does the voiceovers and I think we can all agree that's probably for the best but we're talking about the mechanical work and I tend to be the one that turns the wrenches here so here we are the first time I got to see it was in the garage and our first job was to put air on the tires miraculously three of the four tires actually held air that was enough that was enough I was very surprised um that got us going and I thought to myself let's see this engine is free because we were not able to confirm that the engine was not seized I couldn't use the hand crank because the front plate blocked the hole I uh fell back to one of my favorite tricks is uh put the car in fourth gear and pulled it Forward just by hand unfortunately I was not getting good results the the engine was not turning that made me quite nervous but hey we were already in this far so too late to stop now we got the car loaded up John and I started evaluating next steps we needed a new battery we needed fuel filter fuel line clamps coolant oil unfortunately the 883cc engine has a unique oil filter uh not something you can pick up except for at Specialists but we got a drain pan and some Marvel Mystery Oil because that's what Everyone Falls back on next day so one of the traditions of attempting to fade tours is that we go to breakfast at dieters we removed the wheels and tires and loaded them into the Volkswagen we had sourced a set of Rines and John went out to get those mounted and to secure a set of spark plugs and while John was gone I broke out the wrenches and got started on the rest is the engine free first thing was to remove that front license plate get the hand crank on there and see if we couldn't get it to turn I had visions of this project coming to a screeching halt immediately but it seemed to move a little bit and there were what I thought were sticky and squeaky kind of belt sounds so I loosened up the adjuster on the generator pulled the belt off and lo and behold so the was free which is great news but the water pump was seized which is terrible news because the 883cc AC series engine doesn't share a water pump with any of the other a series engines we had to Source One from Australia and that just meant that we were not going to get this running with a functioning cooling system but at this point we don't have any choice but to keep going cuz we're already here and committed still waiting for John I pulled out the old battery and I cleaned the engine B up a little bit and things looked surprisingly good uh there's a small hole into the passenger compartment under the battery but behind the battery what did we find but the original Roto dip plug intact pull off the oil bath air filter check the carburetor was free and not stuck the choke was free and functioning and the Piston inside the vacuum chamber next up we filled the radiator with coolant and just to see what leaked uh even though it doesn't have a functioning system and the coolant in the system will help keep it cool while we let it run for a little bit so it does not overheat quickly and do any damage did a quick inspection of the distributor and the ignition system uh use some sandpaper to file down the points a bit and clean up any corrosion check the cap wires rotor and the coil and everything seemed okay got our fingers crossed on that and then John arrived back with the tires and spark plugs 13514 for the record was December so we ran out of light pretty early but managed to put the new battery in see what we got hoping for the best and light came on Mission light came on wipers are [Music] dead on the other hand the lights appear to be good all of the lights worked except for one license plate which amusingly the one light that wasn't working turned back on there's no wipers the blower motor doesn't work and the dome light doesn't work even the turn signals worked although the relay is a little bit wonky despite Decades of Lucas jokes the electrical system in this car was all but perfect all right so we went home to the hotel got some rest and came back the next day a large greasy breakfast makes all sorts of things including the unexpected much better we attack the fuel system the old fuel pump is not working after a brief effort to see if we could get it going we just put the new one in unfortunately the fuel line from the tank is blocked with just residue varnish from the old fuel that must have been in there pulled apart the carb pulled residue out of the fuel bowl installed a new needle valve few new gaskets put some fuel in in the fuel bowl there would run off that until it ran out and then in what is a signature move for me I had reassembled everything uh when I realized I had left the spring out of the vacuum chamber and had to take everything back apart now that we're at this position it was time to spend the engine over um and it would allow the engine to build up a prime pump that new fresh oil through the oil system help lubricate it before we actually tried to start the engine but without any plugs in it it would uh push any of the remaining Marvel Mystery Oil out of the S hopefully smoke when it started but also just getting that out of the way it confirmed spark as Jon was operating the starter I was able to see that there was spark coming out of the plug wire so that was a good sign the Moment of Truth we threw the plugs in see if she'll run much to our um Joy it fired right up much to our horror and then proceeded to rev near Red Line thankfully I was able to frantically reach for the throttle and close it remember how I said not to forget to hook up the throttle return spring forgot to hook up the throttle return spring woo and then after that it ran shockingly well for a car that had not run in 50 plus years and so that night John and I went out and celebrated with some quite good Mexican food and came back the next day to see where we could go we didn't have time to do the brakes and we didn't have time to deal with the water pump but we showed up in the morning found a fantastic vintage Texico map of Los Angeles in the interior as a side we actually cleaned cleaned up the billat for the oil it's just uh it's just so very very neat to have we had a lot of work cut out for us this may be the most ill advised video I've ever filmed but we're really happy with how far we were able to get and also just still really happy with the condition of the car because it is just remarkably original

Channel: Tempting Fate Tours

Views: 386

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Id: oSjfL87Ji0Q

Length: 7min 52sec (472 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 11 2024