Will it run? Road trip to Illinois to rescue a 1970 Chevelle sitting for 27 years!

hey everyone uh we're taking a road trip this is the first video for my road trip rescuing a 1970 chevy chevelle you may recall a few weeks back we put out a request to you all for submissions to us if you needed help getting your old vehicle running this is the first video of the ones that we responded to this was a fantastic trip come on along i think you're going to really like it this is it this is it wow wow look at this girl crazy this one is going to be fun this is the engine battery is still in it the owner tells me it's a 400 it's been swapped hedman headers wow wow it's been sitting since 1995. it's a 400 will have the big harmonic balancer and it does yep it does this is a 400. wow it's got hei that's a good sign but it's been here a long time a really long time as you can see a very long time so this was the 350 model malibu 350 so it was a little little upgrade over the base malibu and they can't be body's pretty solid little bit a little bit of filler here um 14 inch wheels whoa is this thing sunk wow look at that that's the dirt that dirt is up almost to the center of the hubcap wow well first step is let's see if this old girl is seized all right first step with the chevy is we're going to see if it's seized and even if it's not we're going to put mystery oil into the cylinders well let's see um why don't you aim the camera right in here so we can see if the crank turns i've got my famous wrench here um yeah maybe right through here through the power steering area can you see the crank okay oh it's it's tight but you got to expect that there's a these frames kind of in my way here oh look at that look at that it's not seized it's not seized that's unbelievable it is unbelievable it is unbelievable wow awesome [Laughter] all right let's get the mystery going the sun's going down but let's let's get that done at least for the night so i've got the first one out um it's decent but very carbon fouled so it was running rich which is not unusual really for a car like this i've already put some mystery oil in the cylinder and for the night i'm just going to put this plug back in loose for the night right number two is coming out whoops number two is coming out this uh has headers on it so it's a little bit more challenging to get the plugs out it would be without it but we'll we'll manage i'm willing to bet these are all the same they're all going to be just a bit fouled um carbon filed with gas oh yeah look at that one it looks like the inside of a chimney we'll clean these up before they go back in permanently but tonight well we got some daylight i'm just putting oil in the cylinders um it's not seized so i don't have to fill them to the top but i don't want them getting scratched either when i turn it over tomorrow this side plugs pulled checked fill the cylinder with a mystery oil let it sit overnight the oil it's full which is nice it's dirty but it's full little over full so i'll take that over empty any day now on to the other side and i'm losing light i have to move fast there's an old corn stalk in here as you can imagine same same condition as expected i didn't see that oh that's a souvenir right there that doesn't get thrown away [Laughter] that's cool that's something we haven't seen before the second last one on this side which would be number six is a little tricky to get out because the header's in the way so what you do you put the socket on it i'll show you in a sec you put the socket on it take an adjustable wrench and you loosen it that way you can't get the ratchet in there one more oh look at that something ate that plug wire i brought some spares with me hopefully i've got one like that but that's not gonna work this real one's coming out really hard it could be that it wasn't changed very often because it's so hard to get out i hope it doesn't mean it's cross-threaded because it's coming out super hard it's fighting me every step of the way i finally got this one loose finally you can see how rusted the threads are i'm seeing if i can thread this back in easily by hand and if i can perhaps it's not cross threaded [Music] yeah i got it in i got it in so i don't think it was crossed it was just super super rusty that particular plug was not changed like the others probably because it was a real bad to get out actually i had to use two different wrenches i had to use a 5 8 box end and a 5 8 open end to get it out so last things for the night i want to see what condition the brake fluid is in if there's any even in here the front bay is full completely full the rear is not so the rear probably has a blown line not unexpected this this fluid is actually in really good shape really good shape so i am uh i'm excited that the brakes might might actually work the front brakes the rears got a problem i can tell that already but the fronts will and last thing i want to see if there's any transmission fluid in it on general motors cars the engine has to be running to check the fluid level i'm not checking the fluid