This car hasn’t been licensed, started or running for at least 3 years. The 2 year old battery in her is completely shot. I took it out first thing and checked it. It was connected, when I got the car.

I have receipts from PO showing that the engine (1.8L), was completely rebuilt by a shop in Bellingham ( SIBLEY POR-SHA & MACHINE, with about $3500.00 spent), back in June of 1993, with 67K miles on the car. It currently shows approx. 96K miles on car (if the odo is still anygood). I have another receipt dated 8/96 (87Kmiles) showing car was worked on for a “misfire”, and invoice comments say “low compression (under 100 ea.cyl.- adjust valves)”. Hoping this isn’t a REAL issue. If I have to rebuild engine again, it will most likely be that spare 2.0L I got with the car.

This car still has fuel in the gas tank. It don’t look or smell so good….fancy that.

My first goal is to try and get the engine running. So,
I plan on draining the tank, and flushing the fuel system out the best I can, once I figure that one out.
Next, I’m thinking about taking the plugs out, and squirting some oil in the cylinders, let it sit a day of so, then just cranking her over for a bit, to make sure its loosened up. Then, I can go from there.

I’m hoping that I have a decent base car here to work with. Time will tell, I guess.

Once I get her running, and see what shape this engine is in, then it will be on to the real fun. Rust repairs. The body is in pretty good shape, its just the “typical” longs/hell hole/and some floorpan stuff. I hope.

Any thoughts or suggestions, or gottcha experiences regarding this approach, will be greatly appreciated! And any leads on purchasing a FSM for this car without spending more on the manuals than I did for the car, would be absolutely wonderful. Thanks!

I'm with you. I have a line on a 76 2.0 that hasn't been started in about 2 years. I'm trying to get together my checklist before starting.

I found this on valvoline's website:
http://www.valvoline.com/carcare/articlevi...ccid=3&scccid=3


Which really comes down to new:
oil / filter
spark plugs
gas

Any more ideas?

Is there an easy way to manually turn over the engine to make sure it's not locked up? With other cars I've just grabbed the fan blades and gave them a tug. I'm assuming when I show up the tires will be dead and weeds around it, so pushing it in gear is probably out of the question.

Yeh...fresh battery and leads to the starter...jump the poles with a screwdriver