Junk 1952 Kenworth Pacific Bus, Will it Drive?

on this finale of the Grandpa's backyard miniseries it drove here and parked in this spot in 2003. I ran into a few problems along the way fix some problems it's making the right sounds that means it must work and then this happens [Music] here we have another Kenworth bus now my dad picked this up shortly after he got the first one for spare parts because how often do you find one of these that was back in 2003 it drove here and parked in this spot in 2003. it has never moved since now I need to get this moved and I don't think I'm telling this one so we're gonna try to get this thing running and drive it out of here now luckily the engine compartment has been propped open permanently by this very tall tree that is uh grown up since it has been parked here so engine compartment access is easy there's cables there's lots of wires so something's got to work circuit breakers sure that helps I see a fuel filter in there let's follow the line and see where that goes yeah it goes right here um yeah let me take you on a tour of this thing this was converted to a camper really nicely a long time ago they've done all wood paneling on the entire thing has stone work there used to be a fireplace here 's where the chimney went out bunks it hinge up and down a skylight that isn't here anymore which is a cause of a lot of the problems the tile inlay table we've got the moss growing up nicely in all the grooves so that's a good habitat at this point nice wooden shower area bathroom more nice wood work folding bunks huge bed all sorts of stuff another Skylight in the back another Skylight over the nice tile kitchen this thing was done really well it's a shame it was falling apart but that's the reason my dad got it it's already falling apart infested with the animals it wasn't livable anymore so it already deteriorated when he got it and he just kept it for parts for the other bus sad but that's what happened it looks like holes for six by nines manual transmission appears to be a five speed does this shift [Music] it's not the smoothest shifting thing in the world oh we got bricks falling down it looks nice but it's not sturdy the old door handle for when it was a school bus here's an air pressure regulator and uh one side is completely disconnected so I'm not sure if that means anything good it's a Pacific School coach the serial number is not too far off of that 1953 one I guess this is 51 or 52. I'm going to call it 52 but somewhere around there let's get that engine compartment all the way open all right kind of sturdy no proper out on this one don't see any Hornets chasing me yet we're in good shape now I've seen this bus sitting here for a long time but I never really dug into it when I worked on the other bus I opened up the hood a little bit looked at the radiator look to the fan and looked at the fact the fan blades pulled air from here and went that way and that's all I did now I'm looking a little closer and it's kind of interesting that's definitely not the original radiator looks like that is the original radiator because there is the big tunnel where the cooling air comes in I don't think those electric fans were supposed to be here at all it looks like you could belt drive a fan from that engine over here and have a mechanical Drive fan right there it's just interesting to see the original radiator and the radiator filler neck is way out here somehow that doesn't look very original I doubt Kenworth would have put a radiator filler neck that stuck a foot out the back but that gasket kind of looks original it might have been flush here very odd for sure the radiator is not original I don't know if the motor is original or not either but it's what I got so we're going to see if we can get this running now luckily we have a very effective rain cap here I believe there's a one quart variety but there we have a holly does anything move the linkage moves the linkage goes to open in the spring snapped all right I like the Rope holding the radiator hose out of the fan blade I admire this upper radiator hose so here's the thermostat housing we've got a big diameter hose here that appears to be a tail pipe adapter going to a smaller size then we go to an elbow and that has the rubber hose clamped directly to threads of a threaded fitting she goes to a barbed fitting which has a hose clamp connecting that's plastic not metal that's that black I think it's ABS pipe that they use for water line then that has a piece of rubber hose connected to it with a hose clamp and then we have a rope going to the engine holding it that way we have wire wrapped around a few times holding it that way and then we go to the radiator that is just impressive that's bone dry not 100 sure where the oil dipstick is I think you put it in somewhere obvious it's easy to check oh hey found the dipstick Ah that's useful I don't think I'll be checking the oil with that there's the air compressor now this thing should have air brakes which means this engine needs to run to run that compressor in order to release the brakes we've got to get the brakes to release before I even think of moving this thing bad enough sunk in as far as it is I don't want to think about trying to drag this with the wheels locked up all right should I put a bar on