It's alive! (sort of)

Thanks to Jon Fearnow's tools, PB Blaster, and my near-autistic ability to focus all my energies on futile tasks, I was able to finally coax the last of the clutch-head screws from the cap of the sending unit in the gas tank. I'm pretty sure this is the original sending unit:

When I pulled it out, the opening of the tube leaked a blackish tar. I fashioned a bit of wire into a small facsimile of a pipe snake and started pulling chunks of tar out of the uptake tube. I spent about 45 minutes on my little roto-rooter job and finally ended up with a mostly clean tube - I will put a new sending unit on order tomorrow.

I put the now open sending unit back in, replaced the clutch-head bolts with phillips head bolts and called for Sharon again.

After some trials, and checks that fuel was coming out of the pump, and then into the filter, Sharon laid on the starter. VROOM!! All of a sudden the truck was running on its own. LIFE!!

Gray smoke poured from the exhaust for a bit and there were a couple backfires. The engine was really racing. I was a little concerned and was about to ask Sharon to turn the key when it slowed down and smoothed out on its own. I asked Sharon if she turned the key off. She said no, but she did take her foot off the pedal. Yikes!

I should have explained to her that once the truck started she could lay off the starter. I hope we didn't cause too much damage with that full throttle first start.

The engine died and I had her start it again. It fired right up. It was clear the idle probably needed to be adjusted because she had to give it a little gas to keep it running.

I was starting to grin like an idiot when fluid started coming out of the carburetor. It started smoking and I had Sharon kill the engine before it caught on fire:


I have a carburetor rebuild kit on order, with all new gaskets. It looks like I'll need to rebuild the carb before I take it on the road.

All-in-all a pretty exciting evening. I can't wait to get back at it. I feel like we are close to getting the truck running and I can't wait to take it on its first drive.