level i'm checking the fluid color and it's awesome i don't know if you can see that but it's red red red that's fantastic it's not burnt because you can smell it when transmission fluid is bad you can smell it that's not burnt there's plenty in it that's a really good sign there's another plug wire here that's eaten see this one's eaten that one's eaten there's probably more that are eaten that i don't see so we've got to get some replacements for those out unfortunately i think i brought conventional wires not hei wires but i'll check later good use for corn stock oh look at that it's it's full and it's green fantastic fantastic this car was put away right all right it's the next morning and we're back to uh work on the chevelle um the owner contacted us he's a subscriber he wanted us to come work on this thing to get it out of here because he's afraid it's gonna get stolen there's been a couple of attempts to steal it already and he wants to bring it to the guy's house in town that has the biggest gun where it's sitting is on a family farm and the farm has been in in owned by the same people since 1880 so it's uh extremely rural here and i wouldn't want to leave my car out here either 70 chevelle two-doors are worth quite a bit in any condition um so it's a good thing that that he's he wants it out of here so we're going to start basically giving it a once over again because it was fairly dark last night and uh i've already got mystery oil in the cylinders and we're going to take it from there this car was originally forest green it's very hard to tell when i looked at pictures i thought it was black primer it's not this is the original green that's very faded it's it's fairly straight but it's got some filler here so it's probably had some dents and bruises along the the years probably was like sideswiped here because this filler here this tire here is also completely buried and completely flat quarter panels look good but they may have filler in them who knows the grass was cut probably the owner cut the grass around it but not all that close was probably a big tractor so we just have to be careful um here's a good indication of how low this car is on the ground the exhaust pipe is actually on the ground so we don't know what challenges that's going to present to the starter but no matter what it the condition is it's a 70 chevelle 2-door and that alone is pretty amazing uh one thing about this car i'm sure a lot of you will like how much is it i want to buy it um the owner's not selling it it's not for sale he wants it out of here and he's brought us here to help get him get it running so he can start using it again all right now we're going to go to the inside this is always the scary part i oiled up the door last night it was stuck there's an air compressor inside we may use that wow it stinks some kind of dog or an ant dog some kind of animal was living in here maybe still is oh man it stinks in there oh man that is the type of smell that literally can knock you over someone ever says the smell will knock you over that's what they're talking about empty empty there is an incredible ant farm in here this is how long it's been sitting here how am i going to move this thing i guess i better grab it underneath it looks to me like someone was lit something was living in the glove box and it looks like the owner's manual might still be in there how's the headliner not good mean i'm gonna dare go into the glove box and see if that's the onus manual look at that and it's in decent condition it really is considering it was in there some decent conditions okay the trunk floor is surprisingly good look at that it is surprisingly good some kind of old gauge huh i don't know what that is it says clean pump clean air i'm not sure what that is in case we have trouble starting it we'll pull we'll hook this up all right um nothing really great to see in here the original bumper jack is in it that's pretty rare so all good um the owner has the keys so that's great let's see if the ignition works it does a little sticky but it does [Music] the dash has clearly been out in the sun a long time the uh gauge cluster the plastic on the gauge cluster is super faded out the dash has cracks in it the original green and on the brake pedal you can see it's got disc brakes so [Music] so that's an overview now we're going to start at the work i got the doors open let's try to let this thing air out i mean literally it's so bad inside we get this running i can't drive it um but we're moving on to the mechanical aspects anyway i'm gonna see what it's like under this air clean the uh the nuts stuck to the bolts so it take the whole stud out trusty quadrajet let's see what it's like inside this air filter i bet it's going to be bad oh yeah whoa look at him hello little mouse did we interrupt you that's a first that is a first actually a live mouse inside this is all freed up here nothing's stuck surprisingly you know people hate these quadrijets but they're actually really good carbs the problem with these quarter jets is when you have to rebuild