bryanvw61

I'm a high school auto teacher and am restoring my 66 coupe. Its a rolling chassis with no usable motor, but the parts car came complete with a straight 6. Well the parts car hasn't run in atleast 10 years and has been just rotting away.

Now I teach my kids that for a car to run, you need 3 main things, compression, spark, fuel.

So the students and the other auto teacher a few weeks ago decided to check for compression... at first there was little, but once we got the cylinder walls with a little oil, the numbers got right up near 100. Compression.... Check

Then we try to see if we can get spark... nothing. but we quickly notice that the points are toast. we go into a drawer in the shop and find an old set of points that matches closely, we didn't even check the dwell or anything, just through it in. Bingo... Spark... Check

We pour some fuel down the carb and she does bark, and barks nicely, no loud knocks or anything.... however exams come and it sits for a few weeks.

Now exams are over and we are back into the shop and a student of mine gets the old Ford 1100 carb working nicely and seems like its going to be a perfect it, but the plastic piece working the accelerator pumps breaks, so we decide to pull the Holley carb off my roller's junk motor that sat outside for 2 years! With a B-tank and some PB blaster my student is able to miraculously get it freed up and working smoothly, but it doesn't fit on the flange and the flange it came off of has a stripped bolt. so we have to drill out the mounting holes and we make her fit, we then rig up a lawn mower gas tank to the fuel pump and grab a battery and a screw driver to hot wire it, and to make a long story short we get some constant fuel into the carb, and Bam We've got a running engine! .... Check

There is something to be said about an old 7 main bearing straight six, i swear you can't kill them. This motor sat for 10 years and all it needed was an oil change, a set of points, and some TLC and she ran better than a lot of cars i've been in... no ticking, knocking, or anything a miss... just a good old straight 6

but please don't tell her that she's going to be replaced by the 302 in the bronco out back someday

Gun Jam

Right on!
What a cool deal for your students. I have always felt the old engines 6 or 8 cylinder are very rugged when it comes to being stored usually very little it required to revive them.

Gun

bryanvw61

its when they used to build things to last, unlike the throw-aways today

stang4lyfe

ya i watched some show i think tlc or somethin about myths of engines. they took a old 289 and had it hooked up to a radiator and were trying myths like egg in the radiator in to plug a hole and other things to the engine. in the end they decided to try and kill the engine ie: water in the crankcase, redlinein the hell outta it. they they started puttin stuff down the carb like coins. funny cuz u could here em clinking around. they never did kill it tho after about 10 mins of abuse. sad but interesting

bartak59

I saw that same episode, it's a show called "Myth Busters" on Discovery channel (I think...?). From what I recall, an egg in the radiator DID actually plug a small leak. I think they finally killed the engine when they poured bleach into the carb.