Hagerty Video: Abandoned Edsel (Ford?) PARKED For 40+ Years- Will It Run?

Hagerty Video Transcript

– Hey, this is Davin and Jeff and well, today we’re looking at a 1959 Edsel, and we’re gonna see if we can make this run. – We found a set of Edsel keys, so we’re gonna put ’em in the ignition, and see if it turns the tumbler. Upside down ’cause it’s Ford. Oh, yes, sir. Look at that. – [Davin] It turned? – It turned. – Does it feel like it’s got the return for the starter side of it too? – Absolutely. – Okay, cool. – Yeah, it’s a little stiff, but it’s there. – Let’s start by, obviously, we’re gonna pull, get the air cleaner outta the way just so we can look at the carburetor. – I say we throw a battery in it. – We gotta see if it turns over.

– Yeah, see if it turns over. Do we wanna try to put a wrench on it? Let’s start with three quarter. Three quarter and a 13, 16. That’s my guess. Okay. – [Jeff] How are your finger gauges? – First gauge is wrung. (grunts) Man, that’s two failures in a row. Seven eights then. – [Jeff] I probably gave you the too big. – Nope. That was seven eights? – [Jeff] 15 16s. – Oh, that was your guess, wasn’t it? – [Jeff] Dang, I lost. – Okay, well, since we can, I can, maybe, well, that ain’t moving. – [Jeff] Oh, yeah. – Turns. Not too bad. All right, let’s, I mean, go through this like we- – Pull the plugs. – Yeah, pull the plugs. Let’s see what they look like. Not necessarily, well, we’ll put fresh plugs in it regardless. But let’s throw,

Get some of that oil down there so it’s free when we turn it the first time. Let’s see what the starter does. Starter, we have to have the starter to turn it over fast enough to start it. – I’d like it, to also put the battery in,

See if we got power at the key ’cause that would help. – Yep, yep, yep, yep. And of course, verify that we’re getting power up to the ignition. That just stops us from having to jump a bunch of stuff. Otherwise, we’ll jump it. No big deal. I don’t think it’s gonna complain if we jump it. Whoa. Let’s get this outta here. – [Jeff] Same plug- – [Davin] A glorious two barrel Holley. First one’s broke loose. This thing was burning nice when they shut it off. Shoot. No oil or nothing. (metal clanging) You know, the plug wrench can’t get this one back out. Eight plug wrenches. Wow. – [Jeff] Since the gas tank’s gone, I almost wonder if the gas tank guy got a hole in it, and that was it. – [Davin] I mean, it seems kind of petty, but again. – [Jeff] At the time- – [Davin] At the time- – [Jeff] Who knows what a gas tank cost.

– Right. You wouldn’t think it’d be more than the cost of the car but. We got- – [Jeff] Brand new. – [Davin] So far, we got an AC plug, a tractor, I mean, a champion plug. – [Jeff] It’s one thing that seemed to be typical in these- – [Davin] Yeah, like random-

– Mixed matched plugs. You know, as far as the plugs that came out, I mean, it looks like this engine was running fairly efficient. – [Davin] Right, I see nothing that says, you know, like it dropped the valve or anything like that. – [Jeff] Nothing.

– Again, so far, the only thing I could see wrong with the car, honestly, is the fuel tank’s missing. But, whatever. Okay, well- – I gotta spray my side. – Yeah, spray your side. Watch that. That straw likes to come out by the way. – All right. – Why don’t you?

While you got that, spray around the carb, like on that throttle plate. – You want the link disk? – Yeah. And maybe even a little down this. – [Jeff] Am I hitting it over here? – Yeah, I mean it’s, hitting the carb. – [Camera Guy] You’re hitting something there.

– Hoop, there it is. (Jeff laughs) Here lemme see that can. It’s like brand new. We’ll hit wide open throttle now. Cool. Well- – I say, let me hook up the trigger. See if you got spark. – You want to trigger it from there? Or do you want a trigger from the key? – Oh yeah, we could do the key.