them they're a nightmare this one's got quite a bit of carbon inside of it and this thing was running super super rich i mean it's just coated with carbon see the black that's not supposed to be there all right let's uh the next step is i'm going to put a wrench on the crank since i know it's unseized and just spin it over a couple of times and make sure that nothing else is stuck i'm having a tough time getting this spinning with the ratchet it's been it went fine with the plumber's wrench i'd really like to get under it to do this so next step is i'm going to try to get it up in the air see that the frame is on the ground i'm gonna jack this up it's gonna be a procedure for sure well i can't even try to put air in this the valve stem is below ground so i'm stuck with trying to jack it up if you ever need to jack up a vehicle in the middle of a field like this and the jack keeps sinking in here's what i use to prevent that this is a mud flap from an 18 wheeler they're very thick and i found them to be excellent jacking services with something like this because they're not too thick this side we can get at the valve stem it is so low i just can't get the jack under anything that's solid enough to lift so if i can get air in this thing if it'll take it it'll give me the clearance i need it's taking it you're looking tired babe it's hot beautiful beautiful that wheel is not frozen wonderful before we let it down we're gonna put some air in it but not right now in case it's just gonna leak out [Music] it's getting easier and easier i just needed the extra leverage of this breaker bar that's all it was all right so glad we got the engine moving i don't like being under there this battery is what's called a gm side post it was around this year the gm went to these side post things which i personally hate and the battery i brought is top post but i brought converters for it so it's no problem that this is side post these are the converters the side terminal plugs in here that goes on top of the battery like that it's that simple all right converters are in let's see if there's any smoke when we hook this up no spark that's good so there's no draw i'm gonna turn the key on see if we get anything about headlights nothing yeah nothing no maybe maybe convert it for a sec um oh we do we do maybe one but no headlights no i think we have three headlights right now oh wonderful okay so we're involved wonderful all right next step is spin it over blow the mystery oil out of the cylinders moment of truth here let's see if it spins over nope so i'm hitting the starter solenoid now but not the bakelite the bakelite would break right off if i did that this is getting to be a hail mary this starter just really seems seized let this car start didn't work nope the only other thing it could be is connections but these cables are in decent shape as the ground go right here i mean it looks to be in decent shape so i don't necessarily see any problems with that is there any chance that you're able to reach inside and turn the key when i'm hitting the starter well there's a chance i don't know if i'll come out alive no you just reach inside just like this it's so disgusting yeah just like that you don't have to film it okay can we do it now no just wait till i start whacking it and just do it as often as you want okay [Music] yeah when i hear you whack it start turning it okay okay i did it eight times more okay okay yeah definitely that mouse con didn't work got it got it i hope i can break it yeah i got it i'm also going to remove the header from the head because while i get the starter out it's going to be hard to get it back in with the remnants of a rusted header in the way it's got two types of bolts allen bolts and regular bolts but they're coming out so that's good and i don't really have to worry about creating a header leak because there's nothing left to the headers underneath i'm hopeful i can do a cornfield rebuild of this starter when i was in high school i made a little extra money rebuilding starters for people general motor starters just like this one so i'm hopeful i'll be able to do the same here so did you just coin the phrase cornfield rebuild i did you heard it here first all right header's loose that'll give me all the clearance i need okay all right all right it's getting ready to bring it out well the good thing is it doesn't look that old it's got paint on it the bad thing is you can see it's been in the mud oh yeah it looks pretty bad in there but let's pull it apart cornfield three bit cornfield rebuild part one this extra length here is for an additional bracket to hold the back of the starter up a lot of people when they first pull the starter they don't put that bracket back in and this car is no exception that's good this isn't shot a lot of garbage inside but this the brushes are not worn out they're worn but not worn out that's a good sign so this comes off next [Music] all right um you know nice people out here some guy just stopped to uh ask about a tractor that's on the property that he and his son want to