It’s Alive — The Gray Lady Rumbles To Life !!
ByAll of the hard work came together this morning when I once again pulled the distributor and corrected its installation, re-installed the plugs, changed her oil, gave her a shot of starting fluid and BOOM off she went sputtering and snorting, popping, and backfiring. Naturally after sleeping for decades no one expected her to awaken with a smile, but she is awake. Admittedly, I shut her down after about 20 seconds amidst the unexpected noise.
I made some minor carburetor and timing adjustments, started again and she smoothed out dramatically but there are some weird and scary noises coming from the front end, so I shut her back down again. I didn’t think any of the noises were coming from the engine itself so I removed the power steering and generator belts, re-started and the noises were now gone indicating possible bearing issues in either the generator or power steering pump. Again, I shut her back down, because without the belts the water pump was not turning and I was not going to take a chance of her overheating.
I put the power steering pump belt back on, re-started again and this time she ran quietly at a fast idle for about 20 minutes until she came up to normal operating temperature. Seems like the noise was coming from the generator and I will have to check it out later. She ran smooth, solid and without so much as a hiccup and overall I’m just tickled pink.…. Note to Santa, you can skip my house this year, today was good enough for me and besides I really have not been all that good anyway…lol.
After shutdown a complete inspection showed a minor oil leak at the oil filter resulting from a loose compression fitting and there is an issue with the distributor hold down allowing the timing to back off as the motor is running. All minor and easily fixed. I will try to post video of the start-up when I get a minute, but it is getting crazy with the holidays almost here.