– We’ll hit, let’s see if the key work. Positive first. Be positive first. – Oh, where’s this one even go? This is a little skeptical. Where’s that? – (laughs) You think it’s skeptical ’cause what, there’s only half the wire there? Or is it because it’s green? (Jeff laughs) – [Jeff] Both. – [Davin] Okay. Is it loose or just- – [Jeff] That’s what I’m wanting to see. – [Davin] Yes. Is it on tight?

– Yeah. – It’s on tight. – We’ll go for it. – It might be all right. Pretty thin ground cable, man. – [Jeff] Really thin. – [Davin] I mean, factory wise, even the positive. See what we get. Right? – [Jeff] Yeah. – Yeah. All right, let’s spin her a few times now. – [Jeff] Yeah, do it. – [Davin] Just feel if you got any compression just blowing out of the cylinder. Ready? Good? – Cool. Oh yeah. I got compression on my side. – All right, good. Well, if we got half the compression, we’re fine. – [Jeff] We can run it for. – [Camera Guy] No way, it’s gonna start driving. – [Jeff] You got a taillight. – Really? – [Jeff] Yeah. Yep. – I hear blinkers.

– You got a blinker. – (laughs) That’s amazing. – Isn’t that crazy? Unless you wanna try the radio, what do you wanna do next? – I wanna see if we got spark at the coil. – See if we got spark. – Let’s see if we got power to it. – Grab that test light. We gotta clean these.

Clean the points up. – [Jeff] Yeah, they’re pretty dusty. – [Davin] Little 400 grit will do just what we need. – [Jeff] Or we’ll swap the points. – [Davin] Or too. Ooh, those are really crunchy. – [Jeff] You wanna swap the other set? – [Davin] Pretty boy. Not really. Not until I know we don’t get any contact. – [Jeff] All right. I guess. – [Davin] Wanna pop that key on? – [Jeff] On. – [Davin] You sure? – [Jeff] Am I sure? – [Davin] Yeah. – [Jeff] Yeah, I’m pretty sure. – I don’t like the answer I’m getting here. – Nothing, aye? – Not so far. All right, so we went through and we cleaned up the points,

And now, I’m basically checking with a test light for power going to the points from the ignition. So far I’m not getting any power. So basically it should light up like that if I got power. Well, we know we get power off the key to the solanoid.

– You wanna check that real quick? – Yeah, to the line? Yeah. – [Jeff] Okay. – [Davin] Key on? – [Jeff] Yep. – Okay, so that’s, I’m not getting anything at the solenoid. So that power’s not going, right? That means it’s not going through the solenoid. – Is it disconnections?

– It might be just connections. ‘Cause when I touch on the outside of this, I can’t get it to. – Right, so the key triggers the solenoid for the solenoid. Just- – [Jeff] To send power. – Send power to the distributor, where you’re not getting power between those two, which in that case, we can always just jumper wire, honestly, right from there to the coil. – Yeah, we could.

– [Davin] Key on now? – [Jeff] No. – [Davin] How about now? – [Jeff] Yep, key’s on. – Okay, I’m getting nothing. – It’s not jumping past the solenoid. – What’s weird is I can’t- – You can’t get power at that terminal? – Either one of ’em. And you know we’re getting it ’cause it kicks the starter. Bump the starter. – [Jeff] I got nothing now. – Oh, we broke it. How we break it? – Not sure. That solenoid give up the ghost on us? It’s possible. Ooh, better? – Yeah, I think she gave it the ghost. Not the solenoid. Here we go. Let’s do this. Let’s force some juice across. We’re gonna find out if it’s solenoid or the- Not the solenoid. So the key, either the key has decided to give us problems or whatnot, but what we can do is we can go right to the coil, and basically, that’s hot wiring the coil. And we can come just ’cause I want to test probe it.

All right, so now we have power to the coil. Now, we should have power up here, which we do. All right. Okay, now can you see when I move this, you seeing any sparks in there? – [Jeff] Oh, there you go. – Yeah, we got connection. Okay, so let’s make it now. All right, so now we should have spark. We’re just hot wired, that’s all. – Look, we’ll hook up our push button to spin it. – Okay. That’ll resolve that. I’m gonna leave this hooked up. That’ll resolve our key problem. – [Jeff] Okay, throw plugs in it.

