It's Do or Die for my '67 Special - Looking for Advice

[UPDATE] I only had about a half hour of time this evening before I had to leave, but I messed with it a little bit. So here's what happened:

- I had the charger hooked up all day today.
- I added maybe only a gallon of fresh gas to the tank (probably should have added more, but it's all I had on hand at the moment)
- Added some gas to the small inlet port in the carb - Also opened butterfly valve and added fuel in there too (is that right?)
- Battery had spark and showed a good reading on the charger (not sure if it was because the old ass battery was actually charged, or if the charger was providing all power)
- Tried cranking her about 6 times. Cranks sounded fairly slow (but not too unhealthy), progressively getting slower and slower until I gave up on the trial
- Trials 4, 5, 6 - single "pop" sound out of exhaust

I will do the spark tests tomorrow and report back.

-Andrew

 

The battery is toast. Pull it, pull the alternator, take them to the parts store and have them tested. If you are not sure about hooking the alt. back up, take a picture of the wires firs. Take car of these two things, buy some starting fluid and I think you will be in business. Probably buy a couple more gallons of gas too and put it in the tank. Put the (probably new after the test) battery and alt. back in, put a little gas in the carb where the "butterfly valve" is (that's the choke) and crank it. If it doesn't want to start give a little shot of the starting fluid into the carb and try again. If you have spark it will run for at least a second doing this, and that short little run will help to get the gas flowing and put some in the float bowl of the carb so that it can pump it into the engine. You can have this thing running (probably) by mid day if you do this. I would be willing to bet that the battery is going to test bad and you won't have luck getting it going or getting true test results on a lot of the tests without fixing that. I'm willing to bet that the alternator is bad also, and has been the problem from the start. Next is to see what else is wrong after sitting for three years, and what else is in need of fixing before it causes the car to sit for another three years.

 

Well,what happened?

 

Well, I got underneath the car...just to orient myself with the fuel tank and fuel lines and whatnot, and, this car is, um, too rusted for me to repair without a good amount of time/money. I kind of think if I get it running that the drivability may be compromised because of the body situation.

In short, I'd rather sell the good parts off the car (there are quite a few), or just sell it as a parts car, to a Buick enthusiast who can really use them. The other option is to let it sit until I have money to put into it. By then, who knows if it will be worth restoring. I have two other cars, one still with payments, and one with high miles.

I hope I can just sell the whole thing to someone locally. Parting out seems a bit tedious, especially with shipping.

 

based on the work you've done to this car, I would think that parting it out might take a very long time.

 

Well, I had a some time today, so I took your advice and brought the alt to the parts store. It actually tested okay. Not great, the guy said, but good enough to run the car. I went back home and installed it, but I left the old battery in the car, trying to crank the car off of a jump start, first off my plug-in battery charger, and then off of my other car with jumper cables. Using the charger, it cranked very slow, with a couple pops out of the tail pipe. Jumping it off my other car, it cranked a bit faster, but still about half as fast as it should. Again, a few more pops out of the tailpipe. I should also mention that I did use gasoline in the carb's choke, along with a few shots of starting fluid when the gasoline alone didn't work.

Then, before dropping $75 on a new battery, I actually took the strong battery out of my other car, and put it in place of the old battery in the Buick. The temporary replacement battery from the other car I really don't think is the "correct" battery for the Buick (does that reallymatter?), but when I put it in (along with a few more gallons of fresh fuel), it started cranking quite fast. Probably as fast as it normally should. But still, no start.

Next step I figured I would take is removing a spark plug to check for spark.

 

A fast way to check for spark is to remove the distributor cap. Inspect the towers inside the cap and look for corrosion. Then with the cap off have a friend turn the key trying to start it. Look at the points and see if the points spark. If it does,put cap on and remove the center coil wire.Put a phillips screwdriver into the metal of the wire and hold it by the handle next to a bolt ot metal part to see if it sparks when turned over. May be that you have bad points,condenser or coil.A simple fix..

 

Thanks. I love easy checks. Now I need someone to help me out. I'll report back when I do.

 

rofl because i have a car just like this, i got it running good again, AND i do yoga

 

I hate thhis thread!

 

one last thing- when, er i mean if you decide to part that out, please contact me about one of those trim pieces with the 3 fake vents

 

The Buick is now up and running as of about an hour ago. I had a friend of mine come over and help me with it. The points were off by a little, the timing needed to be reset, and the choke was off. We ensured the firing order was set up correctly.

On the to do list is a carb rebuild, battery, fixing the exhaust (it's completely on the ground), and cleaning the interior of the mold.

Just want to give a big thanks to those who responded to this thread. I do appreciate it.