Stutzdate 2012-02-04

I don’t remember ever watching Beverly Hillbillies, but I’m sure our antics on the street Saturday brought the old show to our neighbors’ minds.

We aired up the one leaky tire and cleared all the tools off the running boards. George added his nicely constructed bracket to the loose tail end of the exhaust. We used haywire to temporarily keep the loose shocks from swinging around (we’ll attach those after we get some brake work done). We fiddled with the vacuum tank to get some gas flowing cleanly through. We found that the tank leaks, so we wired a plastic container under it to catch the drips (new job for George – seal the leaks).

Once we had gas all over the place, we checked for spark. Well, George checked for spark. I went and got the fire extinguisher to keep it handy. (George has a bad habit of catching fire.) Yup, there was spark, which was a happy surprise given that I was the last one to work on the wiring.

George took the front seat of the Stutz, and Brad took the wheel of the tow vehicle (a conspicuously ugly and beat up old minivan normally used for hauling hay and feed). Bill and I stood on the running boards, while Judy and the kids ran up and down the street beside us. Judy had the camcorder going, which worries me because I have no idea how many regulations we were breaking in this exercise.

On the second pull down the street, the old girl (the car, not Judy) sounded like she wanted to fire up. On the third pull down the street she did fire. This is where the smoke came billowing out from all the ATF, STP, and whatnot we had soaking in the cylinders. The smoke filled the cab, the air, and at least two neighbors’ houses.

The engine ran great! The spark was good (surprise) and the carb was working well (surprise). George kept it revved for a while, and soon it was able to start with its own starter and idle nicely. The generator was working well and we could see in the ammeter it was charging the battery. George drove it back down the street to our house. At one point he took off pretty fast, which had Bill and I yelling after him not to forget that we hadn’t done the brakes yet.

That was a lot of great news. We only ran it for about ten minutes total, but there are a few concerns. The oil pressure was off the end of the gauge (well over 30). The head gasket was leaking slightly down both sides of the block. The rad was bubbling over when we got it hot. Now, there was a lot of junk floating out of the rad (nut shells or some such) and we hope that the bubbling up is a result of blockages and air bubbles. But, we’ll be keeping an eye on all these, and we may yet have to pull the head and get a gasket made.