Getting a FREE Car to RUN! Thunderbird First Start in Years

ladies and gentlemen welcome to another episode of junkyard digs today we're here in ames not too far from our shop and we're here to revive this not actually that that buried back there is a ford thunderbird that was given to us for free we're gonna see if we can get it running pull out of this pile of junk and drive it home today's video was brought to you by squarespace stick around to see how you can get 10 off your first purchase i'm here with junkyard mooc today my brother jesse's filming we're we're going to have a good time we got a big old pad of concrete maybe try to burn out before we leave so we're going to set into digging this thing out and get the work on getting it running let's begin all right so the story on this sucker my buddy jed who owns central iowa diesel performance it was a family member of his they passed away it was handed off to another family member they had some complications come up this that the title went from hand to hand and now it's gone so this car currently does not have a title it's been sitting here for i don't know once it last registered 2013 so it hasn't been on the road for seven years so i guess step one is going to be dig this sucker out a little bit to where we can at least get to the engine bay and see if we can drive it from its current grave tires all hold air so even though it's not been on the road in seven years i bet it's been ran or at least moved around since then so i'd say it probably hasn't ran in at least five not a crazy like old revival for us but right here in town it's a free car so we're still gonna do it all right let's dig her out [Applause] [Applause] let's set this over here for now final tops it's a free car now okay i found the front can you hop in and put it in the neutral okay here we go it's in neutral right is the parking brake on i guess i just gotta push extra hard oh my gosh is the brake pedal stuff beverage there it goes [Music] the free car they said this should be pretty easy they said okay that's good enough yeah thumbs up a little lever let me in let me in [Music] there's no good thing oh where's that stick i lost my stick wow that's a big battery look at this battery that is a absolute tractor battery let's see what we got in here oh there's no carburetor well there's a good thing i have a few spare two barrel ford carburetors all right so it looks like we're looking at a 302 with a dura spark ignition system um air condition i do not see no there is a smog pump damn it power steering power brakes uh cruise control smog-o-matic 302 one thing i didn't bring was a vacuum cleaner it's full of mouse poop we're missing one carb stud okay so we got a little bit of work cut out for us uh to make sure this thing's gonna fire up we got a hard line here for the a fuel million vacuum lines a radiator obviously which is half empty i didn't bring any water didn't think of that the darkest power steering fluid i've ever seen in my life look at all that goo what the hell it's full of metal so i'm sure this might need replaced but as you can tell if you know anything about fox bodies this right here is the telltale sign of a fox body chassis is these shock towers and they usually rust out right down here they'll usually all rust right here if you're ever looking for a fox or thunderbird check that this one absolutely rock solid there's still paint paint on everything this is probably the cleanest example of a fox chassis i've ever seen out in the wild crikey defend your bed see if we can get it running you got to sneak up on it yeah it didn't stop sound [ __ ] all right let's go get a battery from our tank tools toolbox it's the tank tools toolbox hey look batteries damn what a convenience random dual post i had laying around always here for a good time all right well nothing's immediately on fire things are looking good make sure there's nothing in the intake that we're gonna oh there is really yeah there's a bunch oh nice bunch of mouse poop in it so we'll have to clean that out before we can see if it cranks but uh yeah let's move on in the interior and see what works wow this thing is nice look at this dash it's beautiful it's like perfectly clean can't be driving around my center console open oh no guys we can't have this car the center council doesn't work what the hell are these i've never had a car this nice ah insurance card for a 1982 thunderbird all right yeah nothing i'm gonna wiggle the battery post okay oh hello wasp don't mess with me oh oh he's pissed he's fine did you piss off the wasp next to me sorry reckless endangerment all right let's see if this tiny battery works [Applause] [Music] that's copyright everything's fine oh my door does oh wow they weren't kidding when they said they hit it with a uh skid loader so this is a uh i'm not good at reading what's that say the landau yeah let's just call it the town land boat no okay do we have a fan um oh nothing comes out anywhere it smells like dead mice it's probably a mouse house in there so it's probably just clogged it's got a rear defrost radio ac oh it's got the nine mile mirror adjuster we'll do this and that does that sos i bought a piece of crap for free help me windows that's a no on that side oh yeah hello hi what's up whoa that's the original color we got tape a danger triangle yep there's some tape a spare i guess all the stuff to change to spare a nice mouse nest or tape put this on your head why what is wrong with you so as you saw we got a bunch of mouse poop down in the intake we need