It Lives!

Today I welded in the kick panel patch and put seam sealer over my crappy welds and it doesn't look half bad. Once the sealer sets up, I'll give it a coat of undercoating. Still need to cut out some rust in the floor/firewall seams on both sides, but this is major progress. Still need to do some work on the A pillar and kick/floor in the interior, but that can wait for the moment.

To compare to what I started with, refer back to the pics in the Slice and Dice post. I actually cut a bit more from it that that. The square under the inner fender flange was ultimately cut out as well (seen above as the square of seam sealer).

While the sealer and primer was drying, I decided it was time to give the engine a go. I fashioned a oil priming rod out of a piece of all-thread and ran it with the drill for about 5 minutes (about long enough to make the drill smoke). Put the dizzy back in, hooked up the battery, sprayed some ether and hit the key...

vrrrrrroooooooooommmmmmm. How sweet it is! On the first crank it fired off. Now that I know it wants to run, I filled the carb with gas. It fired right up and settled into a nice little idle. Sweeeet!

Didn't run it too long since there is no radiator and didn't want to totally gas out the garage. I asked Diane if she heard me start it and she said she not so much heard it as she felt it - it shook the whole house. Nice.

No big clouds of smoke, no belching of fluids. But, after it was shut down, I did notice that the transfer case is dripping oil. What's up with that? I also noticed that the passenger side exhaust is touching the frame just south of the manifold. Nothing a bfh can't fix.

If the rain holds off tomorrow, I might just have to roll it out into the driveway and let it run a while longer.

Woohoo!