That looks like the bones of a sweet cruiser for sure!
You may find some good deals at the Portland Swap Meet this weekend.
Maybe even some wheels and tires.....
Hahaha, it came with wheels and tires... not very good ones, but they are there. I have them of so I can inspect everything and get the fuel system sorted out. The fuel tank was crushed up at the back and had at least one puncture hole in it. I decided to work on getting it running and making sure it was healthy first.
Tried to crank it with the fuel hose dropped straight into the fuel tank you can see in the pics above. No dice. Cranks well and tried to fire, but never lit off. Little bit of troubleshooting and fuel was flooding out of the holley 4160 and no spark. Pulled the carb and rebuilt it.. flooding fixed but still no spark. Seems like there is a break somewhere on the ignition power, so I just made a cable to go from the battery straight to the coil resistor input. Also the R45TS(wrong plugs) were totally fouled, so I went and got some correct R44TS plugs. Stuck them in and hooked up the drivers side wires so that I could check timing before firing it up. Bumped the starter and it fired right up!!!! Ran fairly smooth but definitely seemed like it was weak, quiet and not as snappy as I would have expected
Then my neighbor came over as I shut it down and I started chatting with him on the passenger side of the car. Turned around and realized the passenger side plug wires were still laying across the fender
.... how the F was it running like that on only one bank
So I went and plugged in the passenger side bank of wires and cranked her up again.... holy cr@p!! Its an absolute animal. I definitely need to get a full exhaust system that is bigger than the POS 2" with glass packs exhaust on it now. I've seen some nice dual 3" systems and maybe some decent flowmaster 50 series mufflers to keep it a reasonable volume inside while cruising. Headers, exhaust and mufflers are gonna run around $1k. Full interior redo is about $2k. Just ordered a fan shroud and all new door/trunk rubber for $300. It should make a nice fun family weekend cruiser and maybe a bracket race car in the future.
I had run a compression test when I pulled the plugs and its about 180psi in each cylinder, so she's a healthy, original 10:1 compression 1970 455. Still has the switch pitch TH400 in it.. seems to be the original trans to the car. I pulled the fuel tank and it is super clean inside. It was banged and dented up and had some rust pinholes on top and a big cut through the back. I cut a hole in the top where the pinholes were and banged out the dents and flattened the area with the hole. I'll weld up the cut area and put in fresh metal on top where it was rusted through before welding the cut out piece back on. I was going to just order a new one, but they are $300 and almost impossible to find.
I forgot to takes pics again... so I'll post some tonight when I get back out there to work on it and finish patching up the fuel tank. The only thing left to evaluate and make sure it's right before driving is the brakes. Once I get all of that straightened out, then I can hot wire the ignition and drive it up on blocks in the shop so I can start figuring out where the wiring is messed up. Basically none of the ignition wiring is functional including the windows and driver seat power. Interior lights and starter work as they should, but thats about it.
