I finally got to mess with this thing today. I ended up leaving it at my dad’s house, at least until it’s running and driving. The title situation is still up in the air as well. There’s more rust in the body than I thought originally, but it’s still fairly straight at least. You can’t tell in the picture, but the grill was bent, and pushed back towards the firewall to the point where the hood wouldn’t latch. We pulled that out, got the grill braces reattached, and got everything lined up so the hood will close and latch properly. We also got the one headlight back in, so he’s not a popeye anymore.
Then we started on the engine. We vacuumed all the crap off of it, cleaned the carb, and bolted it back down. Went to check the ignition stuff, and found all new cap, condenser, points, coil, and plug wires. Awesome. The wiring harness seems to be there too, I didn’t notice anything that looked like it had been chewed up. We didn’t try to start it today, but we did verify that the engine isn’t locked up, so that’s good news. We also cleaned the crap out of the tub. That’s about as far as we got today, but next time I hope to fire it up. It’s a giant turd, and I love it lol.
The lockout hubs and the transfer case seem to work as they should. The only thing giving me trouble so far, is I can’t get the transmission to go into any gear. The shifter moves around freely in neutral, but it just won’t engage anywhere. The tires are also way too big, they rub on the frame and leaf springs up front. So if anyone around NC has some old dry rotted 30/9.50/15’s, I’ll trade you my old dry rotted 33’s lol.
Next course of action will be to find a fuel tank, radiator, and battery and either get it started or burn it down trying.