this and see if it turns at all it does turn let's see if we can do a complete rotation now this is good news I hear the air compressor doing compressing [Music] we may be in good shape here I think relatively considering everything else that's going to go wrong currently I think I got a full rotation in it which means we can crank this thing over we have hope I was going to throw a battery in here and I saw these wires it appears this is our control system we have one labeled pump one labeled ignition and I'm guessing maybe something here starts it no almost looks like enough wire to run it up front perfect only one of those was hooked up okay that's perfect we got stuff labeled this is to start um that appears to be labeled for positive ground this one fell off used to do something I think it was a plus and this is a plus so everything over here apparently is positive except for that one ground foreign looks like this solenoid needs to be grounded because there's a little wire flopping here that says ground and uh that doesn't seem like a good ground necessarily [Music] there we go all right kind of secure oh hey there's my starter jumper wire perfect let's see if any of this works so far no I found a stash of solenoids no one's labeled ND question mark so it might be good oh gets warm okay what else we got no one doesn't have any warning labels on it I'm sure it works fine let's put this one in I was just about to walk away and I noticed something interesting I was looking at how to hook this up and there's one terminal which I figured would trigger the solenoid but it's labeled I I thought you're supposed to go to the S terminal which isn't there then I looked over here here's another one looks identical this only has an S not an I so I'm going to bring both with me and see what happens I found this alligator clip in here it's going to use it to jumper it but it won't actually open I just bent the tab we'll just unhook this and go with bare wire got my official solenoid test rig set up getting nothing on this one this is the one that only has the eye terminal here's the one that only has the S terminal yep that's doing stuff it's making the right sounds that means it must work and it looks like this was mounted to a curved Fender once so let's just reorient it for our flat surface mounting there that'll work all grounded properly connected let's hook up the cables get everything hooked back up even added that extra little jumper wire so I have a jumper wire already attached this is pretty close to Factory at this point nothing so we very well might have a bad ground I've had an Old Wire that has a big ring terminal on one end to go to the battery and then two terminals in the other end so I take one to each screw on the solenoid mounting so this is ideal it's even the right color so everything's working out according to plan it's perfect new ground is in now let's see what happens [Music] that's it there we go a lot more access now I'm going to try dumping the solenoid itself because I'm not really sure this actually works and I've got power to one side of it the battery side let's check the solenoid yep we got power to the other side either the starter lead or the starter is the issue at this point I was hoping not have to find the starter but let's figure out where that is it's got to be attached to the engine so that's something that's a big old canister oil filter well there's the starter the connection looks uh quite promising now to start with I brought my half inch Drive starter adjustment tool we'll see if maybe the brushes are stuck wait oh that's that's not even foreign that's not even tightened down at all there's our problem I find it helps to have electrical connections that are actually attached in order to conduct electricity there let's try that nope that was not the problem I'm not getting anywhere on the starter so it's coming out look at the starter working outside the vehicle then we'll throw it in and maybe we'll have a little more luck there we go that's a biggen got the starter out now first thing is see if it spins and it does the good stuff here get our brushes make sure they're all free huh there's broken stuff inside there that's not necessarily a good sign all right presses are all moving this actually looks pretty good inside kind of surprised go the standard test rig oh I think I saw something there we go [Music] this is not going back in my concerns go a little bit I'll soak some oil in it and hopefully it'll free up on the vehicle now I've got all these wires near the coil I'm just going to ignore all those we only need the two wires in the coil one is going to go to the distributor looks like that one which means we need power on this one it goes there's our power wire I'm just going to hot wire this ignition wire straight to the positive terminal squirt a little magic fire deuce in the carb running out of this stuff and we'll see what happens absolutely nothing I'm sure there's a point ignition they're probably completely corroded so we're gonna hit that next it could be worse let's see what we can do I like how the wires run straight to the side of distributor housing no terminal at all that's handy cut the points out they're a little worse than I expected I don't know what engine this has in it but I got a