Greetings . . .

I haven’t been very active on the site lately (beyond admin/moderator duties) because I have been heads down in the garage making a final push to get the car back on the road this summer . . .

As soon as the weather broke this spring I began to mock up an exhaust system from mandrel bends that I got from Burns Stainless. I will put together a thread with details sometime later . . . stick building an exhaust is fun.

My quick update is that the engine is running!

Last fall (before the cold set in for good) I got all of the front clip sheet metal refurbished and hung in the garage to cure. So this spring it has been build – build – build . . . mostly clean hands stuff – far more rewarding then some of the dirty dog-work that lead to this point.

Here’s some under hood shots from this week:





On Wednesday evening I was finally ready to try to fire things up. I had chased a few fuel leaks down and remedied them; same with coolant. The first attempts at firing were sparkless . . . I suspected that my vintage Shurhit condenser was likely DOA from years on the shelf. There was juice to the coil but no breaker-point events – dead short in the condenser? Swapped it for a modern one and bingo we had sparks albeit a bit early. Retarded the cap the and the engine came to life . . . quickly smoking off the assembly lube . . .

Now I am trying to sort through the carbs. When the engine fires it immediately tachs to about 1200 RPM and then slowly climbs to just shy of 3000 revs. Curb idle screws are backed off completely so the throttle plates are fully closed to the factory idle clearances.

These Carters use an offset choke plate that is pulled open by air-horn intake velocity. The auto choke springs pull the plates shut at idle and then relax with heat. With the engine trying to rev-away the choke plates are getting pulled open by incoming air. I can throttle the engine by holding the plates nearly closed manually. Not sure where the fuel is coming from.

I am going to revisit the metering rod adjustments.

More to come.

Regards,
Stock49