My Uncle's Dad bought one of these in the 1940's, cut the bed off and used it to move to Eastern Washington. He had plans to own a Ranch and used it to clear the property he purchased. His health started to fail and they moved off the ranch into town.
My Uncle was visiting the old Ranch 8 years ago and saw the Burma at the neighbors place covered in blackberry bushes and had a tree growing through the homemade flatbed.
Coming from Washington, it was all one color, RUST.
He had it trucked down to his house in Agua Dulce and it sat.
My wife was joking with him one day about when he was going to drive it and he said that he didn't know if it would start.
He had taken the carb off and had a shop rebuild it as well as the starter and had purchased a new battery. He had taken out the sparkplugs and suprizingly there was no rust in the cyl., he put a little oil into each cyl anyway to coat them. He changed all fluids, they all looked good still even after sitting for, our best guess is, about 35 years. (the tree was about 8 inches around)
We started with a 5 gallon boat fuel tank because the original (which was not the original) gas tank had a hole.
fresh fuel, good (6 volt) Battery, crank........ no fire.
Check fuel, yes.
check spark, yes.
Crank........... ONE POP!!
cheers from the crowd!! (ok, only two of us were there,)
OK, here we go, Crank........... one pop.
Crank........ one pop.
elation deflation.
Alright, check spark on all cyl. CHECK
Check fuel, CHECK
Check Compression 5 good, one at 0.
look down into 0 comp cyl while turning engine over, EXHAUST VALVE STUCK OPEN. Spray more magic oil on valve stem, go eat lunch. come back after lunch, turn engine over looking into cyl, VALVE IS MOVING!! check comp, YES!
we are ready now, Crank........two pops,
confusion, stand and look at it for 10 minutes or so.
check points, good.
check timing, good.
check firing order, WRONG!!
someone had swapped some spark plug wires on the dist cap 35 years ago and that is probabaly why it was sitting there!
correct firing order, Crank........ START!!! Purrs like a kitten! (well a loud kitten because there was a hole in the exhaust pipe down right before the muffler)
I looked at him and yelled "let's drive it!"
(of course there are no brakes, who needs those anyway?)
back and forth in front of the garage we went, when he was done, he looked at me with a sad-happy face. He looked like he was a kid again.
He found a bed, fixed a few rust spots, replaced the master and wheel cyl so the brakes work, and painted it like it was in the old pictures with his Dad.
I am happy that I got to do this with him, I am happy that I could help him get his Dad's truck running again. They are tough vehicles and I am impressed with how resiliant it is.
David
