What did you do today that was flathead V8 related?

[rjlester]

Yesterday I helped a friend fire up a 49 Mercury truck that has sat since the 70s. Pulled the starter as it wasn't working. Reinstalled, couldn't get spark but turned over nicely. Plug wires were original and most were seized into the distributor cap. My buddy spent a good half hour digging them out. We made "new" wires from a chevy van he had parked for years. Wouldn't even sputter on 6 volts, jumped/boosted it with 12 and the engine fired immediately!! One mistake we made, was the carb was very gunked up and we didn't notice that it was stuck on full throttle. Wow did that engine rev high!! The inside of the carb is also messed up but we did manage to get it to idle for a bit and it sounded real nice, likely running on all 8.

He was very impressed and is going to rebuild the carb so we can play with it some more later. He is a chevy guy and had a hard time with the concept of the cylinder numbering as he has only worked on chevy V8s.

I'm amazed myself how that engine fired up and survived that high RPM startup lol. Usually I like to let them idle a lot before revving an old engine up. Durable engines for sure.