Foolishly I agreed to check out someones car at work who said it wasn’t running. No biggie, I can usually diagnose that rather quickly. Well, after signing up, I come to find out that it’s not that it was a running car that won’t start, it’s one that has been sitting.
Checked it out, and it’s an older Jeep Cherokee of some sorts, probably from the 80s. Carb’d engine. Has been sitting for ~2 years. No battery in it. Probably nothing done to put it away, supposedly it ran before it sat there. Now, the question is, where should I start?
What am I going to want to do about the gas? The carb? (Did I mention I fucking hate carbs?) Should I just throw a battery and go to town? This is one sickly looking vehicle, I definately rased the :bs: on the only been sitting for 2 years and it ran before thing.
wellp my dad started his 1969 fiat after sitting for almost 4 years nad he did nothing
adn it started right up… carbs do that pretty well
umm going by what i read in a hot rod magazine they are gonna want u to pull the fuel tank drain it… purge the lines… change coolant… basically exchange all coolant
also one thing i found is to pull the plugs and blow/vacuum out all the loose carbon in the combustion chamber
also pulling the oil pan and changing the oil would not be a bad idea since the oil is probably bad as well now
i tried starting my dads truck after it sat for like 3 months. the head gasket slowly leaked coolant into cylinder 4 and when i started it hydrolocked and tossed a rod through the block.
pops has a 70 lebaron in the garage that was last registered in 1980, he bought it in 1990 after it sat a full 10 years … drove it home no prob
it sits for 5 year increments … check the plugs, shoot some oil in the cylinders, check for spark, dump some gas down the carb and crank it over
sometimes carbs get fucked up tho, i bought a edelbrock carb on ebay and the fuel that was in it originaly apparently had water in it to … nothing about the carb was usable except the body itself … and ever thats questionable
Nah, that was my plan of action from the beginning, just like trying to start every car, didn’t know if there was going to be some wierd ass gummed up fuel in the carb or something that I needed to watch for.
id put some gas dryer in there also, just to be safe.
no need to pull the whole oil pan, just change the oil like normal. thats what u get for reading hot rod mags, useless info that takes 10120100 times longer than it should.
oh yea, sometimes its best to take a gallon of gas, and swap the fuel system around a little
get a 4" section of fuel line and connect it in place of the stock fuel line on the pump, drop the other end into the gallon container so that your not attemping to use the crappy fuel from the tank to run the car
you can always check the gas in the tank later on, if the gas tank needs to be drained and cleaned its better to NOT find out because the car doesnt want to start on it
dropping the oil pan is a good idea… any scraps of metal have surely made their way to the bottom of the pan, so now is the ideal time to pull it and get out the shavings.
you may also want to pull the distributor and prime the oil. build up some pressure before trying to stary it.
spray some starter spray in the carb before you even consider hitting the key…
make sure it is a full battery with good cold cranking amps.
if it is going to fire, you will know with the starter spray… if it doesn’t start with that, putting fresh fuel in it would be a waste of time. Just pour un regulated fuel into the carb… no biggie, just don’t flood it. once you know it runs… then change the fuel.