number for the points so I could get a replacement set if needed I'm going to try to clean these up it's funny how life works sometimes I was sitting there filing these points trying to get them to work and a fellow from up the road happened by asked how it was going I said I'm working on these points trying to get a marking it's like oh I got some so quick run up the road he had an old set of standard ignition points uh and I say old they're probably a couple decades old but brand new in the box I got new points so that was a bonus got the new points in hooked up my coil wire and I put some kind of Gap of the points if you care you'd measure that I don't so I didn't throw a little more of the magic juice in here [Music] you see smoke coming out of something let's figure out what that is negative battery cable is real hot so that was where the Smoke's coming from so we got to fix that hmm I don't really see any issues with the wiring here that should be fine it's a good thing I didn't bother measuring this point gap because it changes you can just move the distributive shaft around and get different point gaps I think I'm going to try closing them a little bit and see if that helps I found an old spark plug I'm going to hook it to the coil wire I'm going to crank it over you guys check for spark and see if it has any okay I saw the spark too we may be getting somewhere starting to rain pretty good so I'm going to throw a little gas in the carb give it one quick shot and uh probably pack it in for a while oh yeah that's got a lot that should be plenty [Music] spark at the plugs might be worth checking that it probably does [Music] nothing gonna try just cleaning up the contacts on this cap and see that makes a difference I'm real suspicious of that coil and I probably got another one lying around so I'm just going to swap it out well I found a coil lying around it's labeled was in truck with a question mark after it so I think that's code for works perfect [Applause] [Music] I've got good spark of the coil when I go to the spark plug itself at the cylinder I don't seem to have any now I cleaned up the contacts I don't see much corrosion I can't think I could think of it's a lot of dust and some of it looks a little sparkly I'm wondering if maybe there's enough residue here it's shorting outside the cap so I'm going to try cleaning that out I let it dry a bit and it's cleaner well we give this one a shot now my main goal is to move this bus a few hundred feet that way I've been working on the assumption that since it has air brakes we need the air compressor on the engine to be running so that it releases the brakes so I can move it up there but I was talking to my dad last night and he said that when this bus drove in 20 years ago the brakes barely worked at all so those aren't necessarily holding that in place it could just be sunk into the ground so I'm just going to give it a gentle little tug and see what happens [Applause] [Music] this may not be happening though it did look like a front tire move just slightly now it looks like there is no chance I am Towing this thing so I've got to get this engine running somehow so let's look where we're at with the ignition system now these ignition systems comprise two systems a primary and a secondary the primary is the 12 volt stuff so you have 12 volts coming for your battery going to the positive lead of the coil and then the negative side of the coil goes to the distributor and those points open and close and ground that out and that is what creates spark out of this coil and I have that now that spark has to go to the secondary system which starts with the coil with a high voltage and goes right into the center of the distributor cap and from there it goes to this Center contact and that sends a high voltage to this tab on the rotor and this rotor spins around the electricity then goes from this tip to one of these contacts and that goes to the spark plug wires which goes to the actual spark plugs so I have spark here it goes here gets hidden behind that cap and doesn't come out here so somewhere in the system I'm losing on my spark the usual culprit is this cap and that rotor I already cleaned them up obviously that's not doing it now the question is can I replace them now I know the other bus originally came with an RD 450 gas motor and this has a plate it says motor number rd450 then a whole string so I'm assuming it's a rd450 motor and that's the serial number of the motor so I went to look it up there's a problem that's a six cylinder this is most definitely a V8 clearly not an inline six which is what it says I have so I can't buy parts for the motor I'm supposed to have because that's not it I gotta figure out what I have before I can even think about buying parts for it let's look for identifying characteristics I have some head casting numbers CWC I don't see a name on the valve covers a few identifying features are this gigantic water pump the intake manifold looks like it actually connects to the block at just one spot there and one spot here on either Bank you actually see the valley pan full of acorns that cover up the cam so that intake is actually a small unit rests on top of this looks like this is a cooling passage plate in the side of the head and there's one of those on both sides