{"id":951,"date":"2024-04-19T00:01:00","date_gmt":"2024-04-19T04:01:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wordpress.putrescence.org\/?p=951"},"modified":"2023-12-04T06:46:00","modified_gmt":"2023-12-04T11:46:00","slug":"its-alive-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wordpress.putrescence.org\/?p=951","title":{"rendered":"It’s Alive!"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

We gathered at the shop last night to see if this Italian creation was ready to be awakened from its slumber. I brought the battery from the Neon and Tim brought some starting fluid. Initially, the Neon battery was drawn down enough that there wasn’t enough juice to engage the starter, so we added the jump box and put the battery charger on it. With a couple squirts of starting fluid and a twist of the key, the car coughed to life for a few seconds before dying. We closed off the remaining open vacuum lines and tried again, this time holding the choke mostly closed – the linkage for the carb all depends on the hat being in place and we had it off to the side.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Amazingly, with the choke held in place, the car started – without any more starting fluid! – and as we eased the choke off, it idled on its own and would even rev! It’s a little bit of a rough idle for now, but it’s close enough to call it a running car! It didn’t make any nasty sounds and it appears to be making good oil pressure, if the dash gauge is any indication. The left turbo is spitting out a not-insignificant amount of oil, so it seems like that turbo is likely to need a rebuild. When we took the hat off initially, we found a bunch of oil pooled around the carb, so at least we know the culprit of that now. The plugs were all a bit carboned up, so we pulled them out, hit them with some sandpaper, and re-gapped them. But now, it’s time to make decisions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At this point, I still do not know what my long range plans for the car will be. I don’t really want to try to build it for any sort of motorsports activities, but I haven’t decided if it’s something that I want to keep long-term as a resto-mod on the original engine, do some sort of engine swap to either a FI biturbo engine or something else entirely, or just unload the car and likely make a little bit of a profit on the deal. In any case, I want to be careful to not destroy the value of the car, little though that might be.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As of right now, there are a number of things that I know need to be done to be driveable:<\/p>\n\n\n\n