Following my unscuccessful attempts to get the 800 started last weekend, I had time on Sunday afternoon to diagnose the starting issues. But the first things I did were to put the 2300 carb back on the Travelall and drain gas out of the tank to see how much crud is in there. I cut down some old cat litter jugs and let the gas drain out, then filtered that through an old pillowcase into a 5-gallon bucket. There was some dark particulate at the bottom of each jug, but not as much as I thought there might be. The truck is parked on a slight angle with the drain plug at the top, so I have to get her running long enough to turn around to properly empty the tank all the way, and then I’ll flush it out with clean gas. Hopefully that will sort out the dirty gas issue.

During the week I was able to sneak out during lunchtime, test all four of my spare starters (one is dead-dead, one runs weakly, and two sounded healthy) and swap the old mud-encrusted starter on the 800 for one of the good ones. This sounded MUCH better when I tried it out.

The first weekend task was to do a wet compression test. I dribbled a small amount of oil into the cylinders and checked each one again, and the compression rose dramatically on each one (125-125-150-90) which told me it’s definitely the rings that are stuck. I fiddled with the distributor for a while, adjusting it all the way counterclockwise and then to the opposite side, thinking the timing might be off a little bit, but that had no effect. Then I pulled the cap and rotor off and looked again at the position of the rotor—when I re-stabbed it, I got the rotor pointing a little ahead of the #1 cylinder, but not directly at it. So I pulled the distributor out and fiddled with it until I could line the body up and re-stab it with the rotor pointed directly at the cylinder. I buttoned the engine back up, shot it with some starting fluid, and it fired right up until the ether burned off.

Halleleujah.

From there, I played with the carb and the electric fuel pump to see if I could get it to run from the boat tank, and got it to idle happily for a few minutes. At this point I jumped in and tested out the transmission, and got it to move forwards and backwards under its own power. That was a huge relief. I didn’t want to run it for too long, as I’d pulled the radiator out to get to the crank, so I shut it down and started looking at next steps:

1. The carburetor is leaking out of a relief valve on the top. This means that the electric fuel pump is pushing way too much pressure into the bowl, an issue I had with the Travelall earlier. I’m going to test the regulator I bought for that truck here to see if it fixes the problem in the short term, and then later I’ll pull the carb and clear the needle/seat assembly.
2. I have to finish re-installing the radiator and test it for leaks. I put it back in and hooked up the top hose but I have to flush out the engine and put the bottom hose back on. If the rest of the truck is any indication, the engine is probably full of crud.
3. Brakes. Right now the pedal is frozen solid. The cylinder was dry so I added a little fluid a couple of weeks ago, but it’s still not moving. At the very least I’m going to freshen up the front brakes and I’ll pinch off the rears in order to get it to the driveway. This is going to take some flaring and bending and swearing. If the passenger rear drum is any indicator, the pads are shot, the drum is scored, and the assembly is full of mud.
4. Gas tank. I pulled the access cover off the passenger side tank and started cleaning the mud out from around it, but ran out of light before I could get it moving. It’s held in there by….something, but I don’t have experience with 800’s so I don’t know yet what to look for. The plan is to pull the tank, see if it’s salvageable, and if so, prep it to put back in so that I don’t need to depend on a boat tank. I also have to clear out about 5 lbs. of mud caked in on top of the fender from Dan’s offroad excursions. This means the driver’s side will be just as gnarly, which I was expecting.

Total costs to date:

The temperature outside never got above 20˚ today, but I still bundled up in three layers of warm workclothes to get as much done outside as possible before the snow really hits us. The forecast is for the storm to begin overnight, go all day tomorrow, and shift over to ice before stopping. Next week’s temperatures will be equally cold, so it won’t be going anywhere for a while.

First, I made a quick run to the store for some hardware and Hobo Freight for a medium-sized narrow prybar that I could put on the 800’s flywheel. The main task was to try to get the springs back on the Travelall. I started with the driver’s side, jacking it up and pulling the wheel off. I horsed the spring pack into place and got it oriented in roughly the right place, then finger-tightened the rear shackle in place. This was not easy, as my ribs and butt are still sore from snowboarding on Tuesday—using my body as fulcrum on the ratchet was pretty painful. I should have taken some ibuprofen before going outside. I have an old shop heater I keep running in the garage while I’m working, and I found I had to come in and warm the tips of my fingers up every half an hour or so.

The front bushing was about 2″ away from the front fang, so I had to be creative with a combination of wood wedges, a bottle jack, floor jack, ratchet strap, and Hi-Lift to compress the pack enough to stretch it out and get the holes aligned. I put new Grade 8 bolts in the front mount and tightened everything up, including the U-bolts and shock absorber. By this point in the day the sun was behind the clouds, the temperature was dropping, and I knew I didn’t have enough time to try to install the other side.

The truck sits a lot higher on the front wheel now, which is great to see—overall the stance looks much better and the truck doesn’t look like it’s being squashed on its haunches. I figure I’ll have to get it aligned after I do all the bushings in the steering gear, but this should make a huge difference in handling. I let the fuel pump run and with two pumps of the pedal, it fired right up. I ran it up for about ten minutes while I was cleaning up my tools and then buttoned everything up.

With the remaining light, I shifted over to the 800. All attempts to move it from the crank bolt this week have been a failure, even after I put a ratchet strap on the wrench and left it under tension. Crawling underneath, I put the new prybar on the driver’s side and tried working it toward the center. I was surprised to feel a small amount of movement, so I kept at it until I’d moved it about 6″. I went to the other side and moved it back to where I’d started, and then repeated the process. When I got to the tough section that originally stopped me, I worked it a little more and suddenly felt it give way with a whoosh of compression. Excited, I got up and put a ratchet on the crank bolt and found that it moved pretty freely.

