Forgotten 1925 Studebaker HEARSE / FIRE TRUCK! - Will it RUN AND DRIVE after 17 years?

i wanted a challenge a little bit you know so i did the right thing and went online and bought this 1925 studebaker fire truck which i believe was actually a hearse originally it hasn't left this barn in two decades and of course it doesn't run i know absolutely nothing about studebakers or the big six but i'm gonna go ahead and try to get it running anyway and yep drive it home 50 miles great nope dumbest idea yet [Music] [Applause] well if you've went on ahead and watched more than 8.76 episodes you probably figured out that a guy likes the history just as much as the rig itself sometimes even more and this one is rich in it and i'm talking oprah so before we dig right into this thing let's talk a little bit about the history of this old truck and what it is the guy i picked this rig up from had it for 37 years and 17 of those sat right over there in the corner in this barn before that the old timer that had the bank you know downtown he had it for a long time long long time use it in parades and whatnot and then we do have photographic evidence that it was a fire truck for a stint but i personally believe this was actually a hearse in the beginning you see in all the years that the guy owned this rig he actually wrote studebaker and they were kind enough to calligraphy them back and they said in 1925 they only made a bus chassis which this is and that bus chassis was either made into an ambulance or a hearse and i'm seeing a lot more evidence that this was actually a hearse in 1925 and was later converted into a fire truck pretty neat i don't know let's hook the peepers into it and see what you think and you can start bleep blooping it down there but it's pretty dang neat either way this is one of the coolest trucks and probably most complete from 1925 that is in its original condition other than the paint in the box that i have probably ever seen i'll take that back i mean it's up there is what i'm saying so this rig here should have come with the big six which is a six in the roll ready to tow flathead variety they made about 80 horsepower it's pretty much the only engine that went into the bus chassis but they also went into a lot of cars and in the 20s especially like early 20s they were really really popular with the rum runners or whiskey whistlers or booze haulers or whatever you want to call them people that you know they hauled booze illegally is what i'm saying because they were so fast you got to remember there were still horse-drawn buggies scooting through town and then jim bob comes flying by on a studebaker at 80 miles an hour which is just it's insane today that'd be like 150 160. in fact a lot of the sheriffs didn't even chase studebakers because they knew they couldn't catch them until they finally caught on and like arizona for example then 13 of the 14 counties issued studebakers just so they can at least keep up with the bad guys but anyway they were really popular speed wise durability you name it they eventually even came up with a model called the sheriff because you know what i just what i just was telling you basically here's a photograph with an unknown date but you can see there it doesn't have a box on it but on the hood it does say i think gfd so something fire department and of course i forgot the letter from pseudobaker but i'll put a bunch more photographs that came with the truck and the letter probably up on the insta ounce and the face space when i get back home but that tells us right away the box is not original so when it was a hearse i would assume there was a different box of course fire truck it probably had a water tank on it and then this was most likely made by the banker feller that had it and kind of painted it to match but we'll walk around this thing and you're going to start seeing some clues right away but this was probably a hearse in its original form but look how neat this thing is the tin is in absolutely beautiful condition there's no rust other than surface rust of course but none of this is rotted out it's been stored all of its life thankfully even down here there's just a little tiny bit where the running board hit it but the doors are absolutely perfect the hood even the corners all of the hinges are in excellent shape the boxes you know she's more rotten than that tomato movie but we can fix that there's just a couple speed holes in it whoops that sounded solid what was that a rock i don't know we'll just ignore it on the back of the cab here you can see it's got nice rounded tin the roof matches it and then of course the wood and the windows so we know that it came with the truck cab so that tells me right away it was not an ambulance so the only other option is a hearse well then you start seeing these handles and there's another clue over here on the other side these here and i'm not sure i really don't know so you guys are gonna have to tell me but i would assume that a lantern or flowers or something was hung from that others say because of the bottom clamp this might have been an old fire extinguisher and part of the fire truck set up so that is still unknown and my research hasn't brought back many details there other than these handles and the whole bus chassis thing you can see the original paint was black black here black under the red black doors black under red there so this truck was absolutely without a doubt black when it rolled off the line interior is all black again that is kind of telling us hearse right by the way all the door framing is wood cab framing is wood the roof is wood look at these old flathead screws such a neat truck and look at this click still shuts big old lights all of the tires are pretty well shot these are gum dipped firestone 34x7s i don't know the age on these but i'm willing to bet they're older than me this one here sure is going to hold up if we get it running down the road nope probably half a mile before that