to get that out i didn't bring my shot back we don't have a source of power there's other ways than sucking to just watch i'm going to take a little engine oil i would prefer grease i don't have any i'm just going to lay it here on the abs molded top for this tank tools box i'm going to soak my rag just a bit just i don't want to like oily but i want it tacky there we go it's not going to work as well as grease but it's all we got um if you ever lose a bolt and you can't reach it and you just have a screwdriver and some grease you put grease on the end of your screwdriver and do the same method it just makes this sticky enough to stick to [ __ ] literally [ __ ] so if your oily rag fails and there's still a bunch of big heavy stuff down the bottom get the needle nose out i guess and spend the next six minutes of my life fishing poop out of a two-barrel intake i'm like fishing poop out of poop when does the poop end where does the poop go you know where revolves around poop a lot that's the question we have we've learned carburetors we've learned engines we just want to know where does our poop go you know there's no we in this question me and luke it's him and luke as far as this crowd goes though it's him i mean like you poop it goes away right and then it goes to the processing station and then they get all the solids and the liquids separated and the liquids are treated and returned back to the environment where the solids go this is quality sound good is there some farmer out there putting human poop all over his field like ah yes props crabs for crops all right so this is the last of the poop i should be concerned about if mice have been building a nest down in the intake runners but i'm not so yeah we're just gonna put a carb on this thing and see if she cranked actually i guess now we could just see if it cranks all right go for it quick tap oh hang on try it try it again yep all right go ahead try it oh try it again weird noises all right here i'll do it from out here now today's problem is going to be batteries i can already tell so before we can go much farther we want to make sure we have spark and figure all this out wow this one's tight looking at the bottom of our cap and rotor she is pretty crusty as you can tell so i'm going to go through with a razor blade and something a piece of sandpaper and clean all these up clean this guy right here this is your center point clean our rotor oh boy that vacuum advance is sticky simply getting freed up there he goes i'm sure the mechanical advance underneath it is also junk because this is a dirt spark uh you gotta pull this cap all these plates all these screws off all this stuff off the shaft just to get to the advanced weights and springs it's terrible we're not gonna mess with that stuff too much unless it starts really giving us issues we're just gonna hope this hall effect sensor works uh usually they do usually it's the dura spark boxes that fail on these uh dura spark systems i've actually so now that i've said that i've had one of those coils right here these pickup coils for the hall effect failed before and what it would do is the truck this one over here would crank and nothing and then when i let off the key it go pop or if i just turn the key on when it was sitting or turn the key on and off and there was a cylinder that was on the compression and charged it would spark that one plug and like turn backwards or forward a little bit but it wouldn't run so if you ever had that happen replace this hall effect sensor right here for us we're just going to clean up the cap and rotor put everything back on uh shoot a little carb cleaner down the intake and see if our electronics or everything are working otherwise i'm going to get crafty do some hot wiring some shortcuts bypass this and that until we get sparked i feel like a dentist all right this is all cleaned up i'm gonna not pull the mistake we've done a thousand times i'm gonna put the rotor in before i put the cap on and then get confused while we don't spark this has definitely been hitting you can see that as it's come across it's ground the actual cap down every time it touches so i've seen that happen a few times i've never seen it cause a huge problem what it will do is it'll make some weird noises like maybe move the cap around so it's just geometry issues maybe someone's got the wrong rotor in here and the wrong cap for the base i don't know but we're gonna put this back on there we go and now shoot some uh some liquid down there and see if it runs or lights off i guess for simplicity's sake usually we'll run a 12 volt wire from this positive to right here on the positive of the coil but since this is a dura spark it's actually a little more invasive it's still not hard if you ever need to start one of these without a key just run from 12 volts to the red feed line right here i believe it is this red one google it before you do it to make sure but uh this is the ground and positive i believe these two are the ac in and then one of these is coil interruption one of these is some other [ __ ] like power i don't know but hall effect sensors are simply a sensor that sees a magnet pass makes an ac current produces a ground in that module grounds the coil spark it's like a really complicated point system that loves to fail okay move tap the key make sure you're not in front of it oh hang on forgot all right go for it a little more that was that was close we have all had the ultimate wide open throttle scenario of the fuel pump perfectly throwing fuel into the intake so hey our