– Yeah, throw plugs in it and drop fuel down the throat. See what happens. See if make it go fart, boom, bang. All right, Jeff, I’m feeling good about this, it spins. – [Jeff] I’m feeling good. – You’re not feeling good about it? Just feel good? – Well, I think she’ll run, I do. – Oh, come on. Let’s get this. Well, we’re gonna finish putting these plugs in on my side.

And we have spark to the, or we have now power to the coil. We have spark across the points. And we’re gonna add some fuel to it and give it a go. We have all the ingredients for it to fire. Let’s run this right over here.

– [Jeff] I got it here just in case. – [Davin] Yep, you’re good. I can hear the pump. Sounds like it’s in the, ooh. You see the mist coming out of there? – [Jeff] Yeah. – [Davin] There’s vapors coming out of the site bowl over- – [Jeff] All right. – [Davin] Oh, there it is. – [Jeff] Hoop, there it is. – [Davin] Now, we’ll know if it shuts off, because right here’s the vent.

– [Jeff] Yeah, floor it. – So here’s where I think we’re at. I think we’re ready to make some fire. – I think so too. (Davin laughs) – So we have plugs in it, we have power jumpered over to the coil that I just still can’t believe it,

But the coil’s good in this one too. So coil’s good, show’s good at least, enough to fire it up. God knows how many miles it would make going down the freeway, but probably not many. Points are making connection. – Fuel pump. – And we got fuel right to the carburetor. Now-

– And it’s squirting. – And it’s squirting. My bet is the needle and seat’s probably not so good. So you’ll have to watch it, like right here, this is where it’s gonna boil up out of there before it’s gonna go outta this where the bees are,

You know, the mud dabbers have a whole nest in. But it’ll come right out here. The only time that closes, when it cracks more than quarter throttle, which I don’t think we’ll need more than a quarter throttle here. – No, I don’t think so either. – In this situation.

So I think with that- – Without further ado. – Yeah, let her rip. I’ma still actuate this, but yeah. – Ready? – Yeah, I hear the pump. Okay, let’s, before we get anything tired, let’s make sure we have any, we actually have spark going, we never did that. We got that, we can either, you want a visual with a spark plug? That make more sense? – Yeah, I think so. – [Davin] All right. All right.

Yeah, if I scream loudly, that means it’s got a connection through the me. – [Jeff] Okay. Here we go. Nope. Getting no sparky. No sparky, sparkerson. All right, let me rub it a little bit. And maybe we don’t have any connection too, we can check the ground through here real quick too, with the test light. Try it one more time. All right. Well, we know we’re good there. – Strange clicking sound, I’m hearing. – I hear it too. – It almost sounds like a valve. – It might be. Clackety, clackety? – Yep. – Here, let me see that. Let me see if I have, it’s gonna hard to check that.

Put, flip that, put it on your power, please. Let’s see if I even have a ground where I’m trying to get ground from. Oh, look at that. Okay, so that part’s good. I wonder if we have a condenser that’s not so happy. – Could. – [Davin] Right? No. I’ll take a fresh one.

Got a fresh one? – [Jeff] Yeah, I have a fresh one. – [Davin] Oh look at you, Johnny-on-the-spot. Man, that was a quick run to the parts store. Throwbees. Throwbees saves the day again. Good job, Jason. Okay. With the condenser replaced, let’s see if that helps give us some spark. – [Jeff] No? – Go again. No, got nothing. Why don’t we have a spark? Let me see the test light. Okay. – [Jeff] No, there’s nothing there. – Maybe the cap’s no good. Well, the status is we’re trying to figure out why it didn’t have a spark on. Is this number two over here? No, it’s five. – Five. – Number five. And in doing that we had a little sputter, whatever. So we decided just to flop on the new cap.