looks like a DM style alternator but that means absolutely nothing not seeing really much of the way a manufacturer's identification here I don't know what that is Holly four barrel it has been adapted on so that means absolutely nothing even a manufacturer would help me if I even knew who made this thing I suppose if I do obserge a big gas V8 I'm going to come up with a lot of answers that are not this weird gas V8 I don't know if that's going to get me where I want to go apparently the correct term was V8 with giant water pump that led me to a site that had the super duty 534 Ford V8 which is exactly what this looks like but before I spent money I had to make sure it was really necessary this is purely for scientific purposes here moved like an inch or so I see a slight bit of movement in the front tires it does have more pulling power in the Oshkosh but not enough yet yeah I'm going to try to make a little easier to pull by doing things like cutting down the tree that's right behind it and stuff like that you got a few trees attached to this thing well yep that side panel is ripping off so we moved it some maybe I'll make a little ramp behind the tires too just dig a little bit so they come out a little easier I backed it up so I'm going downhill and to shorten the chain we're going to try it again foreign that's not doing it I decided to pry open my wallet and actually throw some new parts of this because it does not look like I'm going to be Towing it easy granted I didn't want to spend a lot of money so I found on eBay a lot of seven spark plugs New Old Stock ones apparently when people have V8s they look for eight spark plugs if someone has just seven of them they'll sell them real cheap now the spark plugs were easy because I could use the number that was on there this is a Ford 534 cubic inch super duty V8 apparently they're super torquey really slow use a ton of fuel and no one makes parts for them anymore luckily the cap and rotor is the same as a 390 Ford so that you can buy anywhere now Riley sent me a coupon for five bucks off for both the cap and rotor cost me 13 dollars so I'm up to about 25 dollars total into this repair more than I wanted to spend but it might save a lot of hassle so let's uh throw this stuff in I think I found the problem we have the new rotor versus the old rotor compare the tip length this one's like an eighth inch shorter than that one the spark had to jump that extra Gap I have a feeling you may have found the problem it very well may have been the end of that has just so eroded off the spark couldn't Jump The Gap anymore we might have spark now now that I've jinxed it let's put it in and find out all right that's new I put this bus in neutral I wonder if it popped into gear well it feels like it's in neutral it looks at some point when I was pulling it the fan blade started making contact with the radiator and this blade actually got caught underneath the radiator so uh we're gonna have to straighten the radiator out that's totally not sturdy let's try this again nothing now this ignition system has just drive me up a wall and I keep going back to the distributor shaft is moving around and that point gap keeps changing on me it seems like that problem is not something that's going to go away on its own I've got to do something about it if I don't want to spend money on this thing I had an epiphany last night I realized that I put a cap and rotor from a 390 Ford onto this it seems that Forge uses the same distributor on a lot of engines of the time seems that pretty much everything that had points and was a V8 used the same thing got me thinking I'm a project back home that has a Ford V8 and I need to do ignition work on it soon and on that I was considering converting it to electronic ignition so I bought the parts for that project right here I'm going to install it in this one and then once I get this thing moved I'm stealing the parts back and taking them with me this is one of those pertronics points replacement systems where they basically take out your points they're placed with a magnetic pickup sensor there's a hundred bucks so it's a lot more expensive than points but they don't really care about the Gap they don't care about your distributor staff wobbling all over the place this might be our solution if it's not it'll be the solution to my other project that I have to do the same thing on this is a sign of how Universal these Ford ignitions are this pertronics 1281 is for a Ford eight cylinder no years no models just eight cylinder forts might fit all of them who knows so now we put the pickup unit in place of the points then this little wheel goes on the distributor shaft there's actually an octagon in there and that fits right on the lobes it used to have the points right on them so we just drop that in there's a little bit of a gap there they say you can run between 10 and 40 thou so that shaft wobbling a bit won't be a big deal [Music] that was a nice sound I mean it sounded like garbage but it ran and that's the big thing need to get some coolant for that thing I hope a little bit of plant life doesn't hurt we'll call that stop leak now we have coolant let's see if we get it running a little longer [Music] the idols hear weird sounds though all right well now I need to get fuel into that