1966 Plymouth Barracuda - Commando 273 V8

Well, got'er fired up for the first time since 2001 - on Saturday! Here's a link to my video of the '66 Commando 273 runnin'! [ame="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TunWJF7sRUk"]1966 Plymouth Barracuda - 273 Commando First Fire! - YouTube[/ame]


Before I got the 'Cuda running, had picked up from where I last left off where I tore the interior out. Drained the oil, spent 3 hours in the cold using a heat gun to heat the oil pan up to allow for it to drain better. There was a lot of nasty sludge gooey stuff coming out, and I had to keep shoving a long screw driver in the oil pan drain plug hole to keep it flowing out. I speculate that there may be a small possibility that coolant got mixed with the oil long ago and some how made it clumpy, but not sure. Anyways, after I got all the nasty out, poured 1-2 quarts of fresh oil in, shook the front end a little to slosh around in the oil pan in attempt to remove any more stuff that shouldn't be in there, and then drained it once more. Got fresh oil in her now, and a new oil filter (NOT FRAM) in place.

The next day I spent some time cleaning around the 904's transmission oil pan before taking it off, lots of crud built up on it due to leaks and whatnot over the years. Pulled the pan off, didn't see any major metal flakes, but rather a silvery film on the pan, so I think it's just normal wear, and it looks pretty clean to me. RockAuto didn't send me the correct pan gasket (as the usual stuff goes with them..) but the filter was correct. Went to AutoZone, they had the correct gasket I needed, got it, replaced the filter, then put the pan back on with the gasket. I'm not a believer in using RTV/gasket maker to sandwich the pan and pan gasket to the transmission because I don't want to have any chance of that stuff breaking off inside the transmission pan and going someplace it shouldn't. Also, never had a leak with no sealant of any kind, just use the bare gasket and it's all good (the gasket maker was suggested by the autozone guy...).

So the next day I drained the rotten gas out of the tank, which is always a fun day to do such a thing on projects with 10+ year old gas... Used my cheap $10 low pressure electric external fuel pump with fuel hoses, and a filter attached to siphon out the rotten gas. Filled up 5x empty oil jugs, took em out to the shed to sit till the city toxic waste recycle day comes again.. Put about 5 gallons of fresh fuel in. Went and disconnected the fuel line from the carb and main line to the mechanical fuel pump. Blew out the line that went to the carb, got some rotten gas out, also threw a new see-through (fram...) fuel filter on. Used my electric fuel pump to siphon any rotten gas out of the main line, and nothing came. I found this rather strange to find I wasn't getting any fuel, cause I've done this before on other Mopars I've worked on in the past and usually had no problem. So I began investigating, jacked the rear end of the '66 up, carefully and ever so slightly began to remove the short rubber fuel line that goes between the main fuel line and the fuel sending unit at the tank. Popped it off, and nothing came out...... (also blew a ton of crud out of the main fuel line when it was disconnected) So I got some heavy gauge wire, shoved it in there to clean any stuff out, got it to start leaking a little, and then stopped. Figured by then that the pick-up screen must be clogged with who knows what over the years + the rotten gas sitting in there forever. By this time, I decided to leave that alone for another day and just run a fuel line to a 2-1/2 gallon gas jug, and try to fire her up. So I got to that point, then poured a little bit of gas in the stock Carter AFB carb, hooked a battery up after verifying I didn't have a short anywhere in the wiring system, with a battery tester/meter - on the continuity mode, checking between the negative and positive clamp (Not hooked on the battery! Cause we'd know what would happen there...). Checked to see if the lights worked, and all of them did surprisingly! - Even the radio and console lights were on!

Turned the key, and she backfired really LOUD.

After shaking that off, tried again with pouring a little bit of gas in, and this time I got her to fire up for a couple of seconds, and then died. Did this a couple more times till the gas from the jug made its way to the bowl inside the carb. For some reason I could only keep it running on the accelerator pump, had previously shot a bunch of carb cleaner throughout the carb, and into the idle mixture screw ports + some other ports. I figured that the idle circuits must be clogged with rotten fuel and whatnot, must be rebuilt.

The next day I decided to just throw my rebuilt Edelbrock 1406 - 600 cfm carburetor on the 273 along with a spacer so the butter flies could open completely due to the design of the stock 4bbl intake having 4 circles instead of a square bore. Went to O'reilly's to buy a throttle+kick-down adapter (1481 is the number for the adapter), also got heater hose, and some other things. Got back, hooked the Edelbrock up, and replaced the heater hoses after blowing some crud out of the heater core. Cranked and cranked for about 15 seconds or so, and voila! She fired up and stayed running!! Adjusted the mixture screws to lean her out, also adjusted my throttle cable to set the idle where I thought it sounded best, till I install a tachometer. Ran her till operating temperature, also had 60-70psi oil pressure. Checked the antifreeze after she cooled down (had replaced the radiator + antifreeze prior to all of this) and it looked very clean! Couldn't get the blower motor to kick on, probably clogged with leafs or a blown fuse, but the heater hoses were hot so that's a good sign. The secondaries opened up no problem on the Edelbrock, made that cool sounding throaty gob of power when revved. Didn't try to see if it would drop in gear yet cause I gotta replace my manual brake master cylinder due to the internals leaking bad. Looking around for an external push rod so I can use my brand new master cylinder that has it's guts self-contained. So that's pretty much all that's going on so far! Clearing out a warehouse so I can work more easily on her over this chilly winter. Next thing to attack, getting the brakes to work, get some gear oil in the rear axle, get a new fuel sending unit, and maybe gas tank. Real happy to hear her running, and sounding really healthy for a 50 year old 273 Commando V8.