Roger, go for throttle up....

This weekend was a delight of spending time with family over Thanksgiving, my mother's birthday, and not being at my day job. It was also the first substantial chance I've had to start clearing the way for the bus project to move forward. I spent time in the garage getting thing picked up: the place has been a dumping ground for every tool, sanding block, and screw that has had to leave the house as part of general cleanup. This means that there is no order, only chaos. And every tool that I do not immediately need for vehicle work must vacate to the shed. There is going to be a large bus in the middle of my garage really soon...

But despite playing Tetris with too many bins and too little space, I broke loose some time on Saturday to wrench the old battery out, and get the temporary one (the AGM from my father's wheelchair) installed so that I might be able to test an engine start.

From the beginning, I could see that this wasn't going to be any sort of fun. The working space for putting heavy stress on frozen bolts is absolutely impossible. In this case, the bracket on the battery that holds the it in place at the right rear of the vehicle (so the battery doesn't go sailing across the engine compartment during a sharp right turn) was one solid chunk of rust, frozen together permanently. I don't have any illusions about the battery tray: it is going to have to come out...all of it. So I wasn't too concerned with doing any more damage in there than 12 years of overflowing battery acid had done. But that bracket really hung on for dear life. It took about an hour of prying, grinding, etc, before I was able to lever the battery out of the bracket (without puncturing the battery) and out.

Once I had a little more space, I went to replace the battery ground cable. The existing one looked like someone had replaced the original with 6 gauge cable salvaged from an electric fence. I replaced it with a long, 20" insulated cable 2AWG, which ought to really help. (Never, ever cheap out on your power cables.) One of the added benefits of the long ground wire is that it lets American batteries that have their ground terminal on the right to be used just as easily as the factory fit ones. (Group 42, for those of you who want an original battery. I'll probably go bigger, as the cost is not much different, it bolts into the same bracket location, and you can considerably up-size your Cold Cranking Amps for pennies relative to power when you really need it.)

With the battery hooked up, I realized that Ferd' had juice for the first time on a decade. Let's see what we can see:

Key to RUN

Running Lights: OK
Headlights (High & Low): OK
Backup Lights: OUT (Check fuse, then bulbs, then transmission switch)
Turn indicators: OUT, nothing at the stalk nor by hazard switch. Check fuse 8 and 12, but I suspect the flasher unit. $13.
Interior cab: Fwd lamp OUT, rear lamp OK
Radio: OK
Warning Indicators: Oil, Battery, Turn OK // EGR UNKNOWN // High Beam: OUT
Rear window defrost: NOT TESTED
BA6 heater: NOT TESTED

This went better than expected. No vast surprises; frankly I was pretty pleased. So I decided that there was no harm in going for broke and trying for an engine start. This was a foolishly optimistic thing, but since the current exercise is to determine the state of the engine and make it run if practical, then it was a golden opportunity: If the engine lit off and started, I jump to the front of the line for the next thing sparing lots of dogged checking, measuring, etc.

The Two Frogs

Ttwo frogs once fell into a vat of cream.
One frog sees how hopeless the situation was,
gives up and drowns.
The other is too stupid to know he's

licked, so he keeps kicking away, and eventually

churns himself a little island of butter that he

perches on until the milkmaid comes and chucks him out.

I tend to be the first kind of frog, who resigns the game without playing. Occasionally, my optimism gets the better of me. This was one of those times.

I put on the new oil filter, filled the crankcase with oil (I had dumped the old junk in May) to the fill line, and hooked up the fuel rail again according to the test rig that I had been running previously, with the fuel pump in the engine compartment drawing from the jerry-can, and the pressure regulator at the end of the fuel rail dumping back into the jerry-can.

I hit a slight snag here: the fuel pump being in the engine compartment meant that the wiring harness wouldn't reach. So I hot-wired the pump straight to the battery, heard it prime itself and then the flow of the fuel returning to the jerry-can via the FPR. We have fuel, we have air, we just need to 'add fire.' Slow march to the driver's seat....

Stop. "add Fire." "Fire" is why you have the CO2 extinguisher. This what you planned: an inflexible safety protocol to make up for how you are rushing things. Take the extra 30 seconds and be sure. It is the cheapest insurance you'll ever buy.

With CO2 rig set up, and having steadied down, I pulled the (15) wire off of the coil. Give the engine a chance. Checked to make sure I actually had a rotor and points under the distributor cap (don't laugh, I've had it happen) and then everything buttoned up, I turned the key.

The AGM battery cranked the engine over nicely. Not fast, but steady and no speed-up-slow-down effect that you might hear if compression was zero in one cylinder. OK. Moment of truth. Reconnect (15) at the coil, turn on my camera, and turn the key again.

Cranking. 5 seconds, 10 seconds, no start. Key off.

I don't believe in too much of a good thing, but there was the one last chance of lighting things up that would tell me if there was ANY spark present: some starting fluid down the throat. Just a squirt.

Cranking. 5 seconds, 10 seconds, no start. Key off.


I never did believe the story about the frogs.