The first thing I did was to put all the loose parts in the trunk, see what was all there, and then get out the shop vac. After that, I got a bucket of soapy water and wiped down the interior, which made everything a little nicer to work on.
My first task was to see if the motor would turn by hand. I knew the car didn't run and hadn't run in years, but when I asked the seller if the engine was free, he said he couldn't turn it by hand, but the story of the owner before him was that they did a rebuild and then the car sat for over a decade and was likely just stuck from sitting. The fact that we couldn't confirm if the engine was seized or not helped me when it came to agreeing on a price. Now that I had it home, it was time to find out.
I pulled the spark plugs, sprayed a little WD40 in each hole, then pulled the starter and got to the flywheel with a long screwdriver. I went very sloooowly, and sure enough, it moved. I also took a look down the cylinders with a borescope and when I could see that the cylinders looked pretty decent, I put a little ATF in each cylinder and slowly turned the engine by hand a few rotations. I also noticed when I had the horoscope in there, that each piston was stamped "30", further indicating that the rebuild story was legit. It also looked like the starter, alternator and radiator were relatively new, or at least barely used.
I then bought a battery and after checking that I had a spark, and that the firing order and plug wires looked correct, I tried to start it. I poured a little 50:1 2-cycle mix down the carb and it fired off, but wouldn't run. I could see the gas coming from the tank looked suspect and didn't smell great, so disconnected the lines from the tank and tried setting up a little gravity feed rig. I was able to get it fired a few more times, but couldn't get it to run. The carb looked fairly clean, but decided to tear it apart and throw a rebuild kit at it. Once back on the car, it was the same deal - it would fire, but wouldn't run. I also had some backfiring, so I checked the firing order and distributor rotor several times with similar results. I pulled the valve cover, brought the number 1 cylinder to TDC, and confirmed marks on the harmonic balancer. Still wouldn't run. At this point, I noticed some of the valve lash seemed way to large, and I wanted to ditch my gravity fuel system and just get some clean fuel in the tank.
My hand siphon pump was taking forever, so I dropped the gas tank. And I'm super glad I did because I could see it was leaking at the lock ring, the filler neck grommet was garbage, but more importantly, although the tank looked like brand new sheetmetal from the outside, it was an absolute rust bucket inside. A new tank, sending unit, and seals are on the way.