carburetor and I think through the lines would be the easiest bet but some fuel rated clear line so I could see the fuel go through it I popped the 14 bucks for the JDM Speed Motor fuel pump so I'm sure this is a quality unit at that price now fuel system is basically perfect now so I'm going to hook up power to that pump and see what happens you're gurgling [Music] something's overflowing yeah I think we have fuel pouring straight in got fuel dripping out the side looks like this float is stuck and it's overflowing right there this is the standard first line repair technique because sometimes they're just stuck and they'll pop loose I'm gonna work on this wobbly radiator because let's run into the fan a few times now is fixed I'm going to leave the fuel pump off start it up and see where we're at [Music] [Applause] I smell rubber burning which indicates the belts are slipping like the one that drives the air compressor so that's not necessarily a good thing figured I'd look over a few things it doesn't appear the alternator turns I'm going to crank the engine over you guys keep an eye on that tell me what happens [Music] oh there we go all right we're turning I'll just spray some oil in there and that should be fine a little more freeing up may be necessary it's getting better [Music] all fixed perfect let's see if the carburetor fixed itself no no it did not I just got to yank the carburetor out of here and deal with it now this throttle linkage is pretty impressive I gotta disconnect it in order to get this carburetor off there we go now we have the carburetor off we could see how nice an adapter plate it has it's all just welded together with uh plenty of nuts to hold it on oh impressive let's find out how long this day is going to be not that bad I was expecting worse foreign bolts out there we go this one has a brass float [Music] so two different floats in the same carburetor well I'm at it I'm gonna pop out these Jets and just see how clogged they are like the way debris falls off them as they turn these are fine you can see right through them this carburetor is virtually clean already gotta scrape a few layers of dirt out of it now one good thing about electric fuel pump is you don't have to have the carburetor installed on the vehicle to see if it's holding fuel oh leaking like a sieve I found a single feed line instead of the double feed on a half I'm not planning on really using those secondaries I only want the primaries there's no point in fixing that float Bowl I just want that one so we're only going to feed one side of the carburetor and then just run off that now let's even get just that side going all right it still leaks like a sieve at least we have half the leaking we did before because that side's not leaking since it's not getting fuel it's time to get a little more systematic in our approach we're going to start with the bowl and go from beginning so we have fuel that goes in here you can see in the casting comes up through to here and this is where the needle and seat go in the float sits right below that and hits the bottom so this needle and seat takes fuel from this top side and it's got a little pin that blocks off the fuel on the bottom there's always fuel in the top and then it lets out fuel into the bottom when this float says that the level is getting low and it needs some more now this is going to screw right in here and that's going to stick through and hit this float we try to power the fuel pump fuel pump is running and we have a closed system there is no fuel leaking now take out the screwdriver bit and I will lower it as though it needs fuel then we can see it runs pouring right in so we have the first part working so now we have to seal around the edges I see old chunks of gasket I'm going to scrape all that off cut the bowl on with a new gasket so now hit the pump see if that fills up lifts that float up shuts off and holds the fuel inside and no fuel is pouring out everywhere still now seeing this is still leaking I've got a couple possibilities we've got the float could be not floating it feels like it's not full of fuel for sure I think that float is actually working which leads me to something in this carburetor body there are valves there's a possibility that sometime in the last 20 years it's got water in it frozen cracked so I'm not sure what the problem is but I have a bigger one I'm out of time I'm far away from home and I got to go back soon so this is my last day to work on this thing if I don't get it going today it's not going this year so I took a shortcut I bought a cheap four barrel on Marketplace supposedly it came off a running car he assured me it needed a rebuild because that car ran badly but it was keep I have it in my hand and hopefully it'll bolt on and get that thing running without fuel spraying everywhere that homemade adapter looks fine for pretty much any four barrel so I'll just knock some of the dirt off there's already a gasket on it we'll reuse that and even though this is a completely different make four barrel looks like he's going to fit quite honestly I really don't care how well it runs I just wanted to run for a little bit bolts right on so that's good I covered up all the excess vacuum ports with electrical tape so we're fine with that hopefully this one doesn't leak looks