fuel pump works how's our fuel smell really not bad hopefully they just didn't put ethanol in it and we're good to go we will uh capture some of that in container to make sure it's good before we pump it into our good cartridge i'm gonna take this sweet custom-made gasket off oh a tour to reveal an actual gasket this one's all sharpied out and cut out of gasket material we got double underneath too kind of sounds like we do hang on ah yes carburetor gasket this one is okay he's not cracked like this upper one this washer has to go how did i don't think this ran at least not very good very lean if it did because of how bad this gasket would have leaked okay we're going to take these seat covers off oh you don't like my sporty seat covers no not sorry this seat looks pretty good actually should we try the drivers one they're probably on there for a reason if i had to guess the driver's job well i'm guessing that as well but i want to see it that's fair me too oh yep lovely fixed so i've spent like way too long trying to get this rock hard gaskets off and i got about halfway through this one and went this is terrible and then realized i'd have to take this one off too i already caught myself like three times we're just gonna okay so i'm missing a carb stud on the motor now i've got this one i'm sure these are all way too long without a spacer so we're gonna have to figure that one out you know but we'll get there i don't need this other homemade gasket on here because i'm going to be using a real one that is a weird looking intake i think i see why i have to have the spacer now suddenly the hardest gasket i've seen in my life i just turned the carbon what uh what are you doing nothing i hate cutting gaskets you're doing so good we're just going to get a bunch of these for if we ever have kids and they start acting up she's like you have to scrape this clean now okay so never in a half hour of my life if not more but we got one side of this gasket off this side still imprinted and still on so i'm going to take what was once under this carburetor and match it to it because it's like the inverse of itself so it should seal pretty well and we're gonna put it down because we don't care this thing's stupid wait what does it say top top front this way and then this way and then i forgot to put the stud on so we're actually going to do that first what nothing i but it was pretty fitting yeah are these cross-threading or just poorly made yes why is there one missing stone is it do we see it sitting around there was something on this route i saw that too oh my gosh there it is not yes yes aha you guys are the world's greatest detectives we know all right someone tells me that wasn't the right bolt it's not the threads are destroyed damn it it's fine you know it's minor details our spacer freshly inverted our nice kmj performance spacer oh [ __ ] just tell me it's backwards right i have it on upside down yay okay it's only like a quarter inch off so i couldn't tell it wasn't symmetrical and today for a carburetor we're going to be employing the use of a two marrow holly that i've borrowed from thunderhead don't tell them this is a completely conditioned unknown carburetor so not usually what i suggest to do at all but yeah this will be fine i'm sure uh i think this is actually a brand new car that's never been around which leads me to remember i should probably set the transfer slots and stuff if luke owns this it's probably all perfect okay our mixer screws are set to two out transfer slots are a square got all of our ports plugged we've looked over the intake checked for all the vacuum leaks here we got this guy i think he goes to the uh flapper on the uh air intake so i'm not too worried about him we're just gonna plug him with okay there that's plugged get some bolts bolt this down sort out our fuel situation figure out what the hell this thing is i don't even know well i thought i brought four nuts for this but i only brought two the other two were coarse thread this one's cross threaded from this thing being on it so we found one more nut we're up to three nuts and one or two work yay so i think here's their other oh you guys find it oh nice here we go four bolts yay now we just need to do the throttle linkage and oh we don't have a clip for this guy for the kick down dang it do you see a clip the kick down laying around in there i will dig through the poop okay so there's our carb uh i noticed this is a pcv car we're gonna pull this pcv out flush it out with brake clean if i don't break it in half to make sure that's just one less vacuum leak we're gonna have and then we're gonna see if our fuel is actually any good and then put fuel to it somehow somehow being the fact that i gotta do a 90 right here so [Music] i usually change these in cars i clean them out about every month and then change them about every two or three oil changes in your carbureted cars because they will gum up and leak and not let stuff through at the right time and cause issues like vacuum leaks and just all sorts of fun okay so i'm trying to get whatever the hell this is out of my way and i just found a bunch of vacuum issues this is the one shitty part about these 80s cars and just stopped forged because ford was like hey this engine makes vacuum let's just run everything on vacuum basically vacuum powered cars they suck themselves forward there we go okay give her that oh my what is this this is this is a q-tip shoved into the end of a pipe okay i think we're ready to hook a hose up to this fuel line and check the quality of