It all started after my flying lesson. Weather was crappy here, so I only flew for an hour or so. Went home, tried to put the starter switch back together, lost the key that the lever uses in a bucket of nails, created a two hour fiasco trying to find it, found it and finally got it assembled. Then I needed to create a few more flared fittings for the carborator - and I was done all the assembling.
I got the old instrument cluster, and hooked up the oil pressure gauge (you'll notice I have a civvy one in the picture. I have the original, later when I get closer to finishing the project, I may replace it). From there, I cranked the engine over a bunch of times (dont worry, i didnt do it all at once - I let it cool
) with the starter until the oil got all the way to the end of the line. Boy, that was a nice sound to hear the starter turn over. I poured a little bit of gas in the carb bowl and had my dad help me statically time it. Thus began the big moment.My dad rigged up a little wire for the distributor so that we could hook it up to the jumper cables we were using since I own nothing as far as a wiring harness is concerned. We hooked it up, and inspected everything one last time. As I started to push the starter lever in, I hoped I didn't forget any pieces. The engine turned over a few times, I stopped. It turned over a few more times, let it stop. Turned it over just once more and VROOM she fired right up for the first time in 25 years with 40PSI of oil pressure.
Immediately though, a fuel leak sprung about since I didnt tighten down an inverted flare nut. tightened it, and again, started right up. My dad was working the throttle for the carborator. You have no idea how happy I was to hear the engine come to life.
We would cut the throttle every few seconds because the engine was knocking. My dad suspects that even though theres oil pressure, the oil might have not gotten to some parts of the engine yet and therefore, its knocking. Not too bad, but its definitally there. We're going to have to play around with it a little bit tommorrow - and get the radiator hooked up so we can run this thing for more than 20 seconds to try to get the rings to sit properly.
Exhaust has never smelled so good in my life. Hopefully tommorrow my dad can help me with the knocking issue and we can pump more of it into the air
Heres a few pictures I took after we got the engine running. I don't have any of the engine running, was too busy multitasking. Hopefully tommorrow thatll change.
The battery setup - sort of. we disconnected some of it since we were calling it a night. Yes I know one of the levers has a little blue paint on it
. I didn't really want to paint the levers sicne I thought it would screw with the seals.
The passanger side of the engine. Disconnected the jumper cable from the starter, but I'm sure you could figure out where it goes
Driver side / front side.
I know I am not done the jeep yet. Although all the complex stuff is done, the body work, wiring and break lines lay ahead. But I feel I accomplished a major thing today. Besides woodworking, I never really had any mechanical experience until I got my job at a machien shop and I started working on the jeep. I would like to say thanks to all of you here for all of your help and support. I would like to especially point out:
Wes and Rich - both of you are extremely knowledgeable on this vehicle. Thanks for all of your help, even when my questions were stupid.
Hal - even though you have an M38, your help with the inverted flare fittings couldn't be more valueable when I decided to do all of them myself. Thanks!
I would also like to thank John at Midwest and George and Nick at AJP. They're endless supply of knowledge and parts has enabled me to get this far. My dad deserves recognition too. It was extremely helpful having a person who worked on M38A1s when they were my age (16) - and even more helpful since he actually drove this jeep back in the 70s with a buddy of his. I also valued his help since hes a mechanical and electrical engineer - and so he could give me really good advice.
Anyway, thanks all! Hopefully its all easy work (comparitively speaking) from here on out!