explodes and leaves me stranded this one's got a lot of tread on her but it's known to go flat in about 10 minutes so we're going to ignore that this one apparently holds there and i think it's the same yep it's the same fire stone so all the wheels are the same and the tires are the same i'm going to go ahead and guess the wiring doesn't work on the old brake lights now you can see more of that wooden frame made there now when we talk about fire truck obviously the red paint then we've got holes torched into the body here we're assuming for like a pump or hoses things of that nature since there's really no trunk to check out here i think we'll just go ahead and dive on the cab see what we find in this thing by the way these doors i just can't get over that it's pretty wild this thing's loaded up pretty much got everything you could ever want and a pickup first thing you're gonna notice is the steering wheel that's about to fall off this is going to be an issue if i do get it running but we'll just ignore that for now blinkers sure hazards i believe oh i see it's off now don't know what this one does this should be choke which barely operates this is actually how you adjust your timing so you could throw some advance or in your timing right here which is really cool one of these is most likely going to be throttle feels like that one maybe and then one's going to be a switch for like probably headlights if it's anything like ford or gm what about the winter oh yeah positive windage actually i'll just leave it down put her in cruise mode right out of the gate we got some gage laters we got looks like 7 110 miles which is absolutely believable because why would they put more miles on as a hearse or a fire truck than that oil pieces pressure sure amphares's i don't know what that means something with altitude maybe and then a clock and i think those over there might be buttons or knobs for the clock and then maybe a couple auxiliary kind of things no idea yet looking forward to finding out of course you got the wiper wipe no wipe the blade is a little shot we're gonna have to look for one of them got the dome lip in it look at the wiring there pretty cool all the wood work in here is just pretty darn neat i don't know what was underneath these it's probably storage or something we'll find out a little later does have a heater in this thing all be dipped flip this up we got a parking brake it's just a drum assembly this lever doesn't do anything so that's fine battery goes in over there it's going to be six volt whole bunch of custom wiring this is the factory option you just start sparking these together for different options i don't know what you're going to get until you figure it out clutch doesn't do anything so that's probably froze the flywheel that's great brakes sure that's probably just spring but it's doing nothing one's a throttle i think that is actually the starter maybe that's the starter we're going to find out not sure some sort of miscellaneous pedal over there you could pop them out a little bit get some air con going seats in pretty good shape probably the original seat i wish you guys could feel this it's not like typical vinyl or leather it's got a very well 1925 feel i guess let's throw it out there again you can see the original black paint and the red paint here but the black underneath of it it's pretty cool does this window work oh yeah loud and clear that'll come right down we won't worry about up oh fuel tankage that must be the sender that's not plugged in that's fine just ignore that there's some sort of passenger pedal that was crudely cut into the floor so we know that's not original we'll explore that a little bit more oh that comes up too so maybe we can really get under here oh yeah so there's the battery box we've got some cables hanging some sort of adjusta rooney knob some bailin twine this thing's right up my alley got four wires those are probably for the tail lights that don't work this thing is a pretty sweet rig oh don't don't uh don't touch that i think that brick was the offset you know holding her down well let's jump under the power barn and see these horses it's got to be three or four maybe indeed uno dos six five trace seven minus one we got a six cylinder flathead it looks complete but what never mind it's more cobbled together than a shoemaker maybe it'll fire extremely extremely unlikely i'm going to give this one 13.7 eight percent not very high but i'll show you why right now she's got all the sparklators in it i immediately noticed how absolutely ginormous these are and undoubtedly the originals champion at least they're there so these aren't full of mouse house and stuff like that never going to find one of these coils that's fine speaking of never finding these parts are available but finding them is an absolute chore i mean you gotta dig and search and research and a lot of diagramicals on the interwebs what is this it's a carburetor i know that but it's been modified and this is fuel in but then it's just feel out but then it's unhooked and this guy goes to that fertilizer tank so that's good i think there used to be uh see these bowl holes there used to be like a vacuum fuel canister thing where it ran manifold pressure or vacuum off of here into that tank and then fuel came in and then fuel came out so it's kind of like a fuel pump of sorts but i don't know help me understand this setup i also see a garden spigot that's good that runs to what i believe is the wp yep so that goes into the water pump so that must be fire truckage there this is completely shot that's probably not going to work lightning whirler is there though all the wires top rad hose is going to last two seconds that's fine this cable here is how you adjust the timing see here goes up this adjustment that goes to the firewall right there remember that lever [Music] and that's what moves that right there helps with starting probably not also drag racing you know if you want to race this thing