Engine: CRANK IT UP!

I've taken a bit of time away from the Rustbucket Resto in order to make a fairly large repair to the good jeep.  The transmission went kaput on the 4th of July.  In order to make the repair, I had to remove the transmission from the jeep and do a part replacement from the its internals.  The actual replacing part wasn't the difficult aspect, but instead it was all of the little things that had to be done in order to remove the transmission and then to reinstall it.  In the end (knock on wood!) the repair went well and last I knew, everything was fully functioning.  I was even able to drive it WITHOUT having to continueally hold second gear in place!  I hope it lasts a long while.

So today, I was able to return my attention back to the Rustbucket.  I had lost my momentum and had kind of forgotten where exactly I was in the rebuild process and what my next move would be.  I decided this morning to go for the gusto and start that sucker up. 

 I pushed it out into the driveway.   Although I wasn't expecting it to burst into flames, it was certainly a thought that lingered in the back areas of my mind.  No sense burning the house down, right?  The battery is on its last death throes.  A new one will be in its future, but for now, I hooked up the battery charger to it to give it a bit more "juice" while cranking.  I cleaned out the rubber gas line and spun the crank shaft for awhile so as to work the gas pump.  Gas seemed to be moving through the line, albeit slowly.  I ended up (not recommended) taking a huff from the hose to expedite the process.  I spat the gas out and hooked it up to the carb.  I also gave it a short squirt of starting fluid to "help" the old girl out.

I connected the lead from the coil to the battery and then began handcranking.   And handcranking.  And handcranking.  You'll see in the video that I stop after a few cranks and adjust the carb.  I opened up the choke butterfly just a touch in an effort to give it some more air.  I was afraid of flooding the carb with gas at this point.  I spun the hand crank a few more times and...

...she fired up!  There was an awful lot of white smoke puffing frm the exhaust.  One consideration is that I do not have the muffler attached.  Number two consideration is that the guy I bought it from said that he had dumped A LOT of oil into the engine for safe storage.  By the end of the running, I did notice that the smoke began to decrease dramatically.  I'm not too worried about it right now.  More of a concern was a little bit of seepage from the gasket below the head.  I might try tightening the head bolts a bit and check for proper torquing.  There might just be a new head gasket in this engine's future.

The other highlight of the startup was that the oil pressure gauge was reading between 20-25 lbs of pressure at idle.  Good stuff.

Almost 25lbs of oil pressure.  Not too shabby.

The only thing that I might address before putting the tub on the chassis will be to go back over the valve tappets.  I thought the engine wounded fine, but the more I listened, the more it may have begun to sound like a typewriter.  I figure it can't hurt any to at least double check the clearance.  All in all, it was a successful start-up!