I purchased my '52 after it had been sitting unused/moved in field for more than 25 years or so. Once I got it home, I decided to see if I could get it running (of course the PO said it ran when it was parked). Here is what I did:
1. Pulled plugs and squirted liquid wrench and fogging oil in each cylinder.
2. Drain oil...oops, there wasn't any so I filled her up.
3. Pulled, rebuilt, and reinstalled carb.
4. Assuming fuel pump was no good, I connected carb to fuel can sitting on cab roof via clear tubing. Started a syphon to get fuel flowing to carb.
5. Pulled distributor and rebuilt.
6. Pulled valve cover to manually oil and inspect valve train and clean out all the rodent food scraps.
7. Using a cut-off screw driver blade chuck into my cordless drill motor, I spun the oil pump clockwise to build oil pressure. I continued to spin the pump until I saw oil coming out of the rocker "return" pipe. This verified the oil pump was working and primed the oil system.
8. Reinstalled the distributor and set base timing.
9. Connect 12 volt battery directly to starter and coil with toggle switch on lead to distributor.
10. Broke the engine free with a pry bar. Luckily it "popped" loose fairly easily with no stuck valves.
11. I primed the carb with a bit of fuel.
12. Turned toggle to on and had my soon operate the starter pedal...Vroom, it fired right up immediately and sounded great. All kinds of varmit food came shooting out of exhaust pipe, but it ran.
I did not even bother with the cooling system. Running the engine a few minutes without coolant wont hurt anything (especially if you plan on replacing water pump later anyway...which you should). After I veried it ran, I pulled the engine and tore it down. It was in remarkably good condition, but decided to bore and rebuild properly anyway.
Have fun.
Last edited by DavidF; 01/04/2013 9:32 AM.
