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!"