whatever the hell is in the tank gas i'm gonna run it off the can so we get a little more rpm to pump some gas out go ahead [Applause] nothing all right go again stop doesn't look that bad i think this feels probably okay let's put a filter in line and call it good what i am concerned about is it doesn't sound like we're attempting to hit on all eight cylinders for whatever reason if that's valid plugs old plugs bad plugs ignition issues i don't know but we'll see all right let's set up a fuel system that's the last shitty hose clamp from harbor freight for this fuel system they should be good to go now we got a filter in line after the pump to catch anything that's been sitting in the pump i'll zip tie this down out of the way actually i probably won't it's probably just fine right let's uh throw the booster pack which has hopefully been charging over there back on this and see if it's enough to fill this bowl up and get this thing running then it sounded like it was hitting on all the cylinders before so i won't be surprised if we still have to pull some plugs and put new plugs in but that's fine i've got new plugs over the shop let's go grab them but let's try this to give this thing a snowball's chance in hell i'm gonna put a couple gallons of fresh gas in here to mix with the old stuff and you know then it'll probably be okay that's how science works nothing else if we have to drain the tank it'll give me something to flush it out with you guys come here often no oh that's why they're vacuum yeah i'm sure that'll work still you know what we don't have very much battery we should probably use something to pre-fill that bowl we need a container yes someone's coca-cola can perfect all right we got our nice custom shape coca-cola can nothing cools you off like a coke oh god there's already gas everywhere i'm sure this would go excellent trying to fill this vent bowl yeah no oh my god it's working oh it's full now because it came out the boosters all right we got accelerator pumps go ahead [Laughter] [Music] [Applause] look at this it's blue what happened what is this is it gas is it fuel is it i thought well farm diesel is red i don't know if farm gas is blue it might be i guess we'll find out if it burns hopefully no one like put something in the tank but what it could be is a fuel stabilizer did you see your clock is working the clock works okay go ahead mook fire it up so [Music] works somewhat that's our first small block ford revival it runs on kool-aid it runs on great blueberry juice there it is uh the 82 thunderbird now runs first start in a few years got to get the cobwebs out of it but then it started to run fine sits here in idols revs out pretty good serpentine belt and snap clutch fan feels good okay we got our vacuum advance hooked up deported now just up here on a hallway go ahead and see if she cranks idols [Music] just like that [Applause] [Music] all right down so we uh i think she might be getting a little warm too sitting here so let's go get some water throw it in it obviously we have an amount of blow by so i don't know how healthy this motor is but we're gonna go grab what we need to take it for a cruise i guess i parked in my own way so we're gonna move this to get that out to go get the stuff to get this to get this out and that yeah everything [Music] [Music] [Music] oh that's hot so uh the brake pedal goes all the way to the floor and then they like hung at first but then they started working so just out of curiosity okay it's full yay that means are these drums back here they are discs up front drums in the rear that might mean that the rear drum adjusters just aren't working so all my all my brake pedals getting used up that's the case pretty easy to fix all right let's get this stuff okay it was lower than i thought i'll admit oh that's from over there it's cooling in it you didn't crack the block well i mean there's a lesser chance it cracked the block just gonna scans this on there boom scienced now it is a performance thing yeah performance words words and horsepower none of which we have right now all right let's do this structural wheelbarrow still in place i want my mirror how do they do this in the movies okay [Applause] [Music] all right so here's our test drive of our 1982 ford thunderbird that's been sitting for five or six years got her running here let's see if we can roast off some tires [Music] hell yeah that's what we're talking about all right is that a piece of tire all right so that's gonna wrap it up for this episode of junker digs we're gonna head home see if we can get those brakes working see if we can find a title for this car and see if it's a good day lead don't know can't beat the price of free though so we will see you guys next time here on the junkyard dick's channel the leader in revivals make sure you subscribe to all my friends mook vice grip garage thunderhead289 dylan the cool classic mustangs 429 cars and cameras to boss garage all those great guys out there that are there to help teach you about cars and entertain you when you don't have them to work on yourself so we'll see you next time here on jungkook diggs peace oops that was sorry ames i love the smell of nate palm in the morning kids don't follow his example you

Channel: Junkyard Digs

Views: 1,152,277

Keywords: revival, first, start, in, years, old, cold, junkyard, digs, races, revive, iron, ford, thunderbird, 1982, small, block, 302, run, can, we, get, thunder, bird

Id: r0IEteSncLQ

Length: 40min 20sec (2420 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 17 2020