It's ALIVE!!!!

Today was the day Barney came back to life!

We had a couple of false starts. I tried to start him up last Saturday after filling up all the fluids, but the new Sears battery I had was defective... The solenoid just clicked when I tried to turn it over. So, after getting a replacement on Monday, I turned the engine over once without the coil wire - just to make sure it would turn! (I'd worried myself silly the two days before thinking about what could be wrong besides the battery. Engine too tight... bad head gasket let coolant leak into the cylinders and hydro-locked the engine... bent pushrod...)

The week has been busy at work, and the couple days I'd wanted to try to start it were filled up. Today, I vowed to put the spark to work.

As you can see from the video, it took a few tries, but that's to be expected. Once he got running, revs came up smooth and strong to about 1,500 RPM; the duals were both blowing hard and sounding good. That's when my wife noticed the leak: gas pumping out of the 90-degree fitting on the output side of the fuel pump. I shut him down and disconnected the battery, careful not to make any sparks...!

Tomorrow I'll fix the leak and re-clock the distributor (when it's rotated to the proper position to run, it's about 90 degrees off from where it should be, and the vacuum advance is hitting the firewall - d'oh!

B-I-G thanks to my lovely wife Terry for encouraging and supporting this project and being a cheerleader whenever I got discouraged. And to Bob Kabchef, Bob Palma and Rich and Dave Gahlbeck and everyone else on the SDC Forum for answering my questions, no matter how stoopid they were :^) And to my buddy John Dick, who pitched in and helped time after time.