We know we have power going through the coil, or through the points. Checked that with the test light, we know that’s functioning. Now, we’re just gonna, well, we’re gonna squirt the daylights out of it, and hopefully it’ll draw enough fuel in. – See if she’ll fire. – And fire. – Ready? – Sure. It’s trying. Well, it is trying to, you can hear it. – I wonder if we should shut the choke. – Oh, you can shut the choke, I’m sure it won’t hurt. Don’t have much draw though. – No? – Uh-uh. (negative) Maybe that clicking is a- – It’s, could be a valve. – It should get by one valve. You know, to start it. Can you? What’s holding this from? There we go, I got it. It doesn’t seem like a best place to be,

But it’ll be fine, it goes up. – You like your eyebrows? – Well, I don’t have many anyway. – (laughs) There you go. It’s starting to eat our battery up. – Big old girl takes a little more juice, aye? (grunts) Okay, I’m going. Oh yeah, I got spark. – [Jeff] You got spark? – [Davin] Yep. – Let me see if I got spark now. – Where were you going to? Head bolt? – [Jeff] I was just going right to the manifold. – [Camera Guy] Want shadow? – Yeah, I want a shadow, there you go. Oh yeah, now I’m fine with it. It hits weak but I got it. – [Jeff] Yeah, it’s weak, but- – Okay, so we’re not getting fuel to the plugs. – I agree ’cause they’re dry. – All right, so do we douse the living daylights out of it?

– Did we put some down the cylinders last time? – Nope. But we could, we could put some in the cylinders. At least, let’s leave the two out, we have out. Let’s put, I might, somebody better fill this bottle up. We could put it in there. – (laughs) Geez. (laughs)

– [Camera Guy] Guy is high maintenance. – A primadonna over here. – Okay. Come on, baby. – Come on. Let’s do that. Trying, come on. – Oh, she’s so close. – Come on, come on, come on, come on, come on. More? – [Jeff] More. – Go. That was a- – Come on. Man, it’s right there. You’re right there. – [Jeff] I still think it’s fuel. – Well, I don’t know how much more fuel I can put after it. Unless we got too much and it’s just flooded out. I guess we can go after that aspect. – I’m gonna pull a different plug.

‘Cause I know that there’s gas in this one. – I’m gonna pull the windshield wiper line outta the way. – [Camera Guy] Well, now it’s not gonna start. – Okay. – Is that spray, Jeff? – Yeah. – Man, it won’t. – It’s not even catching anymore. – That side’s ticking. – [Jeff] This side, you want me to? I would be curious to pull a valve cover. – Let’s blow that side off, and get that valve cover off. Let’s see what we got.

Maybe there’s something. Maybe they deliberately parked it, right? – [Jeff] Gonna, yeah. – Okay, you know what it’s doing? It’s not opening the valves. That’s why. Because the hydraulic lifters have no oil in them. So what it’s doing is, well, as you roll over, it can’t open the valves. So here’s where we’re at. We have spark, we have fuel,

Problem is we don’t have any valve action, meaning it looks like they’re opening up about that much, which not nearly enough to draw in the fuel to the spark plug. So pulling off this valve cover, we verified that, turning the engine over, you can see ’em, they’re just barely moving.

At the end of the day, the lifters are not pumped up. So we’re gonna pull the distributor and we’re going to prime it with a drill and basically see if we can get those lifters to pump up. ‘Cause then that will allow the lifters to do what they’re supposed to do.

And that’s transfer the energy from the camshaft in open and closed valves. Then we got a better chance of it firing up. ‘Cause it’s trying, it wants to, it just wants a little more love. All right, why don’t you- – [Jeff] I don’t have a marker.

– Why don’t you love the nest out of that right there behind that distributor. (laughs) Sent you right there. See how that is? – Well, that’s all right. – [Davin] And I don’t think we need to open up another valve cover. We’ll just, we’ll do everything based on this one. I don’t-

– Where is it? – We can blow it out if you want. Thought just gon’ blow everywhere. – That’s what I’m thinking. – You wanna blow it everywhere? – Yeah. – Okay, saw the air, I mean, I’ll put my hand over it, and I’ll shut my eyes. – Okey dokey. – Yeah, we’ll need to see that so. And I gotta go backwards ’cause it’s a Ford. Got a lot of pressure. Can feel it picking up right away. We just spun it more though, the- – Yeah. – Than we have. You wanna hold that for just a sec? – Yeah. – [Davin] I want to see oil come up these shafts. Whoa. Ready? – [Jeff] Go. (drill humming) – [Davin] Shit, I got oil up here already. That’s fast. Dude, it’s all the difference in the world. These are already tight. Not even joking. Look at that. Just letting you know, your side’s gonna smoke. – Actually, I like that little pan you got there. – I see that, that is pretty slick. All right, I am gonna call that. I think that was more than plenty. Yeah, set that back in there. What we’ll do is we’ll spin them

