Well, no luck with freeing up the piston. I had hoped to get it going and drive the car a bit before settling in for winter but I guess she had other ideas. That’s all right. I did want to rebuild the engine, in the back of my mind.
I had made a wooden marshmallow shape that was 2 7/16″ diameter to slid down in the cylinder and sit on top of the piston. It gave me a great surface to smack with a dead blow hammer while trying to turn the engine with a breaker bar and a 1 1/4″ socket on the crank pulley. But, there was no love. It didn’t even budge. I wasn’t really surprised as every drop of fluid I put into it I ended up taking out myself.
Oh, well. This is probably all for the better anyway. This way I can get moving on the restoration process. I will remove the engine and all of the components next. Then the transmission, then I can get to the gas tank. Once all of that is out then I can start tearing the engine down completely and attack this piston from both sides with the engine on a proper stand. I will get it out, it is just a question of how long will it take! I can start cleaning, prepping and painting all of the engine parts, replace all of the wiring, take stock of the radiator and gas tank to see how much work they are going to take. I might as well start stripping the body down to metal to be repaired, prepped and painted. I guess now the real work begins.
Well, almost. My anniversary was Sept. 7th and I promised my wife that I would take her south. So that is what we will do. I hope she doesn’t mind going to the Lane Automotive Museum! This is one of the coolest auto museums I have been to. Jeff Lane seeks out cars that are very unique. Some of them one of a kind vehicles. He specializes in micro cars but also has motorcycles and other odd stuff. He is also the restorer of the cars he collects. The museum is in the old Sunbeam bakery building on Murfreesboro Rd. in Nashville, TN. The website says he has over 300 cars but only exhibits about 150 at a time because of space. It is truly a unique collection. The last time I checked he had 11 Fiats!
Once I return home I will get started on removing the engine.