restore nicest guy ever um of course we don't know anything about it but we'll tell the owner that somebody wants to buy it but back to this got the two bolts out and this bolt out this piece here is just a connection from the starter to the solenoid and on gm starters sometimes this is right up against the nut here this connection that means it's a low torque starter if it's long that means the starter itself is longer it's a higher torque starter oh look at that that's not helping yeah that's not helping you know actually though uh yeah this is this is this is real tight here um but there's not much rust on this hardly any at all so i'm very encouraged uh this is the armature this is the commutator the commutator is worn but it's not unsalvageable i think the biggest thing is this this is all seized up in here and uh it needs to it needs to be freed up this is the start of drive and this is what's supposed to when you kick the starter this is supposed to engage and this might be all screwed up we'll see first thing is we got to clean that all right cornfield rebuild is done don't know if it's going to work but i gave it my best shot we'll find out in a few minutes i'm going to try to test the starter crap it's not working not working all that work and it's not working i really thought that would do it hey so the starter didn't work so we are headed to napa before they close at 5pm um to see if we can pick up a new starter and richard is very bummed hey it happens what happens i'm just hoping they haven't yeah yeah if they don't then they would which i've been wanting to go to the junkyard um but i'm kind of happy that we're going to napa because that means i get a bathroom break because we have been how long we have been there five hours and it is very hot and my hair is wet and sweaty and richard is sweaty and wet and dirty and so yeah there's no bathroom for women in the cornfield so i'm happy that i get to go the first round what it's true you got it what did they have the full starter or yeah yeah the full starter it's a nice one too really nice one and how much should i set you back 61. oh i'm really not bad for a nice napa starter yeah gonna put starter and it's not gonna be fun nice super heavy and i can't really get under the car so it's gonna be a lot of fun so chevy starters have something called shims these shims are designed to pull the starter away from the flywheel to get the proper clearance between the gear and the starter and the flywheel the old starter had no shims so i don't have any real reference as to how many shims this should have and i certainly can't measure it underneath so i'm going to use one shin and see where we get it should be going in really having a tough time getting the starter and what's left of the headers in the way it's really hot the sun came out just as we get back from the parts store so what i'm trying to do now is putting the header back connected to the head hopefully that pulls it up enough out of the way than where it is now i'll find out shortly if you had a sign right now or tie pods no for like we'll work for food if you haven't haven't subscribed yet now's the time this is pretty hard work and being rewarded for it is the greatest the greatest thing it's in it's in okay the transmission lines are rotted out so i'm just going to run a loop so that they don't leak so what i'm trying to do here now the starters in is just patch the transmission lines basically run a loop look at the holes there's a hole every few inches so i'm trying to find a spot of good line so that i can just hook a hose to and run it back all right ready to turn it over [Laughter] all right now we're going to see if it turns over we can blow the uh mystery all out of the cylinders we're only about five hours behind schedule and back [Music] yeah looks good i expect it to turn over a little quicker but i guess that's expecting too much check if any more fluids coming out [Laughter] that should do it okay we're gonna clean the plugs come back in fire this baby up so we had a couple of plug wires that were eaten away so we've swapped them with new ones got a couple of vacuum leaks here we got to take care of right here that one's done that one's okay so now i'm just going to hook up the fuel system get this thing fired up final fuel lines going in patent pending okay all right so we've got the old fuel line here to see if the fuel pump pumps if it does um we're going to splice into the line to use the fuel pump rather than this but we have to test that first we're going to run it off this to start we know there's a lot of bad gas in here so the last thing we want to do is pump it through the carb i'm going to uh hold the choke open with a screwdriver and this weather with this heat we don't need a choke all right why don't you crank it over well help if i hook the battery up it's got spark go ahead man [Music] that was pretty easy oh yeah with that mystery oil it's going to smoke a lot go ahead yep fuel pump's working beautiful okay you might as well hook it up so what i'm going to do i'm going to