all right good enough on this side let's go look at the other side by the way and who this hood opens exceptionally good for being almost 100 years old oh that looks like house wiring that's fine oh that one's just snip right off don't need that we'll pretend we didn't see it this is the starter i believe which is chain driven good luck final one of them hopefully it works belt's in really good shape that's gonna last nope won't make it two miles everything seems to be here though a bunch of switches on the floor sure that one is clearly the starter one because it's got the bacon wires hooked into something this must be oil pumpage filtration edge sure look at the cylinders that's really cool you can see all them well 13 trees and two bicycles somehow a line and a mechanical miracle happens and this thing actually runs my biggest worry is just keeping her cool my grandpa used to say back in the 20s and 30s all the trucks and cars and even tractors they just they ran hot they overheated they couldn't they couldn't keep them cool and whatever he said you can take to the bank and cash it twice i guarantee that this is what's called the thermal siphon cooling system didn't work slow boiling point not very good and up top here is actually really rare and often stolen it's called a moto meter there were a few different companies that made them after market so if you wanted to customize your rig you just screw one of these on this one here appears to be a voice moto meter and basically what it is is a thermometer for your engine it's your tub cage they didn't work by the time this here went red it was way way too late and you boiled out all the slew water that you already poured in that morning the guy is just trying to get to town sell some barley and pick up some wine but now you're walking six miles great german shepherds and rotten eggs well i just checked can't get a wrench on the cranks now or anything up there first step is just seeing if this thing turns over probably locked yep so i'm going to do the right thing and just throw a battery in connect that up and just jam on the starter button and see if this thing rolls over feller here said he did throw some fogging oil down her when he parked her 17 18 years ago maybe that did some probably not but we're about to find out i am completely unprepared per usual on the way here i swung into o'reilly auto parts and my mind was completely bottled they had a six volt battery in stock brand new one but they had this one here that said reconditioned in 2019 and it's now on closeout for 39 so i had to get this one instead of the new one and get this they actually had the sparklators for this in stock right on the shelf so i grabbed them up too let's throw this thing in and see what happens let's see yep oh i feel like i could have been president of the wiring division for student baker every single wire in this entire truck is the same color it's also known as anti-theft you can just watch them burn your rig down instead of steal it that seems better [Applause] clamps are not good we'll just ignore it maybe over tighten this one and then turn your hearting on that one definitely battery clamp installation you just beat it down i don't think that's a super start commercial but sounded pretty cool so this one's professionally clamped on and that one's press fit you know neutralis and then we'll just try it hey no way let's turn it over i uh i was not expecting that oh look at that blew a sparkly later out even i brought a gallon of wd-40 so i thought for sure this was going to be locked up well to be honest i packed two roast beef sandwiches because i thought i was going to be in here fighting this engine back and forth getting it broke free now that's turning we can move right on to spark i think we need compression lightning and fuel i can hear compression in fact it blew one of the sparklators out when i was just slowly rolling it over which is fantastic so i think we're going to move on to lightning before i take off the lightning whirler and all the stuff in there because i think it's got a sure hit contact in there and a bunch of just old hard to find complicated stuff we're going to go right to the end of the lightning hose and just see if we got any sparkleization there so i'm going to pull out all of the sparkle later so it turns over easier we'll just jump start the starter and i got a lightning tester and we'll just see if we've got any right at the plug and that'll hopefully save us a bunch of time if not then we'll go back up to the lightning weather and start breaking stuff that you know i can't find parts for sounds like a sounds like a plan these are actually all loose which gives me confidence and this feller's saying he fogged them all look how absolutely i've got big hands and these things are just massive they're also really bad looking so it's not going to do us any harm changing it but removing all these will let this spin over a lot faster while we check for lightning down here i am going to hang on to these actually i don't think i have any sparklators to sold maybe probably not i'm going to thread in a new champion and now i'm going to plug this here little feller in playlight this side in if the light bulb blinks that means you've got some sort of lightning it's gonna be pretty dull on a six volt system but it's what we've got you know what i mean sure that's making a ground right yep plug that in okay bring this over here yep plug this into this maybe just gotta bend it a little bit ouch bend why won't you bend you gotta bend a little bit i see what's going on here what about this guy well that one works fine so or did it here we go no sparklizations oh do we got a key doubtful very let's look at maybe there is an ignition switch though so there's no key but i was rooting around in here and look at this the dash lights came on these kind of just pull out how cool is that but no key what does this do that turns oh look on off on all right let's