This is a HUGE relief, as now I can start pre-oiling the cylinders, rig up a fuel system from the boat tank, re-install the radiator, and start testing the ignition system for spark. So far I’m only into this thing for the carb rebuild kit and the prybar, so $20 for some new points won’t hurt too bad. I’ve got a set of wires left over from Peer Pressure’s last tuneup, as well as spark plugs with maybe 10K miles on them, so we might be able to get this thing running for pocket change. We’ll see.

Saturday morning I waited until it stopped snowing to get bundled up in work clothes to go take care of a bunch of truck stuff. My sister bought me a set of Redkap coveralls for Christmas, which, like all other work/utility brands were my correct measurements but cut for someone four times my size. We did some re-configuring and I traded up to a set of Dickies bib overalls which are a bit heavier, and I’m very pleased with how they fit—and they’re plenty warm too. Thanks Renie!

The first order of business was to see if the engine in the 800 had loosened up. I pulled the spark plug in cylinder 1, which is the only one still holding liquid, and found that it was still full. I decided I wanted to make life easier on myself, so I drained and pulled the radiator out, freeing up a ton of space so that I could put the breaker bar/pipe combination directly on the crank bolt without having to crawl in the mud under the truck. This was remarkably easy; the four bolts holding the rad/shroud combination came right out, and all I had to do was pull the crosswise support rods out to get it past the cooling fan. With that out of the way, there was suddenly all kinds of room to move in there.

The engine, however, would not budge. It’s been sitting for two weeks with ATF/acetone down each cylinder, and there has been no change. I’m happy to play the long game right now though before I go to the nuclear option and decide to pull the head off—there’s plenty more to do. I’ll just keep going out there and yanking on it every couple of days.

Over on the Travelall, I jacked the passenger side up and made pretty short work of pulling the front spring pack out. Back in the warm garage, I wire-wheeled the packs and mounting plates and sprayed the latter with some Rust-Stop before it got too cold. I had MLK Day off from work, so I drove into Baltimore and dropped them off at the shop where I had the rears done.

Meanwhile I’ve been gathering the parts to put in a working dome light, and I think I’ve got a plan put together. One of the first things I needed were special clips for two of the headliner bows, which I found at our local ACE hardware, and they fit perfectly in the factory channels. With all five bows in place, I now have something to hang dome lights from. I started the wiring part by looking at the factory diagram and realizing I’d perhaps missed one of the pins on the light switch, so I pulled the switch out, hosed it off with electric degreaser, and noticed that the copper contact on the rheostat for the dome light had broken off at some point in the past. I pulled the switch from the green truck dashboard, cleaned it up, and put it in DH. With the system wired up as I understood it from the diagram, I still wasn’t able to get light from the switch, and when I tried to stub in a door switch I blew the fuse.

About that time I got a call from the spring shop, who told me it was ready for pickup. Pleasantly surprised, I drove back into the city, paid them cash (I don’t sneeze at a $50 discount) and returned home with my updated spring packs. By then it was too dark to continue outside, so I stored them in the garage and called it a night.

I’ve been outside as much as possible, but the weather has been lousy for a while now so I moved to some indoor projects. When I pulled the steering column out of the truck in Pittsburgh, I got a basic tw0-spoke steering wheel as part of the deal, which matches the one in the 800. I pulled out the two-part epoxy I used on the steering wheel project last year. This wheel was sun-baked and cracked but not nearly as bad as the first one. With two rounds of epoxy and sanding, I’ve got it mostly ready for primer and paint.

Finally, Brian handed off a couple of new 3D prints of my dealer badge from a guy on his side of the bay who offers ABS as one of the options; ABS is much more temperature-resistant than the PLA prints I got at the library. I’m thrilled with the results, but I’m going to see if he can increase the size for me.

It’s cold here in Maryland—the thermometer is in the twenties but when the wind kicks up it goes into the low teens. This didn’t stop me, however, from bundling up and getting outside to get some stuff done on one of my days off. First, I mixed up a cocktail of ATF and acetone and poured it down each of the cylinders on the 800. There are many different schools of thought on the best penetrant for this kind of thing; some folks swear by Kroil or PBblaster, others use WD40, and still others swear by the ATF/acetone mixture. This is my first try with this homebrew mixture personally, so we’ll see how it goes. I also pulled the battery out of the Travelall and dropped it into the 800 to see if any of the wiring survived. Hooking the leads up produced no smoke or flames, so I turned the key to ACC and flipped the lights on with no results. I’m sure the mice got in and chewed up the harness somewhere, so I’ll have to hotwire the engine to start it, and eventually pull the dashboard apart to see what the full electrical story is.

Then I shifted focus to the Travelall. Jacking up the driver’s side rear, I pulled the tire and got the U-bolts off with little trouble. With that, the U-bolt plate and shock came off, so I moved to the rear spring perches and unbolted those from the body. Up front, after I adjusted my jack points to relieve weight on the leaf spring, I got the front unbolted and pulled the entire spring pack out from under the truck.

Having learned on the driver’s side, I had the passenger side off in about half the time, and left the truck high and dry with the axle only connected to the truck by the transmission and brake lines. Now I’ve got to get the spring packs into the shop for a rebuild, which will hopefully improve the ride. I expect the front springs to be much more of a challenge, but we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it.