Sorry Sam! No pictures or videos of the car running again. Soon though...
My nephew, Kris, came over last night and we buttoned up the few remaining things on the motor. With the radiator topped off, wiring connnected, vacuum lines attached/capped, Kris re-primed the engine and set the distributor. I got in and turned the key - CLICK! I had the battery on a charger, but it wasn't up to the task yet. So I pulled the battery out of the SMPV, and tried again. It cranked about 10 seconds and the motor sputtered briefly. Tried it again and she came to life. Kris adjusted the distributor while I tap-danced on the throttle. We shut it down to address a leaking fuel line at the pump, but then we ran it for a couple of minutes. We were not able to set the timing because the timing marks were not visible on the crank. It was close to 9pm anyway, so I didn't want to annoy the neighbors too much.
We will try again this next week to finish it up. We replaced the electric choke last night, and put the hood back on (it needs some minor adjustments still, but it latches closed). I need to get a battery hold-down for the new tray. We also need to put it up on jackstands so we can loosen the connection at the headers and h-pipe. There is a leak there, so I think we can tweak the h-pipe and tighten it back down. There are more little things to finish up, but it should be back on the road next week.
Oh, and I have decided to keep this car
and the SMPV!