run a line to the pump from a from my gas can so it'll pull right from my gas tank yeah i've seen that done before yep i've done it more times than i can count well i don't know that it's stuck but i suspect that it is so just giving it a little tap i'm going to try to fill the bowl a little bit more is that filled real right or do you need to ah you know it's probably not all right it's probably not all right yep and it probably was full of gas when i stopped running but it's passing gas just fine okay so they call these toad stabbers out here see [Laughter] i knew it i knew it she's like what's a toad stabber the flow is always marked it should be marked if you're in doubt the big end goes towards the carb all right we're almost ready got a new fuel filter we're going to give it another try this time with the fuel system hooked up to the gas can down there all right go for it look i'm gonna put the get hook the battery up okay [Music] still not coming through go for it [Music] okay [Music] okay yeah let's see if there's a filter in here there's not nope there's no filter in there so that's not the problem that is not the problem that's a bummer go ahead [Music] [Music] okay got it running but it runs terrible terrible terrible and it won't keep running i think it's two separate problems i think the float's stuck we could fix that but it's it's not firing at the right time either this thing is jump time or the timing is way off in the distributor but i don't think so the distributor looks like it's right from where the vacuum canister is but we'll go go back to the hotel relax i'll give it some thought maybe i can think of something else good morning so we are headed back out to the chevelle this is our last day yesterday we were out here a little bit over eight hours and um we were both so so tired he was i don't know how he made it it was so hot um we were we looked so bad i didn't even want to do the video on the drive back to the hotel because we both were so we look so terrible um we went to bed last night at 8 30 and slept until 8 30 this morning but it's funny he was talking about the interiors of some of the vehicles that we've done rescues on and it was just so funny i told him i said okay you should totally talk about that um on camera because it's it's kind of interesting if you watch the videos if you haven't watch the videos that he's going to talk about you should go back and watch him so that you completely understand what he's speaking of so but richard go ahead you were talking about the chevelle versus some other cars yeah so we've been doing this a long time obviously and you know when there's been an animal living in the vehicle um that smell it has and it's it's dangerous and i'll leave it at that and talk about that later today but um this is the worst this chevelle is the worst smell of any of the vehicles we've done we did the the black 50 chevy a few weeks back and that one was bad that had a huge hole in the floor and there obviously was an animal crawling up in there and living there and before that the red 72 ford that was out in the field um with the six-cylinder engine that one was bad same reason had a hole in the floor um those two are bad but at least they aired out this thing we let it air out all day and it was still terrible hopefully today it's been aired out because if it's not there's no way that i can sit in this car to move it [Music] we're back it's very clear to me listening to the videos from yesterday that the engine's out of time way out of time that's why it keeps firing through the the carburetor you may have heard on the video from yesterday that it sounds like it's got a rod knock or something that's not what it is it's actually firing in out of order we check the firing order and the plug wires it's fine we double check that so it could be the timing chain we'll check that in a bit but it could also be the rotor sometimes the rotor tab the plastic that holds it in can break allowing the rotor tap to move a little bit it's a long shot but it's worth a try well unfortunately the rotor is fine if you get around this way you can see it it's fine it's right here see i was hoping that maybe this this was broken and moved to the side but it hasn't it's completely fine i'll check under the cap too to be sure again it was a long shot oh yeah it's fine in there too it's real nice actually so that's not the problem so what i'm trying to do here is establish if in fact the timing the cam timing is correct so i've got you can see a little piece of blue tape down there hopefully that's next to the timing mark on the crank and you can see the timing marks mounted to the timing tab on the timing tab next to it so i'm going to match that up with the distributor when the distributor rotor there is pointed at number one cylinder which is right where that black magic marker mark is on the distributor so i'm going to spin the engine until that comes around and points there that's the compression stroke of number one cylinder and it should match with the timing marks if it doesn't the engine's