By now it is January of 2017.  I had previously installed a new leather fan belt and installed the radiator & hoses to the water pump and water jacket connection at the top of the engine. After a quick visit to Fresno to see family, we picked up my Dad and headed home to Carlsbad. If all went well, the plan was to….. maybe…. try and start the engine. I had the magneto working and arbitrarily set the timing of the spark on cylinder #1 for the most retarded position on the spark lever at 7.5 degrees before TDC. Why this number?  Well, my second car to actually do engine work on was a 1966 VW bug that my parents bought new in Germany.  And, if you know air cooled VW engines, and you do a valve adjustment and tune up, you are supposed to manually set the timing of the #1 cylinder to 7.5 degrees before TDC.  Would this work on a 1912 BUDA engine? Who knows — there isn’t a manual or other instruction that I have found. So it’s all guess work. At any rate, we had spark at the plugs and the carburetor was now installed and not leaking. My Dad & I added oil and put water in the radiator. And we had leaks.

Radiator filled and dealing with leaks.

There were leaks at the water pump and there were leaks at the hoses and leaks in the water jacket cover bolts. So hose clamps were tightened, shaft seals torqued a bit more and silicone gooped where necessary.  The leaks stopped.

We next took a look at the valve adjustment for which we DID have some BUDA recommendations. (See Buda Bulletin #176- in the ENGINE section of the NUT & BOLTS menu)

The Bulletin says to set exhaust valve lifters to .005 inches of gap, and the intake valve lifters to .003 inches of gap. We checked that and things looked pretty good.

Valve gap adjustment with Dad’s supervision.

Checking gaps with a feeler gauge.

Ok…. Let’s review our status here.

We have: Spark, Oil, Water, Fuel  —- hmmmm.

When we brought the car to California we stopped outside of St. Louis, Missouri to visit with John Fleck, grandson of Michael Fleck the original owner of the car. Part of our discussion was about his recollections of the car when he was visiting Hobart, Indiana. Apparently it had always been in a garage and wasn’t working, but he and his young siblings would play in it and bounce on the seats. He had never seen it run. John is now over 70 years old.

I think we should see if we can get this long dormant engine to make some noise and maybe cough or pop.