Once the distributor’s back in there. Before we try to start it, we’ll just spin it with the starter, and see the difference, in case maybe the lifters just won’t hold, ’cause that’s a possibility. – Yeah, it is. Right there. Woo, I’m smelling gas now. – [Davin] I’m smelling ether. – [Jeff] Are you? – Yeah. That looks a lot better ’cause these, I can’t push ’em down now. Before, I’d, shoot, I pushed that one a half inch. All right. – [Jeff] How much are they moving?

– They don’t move a ton still, but they’re moving. – Oh yeah, yeah. – They’re moving a lot more than what they were. – Yeah, they’re moving a lot more. – So that was a good, that was the right move. – I agree. – Right there. – Okay, here we go. You see that hop? – I did. It’s not tightened down all the way. – Yeah. – Ready? – Put some more. It wants to. – She’s still not drawing a lot. – You don’t hear the clicking though. – No. – Hold the throttle open. – Where’s all the smoke coming from? – Starter. At this point. And there’s oil all down in the back of everything. Won’t do anything. – I know I’m just choking a dead horse here, but I just feel like the spark isn’t enough. I feel like it’s not. – Well, we already moved the points anyway. We got a zero. Let’s put points in it. Just not strong enough spark to do it I guess.

I can buy that. – Okay. Ready? – Do it. – In this last ditch effort, I pulled a random plug over here and it’s not as wet with gas as it should be. Especially with how much Davin just poured down the intake. – Haphazardly, you can say. (Davin laughs) And so possibly, maybe something is blocking the passages inside the intake.

So we’re gonna pull the carburetor off real quick, and just take a peek down inside and see what we see. – What you’re saying is we refuse to give up. – I don’t wanna give up but, and I did shoot the carburetor spring all the way over there somewhere.

I have no idea where it went. There’s gas there. – [Davin] Where? – [Jeff] All down the intake manifold. – [Davin] Let me see, do it again. – I mean, we’re obviously pouring it in. I’m gonna say dud, right? – Yeah. You said you want it to fire, right? Just fire. – [Jeff] That’d make my day so far. – Here, let me make a carburetor. – All right. – The only problem is on the carburetor and the starter. That might not be a bad idea though. – There he is.

Just in case, I mean, you can pour it all over my hand, and everywhere else if you can, let’s see what it does. – You really want me to pour it on your hand? – It’s got very little pulse. We gotta be in the spot where we have like no compression. – [Jeff] Well, that could be doing it, ’cause it could be not mixing the air and fuel correctly, and it’s- – Well, just not drawing anything in.

I say we do this, I say we call our day, take the batteries back, get everything charged up. Bring a compression tester back and check it. – Here we go. 60. – Yeah, I dunno (squeals), it’s only one. – It’s okay. Okay. – Good? – [Jeff] Yep. – 70. Hey, we’re moving up. – He stops at 65. 55. – Okay. So you were 55 pretty much all the way across. – And you probably were too. Other than watching just that. You know what I mean? – Yeah. – So we’re at half the compression I would expect. I would expect a hundred, 110 at a, you know, as a general baseline.

Be higher than that. But it’s consistent, that’s the thing that kind of confuses me. – Bothers you? Yeah, yeah, yeah. – Because that says it consistently got worse. That’s not normal. – No. And the- – But not saying it can’t. – And the- – I mean, it was burning consistent, so maybe it’s-

– Yeah, I mean, the plugs at the time looked like they were coffee with cream. Which is kind of what you want. – Exactly. So I guess, in my mind we got, we got low compression, and if our spark is- – [Jeff] Weak. – Marginal at all, it’ll struggle, right? – [Jeff] Yeah.