like we got pressure I don't see any fuel spewing out at all so I'm going to turn off the pump because we should have a full bowl of fuel there let's see if it starts and runs on the fuel it has [Music] looks like we got a runner I wonder if it built any air pressure brakes are going to be another issue let's go look we got nothing on the gate so that's not necessarily a good thing so now I wired both the pump and ignition to the ignition switch we got a full system here even though I initially filled the cooling system with pond water I bought the keep Walmart anti-freeze to add to it because after I put this much work into it I want this engine to be fully protected from freezing you can't beat the combination of pond water in Walmart for success [Music] apart so good build air pressure do we have any air pressure air is reading I started to take the reading before because it's about zero but not by a whole lot that one's reading nothing let's press the duct tape and the pedal and see what happens well the valve moves I don't hear anything happening though oil pressure looks real good that's something hoping that leak is just a valve on the side of the block to drain it so I shut it down so I can check that out oh okay it's completely missing a plug I wonder if there's one on the other side that's missing too this one has a valve so hopefully that'll just close got an old rusty pipe plug wire brush the threads a little bit so it should work fine foreign sealant so we should have no problems with this I've got less coolant leaking out of the engine I also turn up the idle a bit because I have no throttle pedal so we should be having a high idle now we're in real good shape here [Music] I'd be running a little rig oh well I'm hearing air leaking somewhere in this area I think one of the airlines is leaking right there and that's why I don't have a brake release I want a truth here will it move and a gear [Music] still seeing nothing for air pressure to try first gear see if that's any lower [Music] [Music] thank you [Music] I think you need to hook up a gas pedal if I could rev it up I might be able to get this to move okay and we're boiling over after running for like a minute or two that's not a good sign I'm just going to let this cool down for a little bit I can't move the gas [Music] the gas I have the throttle a little bit but the fan blade is between me and the carburetor so we made an extension [Applause] [Music] soon [Music] [Music] [Music] all right [Music] [Music] thank you [Music] [Music] everything was going fine I just shut it down on my own for two reasons one is I saw the overheating happening earlier I don't want to overheat that motor now that things are going well and it seems like it'll start right back up so hopefully now that I'm completely blocking a trail it will start right back up the other thing is this front bumper and right now the angle it's at looks like my best shot to take it off so the engine cools down I'm going to yank this front bumper and that way I can bring that one back home I wonder what this thing was for depth gauge Maybe I just realized something cool I was working on this bumper check this out that's the sifter the shifter actually twists and pulls and pushes that drive shaft with U-joints all the way to the transmission way in the back and that's how you change gears now that's really cool ah hey that was fast alrighty [Music] we got a bumper so now all I have to do is get that bus a few hundred feet down that trail to its new parking spot how hard can it be [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] at this point everything was going really well and I was cruising right along until I got to the new parking spot which I had just graded and was soft [Music] [Music] it took a while but eventually I made it [Music] and then it was done this thing's not moving anytime soon let's get something to use for parts so I'm taking my new stuff and using that in another project taking this carburetor too leave my tie down back important stuff we're just gonna leave this old carburetor right here makes a good paperweight or sheet metal weight that'll keep the stuff out of the intake well that's it for this project quite honestly it was the least fun project I've done in a long time there's a lot of things that I expected to work and just didn't but the good thing is that means my next project is going to be extra fun because I'm going to have this one to compare it to so it's only uphill from here also that's it for this year's mini-series of Grandpa's backyard special editions now I've shown you guys a lot of the stuff that did happen here they haven't shown you even more some just didn't really relate some stuff just didn't make any sense some was just a drag that was covered up some things turned out to be unnecessary some I just didn't want to deal with some just didn't start right the others I got going could eat a bit more before I finish it but I gotta go home taking the scenic way back hope you guys are having fun too and we'll see you next time foreign [Music] [Applause] what is that [Applause]

Channel: Low-Buck Garage

Views: 1,014,612

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Id: yMVYIM0HR20

Length: 47min 9sec (2829 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 15 2023