out of time [Music] so it looks like based on what i can tell i'm at zero degrees there and i'm lined up perfectly with the rotor to number one cylinder so it looks to me like it hasn't jumped time so then the question is why in the world is it firing so off like i say i already checked the timing order the firing order twice i'll check it again but maybe we've got some valves that aren't seating so i'm going to pull the valve covers and take a look all right valve cover is coming off looks good i don't see anything wrong no i don't see anything wrong in here at all at all it's a good thing okay what we're going to do is we're going to take the other one off then we're going to turn the engine over make sure all the valves are actually seating that looks real good under there too real good look at that let's throw the battery in it see if we can see if there's any valve sticking see all the valves move ready yep [Music] all good all good all right we'll put these back on anyway okay go ahead [Music] okay i pulled the timing up forward that sounded a lot better isn't it a lot better let me pull the timing up some more [Music] [Music] [Music] oh [Music] [Music] nice all right so now all the pops you heard that time were coming through the header none came through the car so i'm gonna bolt the header back up once it cools and uh i think we'll be good to go the distributor is still funky right i pulled the timing way farther up than it should have should need to be but i mean it's getting better and better the more it runs those valves are seating totally totally so if we if i can get that header piece back on it'll just put enough muffling on it so it won't pop at all all right we hooked the header up on this side so it should pop a lot less through the exhaust we'll try it anyway i'm gonna fill up the bowl i think the float's unstuck because it idled a long time let's try that yep [Laughter] [Music] and it's idling [Music] let's crank it over one more time yeah the float is definitely not stuck anymore yeah give me a sec because i'm going to try to set the timing again it's still way off yeah okay go go for it [Music] [Music] too far okay one more time ready yep go ahead [Music] oh my god you got 40 pounds of oil pressure better and better [Music] did you believe it based on yesterday [Music] yeah yeah i'm gonna see if it goes in again but i'm pretty sure it will [Music] it might stalled [Music] [Music] oh [Music] [Music] [Music] all right i put a couple of quarts in it's loud because the header was busted through on this side but actuality now the engine sounds really good it's really low [Music] all right um we shut it down because the transmission line where i looped it is leaking like crazy it's probably leaking out everything that i'm putting in put it on that's impressive [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] we're gonna see if it goes into gear now that it's full yeah went into here [Music] all right transmission now that's full it's going into gear leak is fixed so this tree is coming out get the jack stand out then we're going to pull it forward now we're going to try to get it out of this hole what'd you put in there richard cd player all right beautiful who'd have thought that's some cornfield engineering there trying out for the rowing team now we need another vcr oh look at that that one's not stuck either and it's taken air look at that beautiful it's as far as it goes we're gonna try to get it out of here i've got a couple of bricks under this wheel a vcr under that wheel all four tires of air in them we'll see i'm gonna put it in gear this isn't going anywhere and just use the throttle to try to get it to move ahead if it starts to get away from me i'll just close the choke to shut it off or you can throw it in park [Music] oh it's thing [Music] so [Music] um we couldn't quite get it out of here we're just not this this mud's like glue we just can't get it out got it to where we want it to be it's running great it's starting great it's all good so this car owned by the owner since 1977 huge moment we got the engine straightened out it's running well i'd like to ask the owner you know what do you think how how do you think our progress went i think it was a huge help to me the cars running like it used to i didn't think i'd ever hear it run again and i'm really pleased i'm real pleased awesome what what's the next steps for you in this car well it's going to gradually get restored it won't all get done at one time but i intend to make a show vehicle out of it all right well it deserves it yeah thank you thanks everyone for watching this one was a lot of fun it's beautiful out here it's part of the country i've never been to before please subscribe if you like this kind of video we've got some more lined up in the countryside like this i think you're really going to like it that's all for now

Channel: What the Rust?

Views: 442,772

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Id: tIQERy-sRnM

Length: 65min 5sec (3905 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 12 2022