Starting Once Again… complete with belt squeal!
Well, a long while after getting the engine put back together in confidence, we finally started her up. My brother was in town for a few hours and we took the time to connect up the random wires, hoses, and tighten bolts to get the car in starting shape. James was there when we first started tearing into the car… taking out the old engine and getting real dirty with the jankness the car offered up. So, its pretty cool that he’s back again for the finishing touches… then engine starting being the most important in my opinion.
Anyways, ran into a couple mishaps in the process… both pretty dumb, but we weren’t ‘taking our time’ as the sun was setting, it was getting cold and we had no flashlights… defeat was not in the cards. The first issue was with the radiator petcock. For whatever reason I had no recollection of how the damn thing operated. Righty-tighty, I ‘closed’ the petcock, the threads sunk into the radiator and that was that… but fluid just gushed out. So I tightened it some more… same thing. Finally I decided to remove it and check it out… well, wouldn’t yah know… it closes by turning it left and exposing threads. Maybe this is the way all radiators are… but it was news to us. Clever.
The second, and probably equally embarrassing issue was gas. Yes, the gas tank ended up being empty. We started the car, it ran, and as I was adjusting the timing it died… the gas the float bowls ran out. We figured my timing adjustment went wrong and sat there sipping a beer for a couple minutes. Finally my ever wise brother James asked if it had gas… my shoulder shrug instantly made me realize he was right. Luckily I had about 4 gallons on hand and put it all in the tank. The fuel pump quieted down a bit and I now know what a dry fuel pump sounds like. We turned the b20 over and it fired right up.
The refreshed engine features a clean/TIGHT flywheel. Literally I tightened the life out of it. It shall stay tight for many many moons. A Cometic head gasket that brings the compression to 9:1… not sure what it was before, but its good to have real numbers now. And resurfaced rockers by Luigi himself. It may be my imagination, but the engine sounds smoother, and less noisy, and it seems to turn over quicker. Next steps include, registering the guy, making the blinkers work… and driving it!