We have a brand new coil. – So yeah, that’s the last thing. Let’s throw a brand new coil after it. It’s right up on top. We don’t have to take that one out of the mount even. Just hook it up, leave one plug out and check it for spark. – [Jeff] Ooh. What?

I lose ’em, huh? As I drop it down onto the ground. We good? – [Davin] Yep. – [Jeff] Okay, here we go. That’s a better spark. – [Davin] Is it? – [Jeff] It’s better. It’s not like a blue, but it’s not a faint orange either. – Okay, all right, well. I think that coil’s still good, the old one, but ’cause it ohms out well. Who knows? – Yeah, I don’t disagree with you.

– [Davin] Maybe it’s not saturating well enough. I guess we’ll throw the plugs in again. – And give it one more shot. – [Davin] One more shot. – All right. – And that’s it. This is his last chance. Here, I’ll hold this. You gonna be running that throttle though, right?

Okay, here we go, let’s see if we’ll get a fart out of it. Spray some more of that on there. Not really. – Still getting that vapor coming up. Is that coming out? – I’m getting it here too, right? We’re getting, it’s puffing out of the crank case. Just won’t draw fuel in. – [Jeff] And why is that? Why won’t it draw fuel? – The only thing, I mean,

Really the only thing left is the intake, the runners. Right? It’s got enough compression to at least make it do something. And if it’s got enough compression, it should have enough draw. – I agree. – But if it’s drawn, if that air’s getting, maybe it’s drawing all the fuel into the crank case.

– [Jeff] I think that’s what the vapor is. – Does the oil smell like gas yet? ‘Cause we put enough gas in it yesterday, I would think, to make a change. Not necessarily? – Mm-mm. (negative) Well. – [Davin] Some? – Maybe. Here, smell this. – Yeah, a little bit.

I mean, look at it sitting here. Call it smoldering. And there’s no reason for it to do that other than- – Other than it’s creating a lot of pressure inside. And they, the pipe still could be plugged there. I mean it’s- – Yeah, you could still be plugged up high,

But you’re still getting air out of ’em, so it’s not dead plug. – [Jeff] It’s not dead, no. – Yeah, it’s just not, it’s not drawing. It’s gotta be leaking. Intake manifold’s gotta be leaking it out, so it can’t draw into the cylinder. But then we still put fuel right in the cylinder,

And it does the same thing, so doesn’t seem like there’s any way around it. Well, I hate to say this, and if you don’t feel my disappointment, then well I’m not conveying things very well, because this is discouraging. But we’re gonna move on from this Edsel. It’s whammied, I don’t know.

– I don’t know. – Maybe that’s why it’s parked. (laughs) – Yeah, who knows what could be internally wrong? – Yep. But for those of you that are catching up, because you didn’t, you just jumped to the middle of the video. We have spark, we have fuel, we have a clear exhaust,

We have a clear intake and we have some compression. It’s 50, 60. I know that’s not great but we have some. That’s all, that’s what we know. And we don’t get any, we getting puff out of the crank case. – Yeah, lots of- – Nothing out, not even a backfire, nothing.

Put fuel into the chambers, we get nothing. – Plug’s also never are as wet as they should be with the amount of gas that we put down it. – Yeah, it’s like, yep, yeah. Looks like the fuel is not getting, not dragging in. So minus completely tearing it down

To find out what the problem is, or going deeper, deeper, deeper, deeper, we’re gonna move on. – Agreed. – We’re gonna move on. But take this time right now, go down in the comment section, and tell me everything I did wrong, or any suggestions of something to come back to,

Because we’re only two miles the way the crow flies from our shop and we can always sneak back over, and try some miracle cure that you guys think of. I’m sorry, I don’t mean to say it that way. If you have some knowledge that we’re missing,

By all means, throw it in the comments. We’ll ponder it and see if it makes sense to come over, and try it again. Just because we didn’t make this one work doesn’t mean you shouldn’t go out and try to get something fired up that’s, shoot, sitting around a corner from your house,

Or maybe in your own backyard. But in the meantime, get out in the shop, go get your work done or get a Jeff. Hey, Jeff, we might as well take all our parts with us. – Sounds good. Or get a Jeff. – [Davin] At least I didn’t say Jeffery. – [Jeff] That’s true.