try that now that is really cool so i got that tumbler you know clicky switchy rolled forward there in the cab and i'm going to check for voltages here at the coil i'm going to ground it right to the threads in the head come to the coil i'm at 6 6.1 so we're definitely getting lightning over here to the lightning can so the next thing is going to be either this really rotten splintered wire going to the rotor cap but most likely i'll just pop this off and we'll take a look at the contacts in here and i think it's going to be an old sure hit no she's been upgraded on well let's see what that tells us so we've got voltages over to the lightning can but we know we're not getting to these big old spark laters over here so we've got an issue with the lightning roller and this is really common with point systems and one of the big reasons they went to hei points and contacts were absolutely fabulous they just don't hang in there long if you let them sit around sometimes if this is on right on the cam you could just rock this rotor back and forth and you can open and close the contacts and you're wanting to hear or see spark in between there and i'm not getting that but i do get randomly a spark or a jump from my river here to the base or other miscellaneous stuff in here so that tells me i'm getting lightning up to here i'm just not getting spark through the actual point or contact so what i'm going to do is take a piece of 1500 grit sandpaper i'm going to open those up and just file on them a little bit is what i'm saying and that should make these brand new and rejuvenate them then we'll try it again and see if we can get some spark in there yeah yeah okay so now we'll try it boom i don't know if you guys could see that we got plenty of fireworks so now we should be able to put the lightning cap back on and test her up here and then we're getting really close we could just dump some fire maker and let's see what happens boost mode engage okay so got the cap back on let's see if we got any lightning in there now i believe we officially have spark all be dipped well i think we can move on to the fuel make it happener system and although i completely approve of this gas can hanging from the 60s i wonder if a feller shouldn't just untie it here and shake her out just a skosh try to clean her up you know wire is so brittle this is breaking off that's convenient [Music] so this can actually says gray mills 707 metal parts cleaner for pistons fuel making happeners transgression parts heads you name it someone wants to look up the year on this that would be really neat from chicago illinois it says non-flammable how does that work i don't know we're gonna dump some of this lawn more gas in wow for pete's sake i'm gonna shake it's not happy it's not happy about it get on the weeds over here it actually doesn't look that bad huh well maybe we'll do it again get up on the old bench here and lean mixing up my clone a little bit normally smell like hydraulic fluid but i'll take gas sure probably should find some old nuts and bolts and throw in here maybe some sharp rocks but i don't even know if it's that bad no we can run this it's brand new yep you know a guy hasn't even looked closely at the fuel make it happener or this line so i'm gonna do the right thing and just dump 17 gallons in here and then that should kind of just show us if we got any leaks and whatnot i'm sure the needle stuck more than a ford ranger in a field but we'll figure that out here in a minute that should be enough to make a fire at least on the floor fuel line snags around comes into here into this fitting that's loose so i'm going to take these screws out and this broken lid and see what we got going on under here i just want fuel to kind of shoot them and then we'll kind of go from there oh i like how that sticks wide open convenient currently smells like old fly traps and burnt batteries so really enjoying things around these parts one screw out here's the second one i don't know if this just pops off or how's the guy what do you do how do you get oh you just lift oh now fuel's coming like crazy how do you shut it down shut it down we're overfilling this is bad news can you adjust it oh i think i shut it down just in time right i mean i don't know i just we're learning as we go here there's gas in the thing now fixed it guy rigged up his fuel modulator 4 000 got that shut down got the float out if you shake them i don't hear any liquid in it so this doesn't have any holes in it that's good this is a ball and ball fuel make it happener and i've got all sorts of junk in here so i think what i'm going to do is crack this loose try to clean this out best i can but basically this acts as a needle and that was stuck and when i cracked the lid with my screwdriver that's when she came rushing in so the good news is we got fuel and there's a big ore office or passage over here this must be how you adjustabilize it and then you know she atomizes and does things in there oh boy all choke system is really on there we might have to get this off so we can hand choke it and do some other things but i wonder if maybe we crank it like this just to see what happens with the fuel in there i think at this point a guy's going to go ahead and just start throwing the sparkle lighters in so we can start cranking on this thing and see if it you know make some noise or maybe smoke something i wonder what these are torqued to never mind all of it [Music] well the guy does have oh sparkly leaders in we got lightning we know that and there's some sort of bad gas from the 80s run into the fuel make it happen or that's broken so i think the next logical step is let's just give her some internalization and i don't know see what happens instead of jumping it with the jumper cables that were hanging on the wall i'm gonna actually use the button because we seem to get some better throw on it so let's see what happens all right here we go i'm gonna go with a little bit of choke [Applause] by the hoon way you probably hear that when it's turning over it's got a very consistent sound and then it's got a high-pitched sound it's like what that is is a dead cylinder unfortunately or one that's significantly less than the others so we know that one of these six is hurt it seemed like a gallop there for a second i didn't hear any bang but i do smell a little bit of combustion so i think it was very very close one of the challenges with six volt systems is just getting them spinning fast enough or figuring out the fuel combination to make them fire off so i think i'm going to pull the heat exchange hoselizationer thingy from the exhaust downer upper to the fuel mic and happener off so i can kind of see in there we can hand choke it and do a couple other things i just changed my mind because i'm lazy so i think what i'm going to do is just keep playing with the choke for a while because that's essentially a hand choke what i was going to do is just soak a rag down a gas and stick that in there because it's an updraft and somehow scientifically or wizards or witchcraft not sure which it sucks the fuel out not the rag but we'll try it again here for a little bit see what happens okay we're gonna go half choke and a little throttle nothing gonna let the starter cool go full choke [Applause] i think the needle is stuck and again i just gave her a bruce lee and it seems to be spilling fuel over the floor so i'm gonna try it again um [Music] get fired did you hear that she fired twice i just got to figure out the right vice clampage on the old fuel line chokeage petal edge and button edge it's kind of just if i could figure out that right combination i think we might have a maid i'm seeing some indications it might be flooded i got some fuel leaking up on the intake tube so i'm just going to hold her open for a little bit try that for a while and that will come back to add more fuel [Applause] i'm going to pull one of these sparkly lighters out and just see what it tells us if it's flooded or not and then that'll give me an idea what to do with all the levers and buttons and cables and what have you [Applause] yes she fired up i threw a 12 volt battery down jammed the cables onto them that seemed to spin it fast enough to actually fire off i got to do that a lot with the old tractors too now the thing is going to be how can i cobble together a fuel make it happener because i think i'm missing some pieces i'm going to unclap that fuel line try to fire it up again because i think we just sucked all the fuel out of the bowl see if i get it to idle a little bit maybe i can loosely unclamp it just to let just enough in basically use a vice grips as a needle and seat perfect [Applause] [Applause] [Applause] ah it sure keeps trying i'd like to get it to run a little bit longer than it did there initially but it's just sputtering and quitting i think it's just not quite getting enough fuel but i don't know that we're going to be able to do much with this needle situation i'm just kind of modulating it right now with the pliers so main issue i'm having looking closer at this is there's these little counterweights in here and the pedestal mounts where this pin goes through is broken off and this side the whole pedestal is broken off and there's this little fine piece of wire threaded through here holding these counterweights and i think that's too tight and it's not letting this needle move up and down like it's supposed to what's supposed to happen is that float comes up hits these counterweights and that lowers the needle and shuts the fuel supply off and that's not happening so we're not getting the correct fuel supply it's either all or nothing there's no in between i don't know if we're going to be able to get past this today and i'm certainly not going to be able to find parts today pop this guy off quick it was pretty easy just a couple bolts just wanted to see what was going on with it and it is absolutely just full of nasty crud i think i can get all that cleaned up but again the issue is i don't have a needle so that's going to be really difficult to control fueling it's actually getting worse every time i pick it up there's a little wire so i may have to come back with some card parts here because i just don't think it's going to want to run otherwise well unfortunately as a guy sits and takes this apart to clean and inspect it i've got all sorts of parts and pieces falling out of it i've got a huge chunk of solder that came off the butterfly this fuel making happener is just shot it's been patched and patched most likely the reason it was parked to be honest so that's going to shut me down completely unfortunately for today but i stand behind what i said i will run and drive this truck it's just not going to be today if you know where to find a ball and ball sv 34a cover rudder bleep bloop it down there in the comments for me please this is what it looks like here it's a side updraft that's not their original just straight through updraft carburetor once i get one of those in my hands we'll get that bolted up and when i have it at the shop we'll have a chance to better go through everything else anyway and maybe even pick up some tires probably not i'll let them blow but that's going to do it for this episode thanks guys for watching appreciate it very much this truck and i will see you in the future you little devil i was gonna take you for ice cream but not now [Music] you

Channel: Vice Grip Garage

Views: 1,260,398

Keywords: motortrend, roadkill, vice grip garage, vise grip garage, vgg, antique, collectible, will it run, will it drive, abandoned, forgotten, revival, rescue, studebaker, firetruck, fire truck, hearse, drive it home, CLASSIC, car, cars, truck, farm equipment

Id: b7XQ838rVjs

Length: 44min 18sec (2658 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 25 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/80_firebird]

I love Derek. Dude is hilarious and really knows his stuff.