I got it started!!!

Tonight I finally got the engine started. It's been a several day battle that entailed chasing a bunch of electrical demons, making new ground cables out of an old one, purchasing a battery and cleaning/rebuilding the starter.

I kept fighting these demons because when I turned the key, the engine would just go "ERNK" and turn about 1/16 of a revolution. I asked on ffcars.com and almost everyone said it was a grounding problem. Hence the reason I made new ground cables.

After that, it still went "ERNK" so I swiped the battery out of the Marlin (that was originally purchased for the Mustang donor) and tried that.

"ERNK"

I hooked it to our Jeep with jumper cables.

"ERNK"

After a couple of days cooling off and much cussing I decided I'd try one more thing. Every time I'd tried to start it I had connected the battery with jumper cables since I don't have the battery box mounted yet. This time I connected the cables directly to the battery.

AND IT FINALLY TURNED OVER!!

I found a fuel leak so I tightened the fuel line clamps. The power steering fitting leaks but I expected that - I wanted to flush the steering fluid anyway so it's not a problem.

So I got all excited and thought, "This is it! I'll finally get to hear this thing run!"

Except that I forgot to hook up the distributor.

Once I found that and hooked it up, I was rewarded with this.



So now I need to do some housekeeping, mount the battery box, run a few more cables, etc. BUT IT FINALLY STARTED!!!!

To quote Mater from Cars, "I'm happier than a tornado in a trailer park right now!"

Has it really been that long?

When we last left our intrepid builder he was untangling the mass of subtle clues and diagrams desperately searching for a diamond in the rough...

Okay, I was cleaning grease and crud off of the engine. I have one thing to say, Simple Green and Krud Kutter are wondrous cleaners!

As you may recall, the engine looked pretty bad.





A gallon or so of Simple Green later it was clean. But it was still ugly. It was soooo ugly... that I have no pictures of it.

After much taping and various cans of paint, I was rewarded with this.





It still had the stock valve covers on it and no bolt-ons. But it looked a LOT better. So, shortly thereafter, I did this.



Remember these?



After installing all of the stuff in the boxes, the engine now looks like this.





And that's what I've been doing.

I've still got plenty to do but I'm getting closer to the first start.

The biggest problem now is that it's gone and gotten cold. So cold that these guys are talking about moving to Florida.