Three times a charm!

[blancojp]

Hello All!

I am in the process of bringing home a 1972 Manta automatic. I guess three times will be a charm for me until #4 shows up. With the Manta I will have a small collection of all three Opel models for the year, not including wagons of course.

The Manta I believe has not been started in 20 years or so. The tag on the car expired in the '80s so that is why I am leading to assume this will be the case. Now some of you have purchased cars that have been standing still for a long while and don't exactly know what to do. So with that in mind, if anyone is interedted in knowing a proceedure on how to revive the engine, let me know and I will post each individual step until the engine is running. I say "a proceedure" because there is more than one way of doing the work. All depends on the condition and state of the engine when it arrives at the shop, and also who is doing the work.

The engine on Stealth runs like a top, the Ascona runs almost or just as good. Now I have a chance to bring back another 1.9L to life and rescue an Opel from extinction.

[michaedo]

Cool. Seems more and more old Opels are coming in
outta the weeds to be born again. It'd be dandy to
follow along with your engine revitalization process.

[blancojp]

It looks like I will be picking up the car tomorrow, if it does not rain.

Once here at the house, I will start the process along with the post.

[blancojp]

Hello All!

I took a 90 mile drive and picked up the Manta today. The car does not look like much, lots of surface rust and so on, but I evaluated the vehicle and this is what I found:

1) The tag on the car displays the year 1994 as the last year tagged. I went on the net and found the car had several owners and the last know mileage was 46K approx. in 1991. Needless to say , the speedometer reads 62K so I would guess it is the real mileage.

2) I checked the body out and found mostly surface rust on the complete car. The vehicle has not been repainted, there is no bondo on the car anywhere and all rails are perfect. The floor boards are intact and just a few rust through pinholes on one of the rockers. The roof has a few dents but all of the panels are straight and don't see any evidence of accidents or any other metal problems.

3) And yes, the battery box area was rusted through which is typical of these cars but the floor area directly below had no damage.

After looking over the car, I decided to continue on to the engine.

1) I inspected the wiring first and all was there in place. The harness looks original and no evidence of tampering was found. The key worked and once in the start position, there was continuity between the battery + cable and the coil supply.

2) I removed the spark plugs, distributor cap, plug wires and rotor. The points looked almost new and the contacts were perfect. The rotor looked like new as well as the inside of the distributor cap. I checked the oils and suprisingly it was very clean, looked like the car had an oil change a few miles prior to sitting. I removed all of the oil and put it on my heat can to bring the temperature up for later use.

3) I then started the process by heating up 1 qt of 2-cycle oil. I got the oil to 110 degrees and poured as much as I could on each one of the spark plug holes. Some cylinders took more, some took less but I put a good qty of oil in each cylinder. Now we wait, I let the oil sit inside the chanbers for 20 minutes.

4) The belts were rotted but still stight so I left them alone for now. I loosened the A/C compressor and the alternator to get both belts off. The A/C compressor belt did not survive however the water pump belt did come out in one piece, looked beat but OK and could be reused for now.

5) I started to rotate items to see if they were locked. The water pump was rotating freely and you can hear the water moving and cavitating inside the pump. The A/C compressor pulley rotated freely and the clutch unit rotated freely as well so I suspect both are usable.

6) By now, the oils has been inside each cylinder chamber fo about 30 minutes. I topped them off again and continued with the next step.

7) I took a 19mm socket and 32" long rachet and stated to move the crank shaft pulley. I moved it clockwise 1" and then back, followed by a 2" move and then back. I did this several times, going back and forth in about 10 second intervals. I let it rest for a few seconds between movements on the initial phase.

8) The oil in the heat can was now at 110 degrees so it was ready to be re-inserted in the engine. I removed 1 qt and replaced it with 1/2 qt of Marvel Mistery oil, 1/4 qt of 50 grade diessel oil and 1/4 qt of Kerosenne. I started to put the first qt of hot engine oil in, followed by 1/2 qt of the mixed oil, followed by another qt of hot oil, followed by 1/2 qt of the mixed oil and topped off with the rest of the heated oil.

9) The engine was now ready for turning. I turned the crank pulley 1 full revolution clockwise, while watching the distributor rotor. The rotor turned 1/2 revolution so cam and timming chain was all moving. I continued turning 1 revolution clockwise while waiting a few seconds in between steps. The crank was moving quite easily and oil was being squirted out of the cylinder spark plug holes. So far so good.

10) I started my compressor and while it was charging, I inspected the carburator and the fuel system. The Solex had the choke locked in place, the primary was free but the secondary was locked as well. I then used the vent hole and filled the float area with fuel. Surprisingly, the carb was squirting fuel when the accelerator was pressed so I refilled the bowl again and continued on.

11) The compressor was charged so I ran a line out to the car and used an air ratchet with a 19mm socket to move the crank pulley. I put it in place, filled the chambers again with two cycle oil and the ratchet was steadily moving the crank and spraying oil oil from each cylinder like no tomorrow. After drying my face and hair, I then tryed it again and it was smooth as silk all the way. It was time to fire the engine for the first time.

12) I cleaned and re-gapped the sparkplugs, re-installed the rotor and distributor cap, place all of the plug wires back and was ready to fire the engine for the first time. I put the battery in place and hooked up the cables. I was now ready to fire the engine.

13) The ignition switch start position was not working so I used a remote start unit instead. I placed a spark tester on line and hit the button. The engine started to spin and I had visible confirmation of spark being delivered. I performed the step again while checking each individual cylinder and all had good spark. Poured some fuel down the carb throat and the engine started and died.

14) I refilled the carb bowl and put some fuel down the carb throat again, hit the start button and fired right up. It idled steadily for about 35 seconds and died. Retried the step several times and the engine would fire easily and run for about one minute before dying from lack of fuel.

15) I put the water pump back online using the old belt, filled the radiator with water and placed a line from an electric fuel pump with a 1 gallon tank to the carburator. Hit the start button and the engine started right away and idled smoothly for a few minutes while I was monitoring temperature. I then went for broke and fired the engine up and let it run until the fuel in the one gallon tank was all used up. The little tank had about 1/4 gallon inside so the car ran quite well for a long while. The temperature at the water neck, the radiator hoses and radiator never exceeded 190 degrees during the complete run.

So after I removed the fuel pump and other items from the car, I placed a call to the seller to give him an update on the vehicle. He could not believe the engine was running so I filled the bowl again and fired the engine so he could hear it over the phone. The man was in shock and kept telling me I was trying to fool him but the facts are facts and the car is on it's way back to recovery.

This was today's adventure, another 1.9L engine has come back to life after 15 years or so of sitting under a Georgia sun.

[JudokaJohn]

the only thing I would have done that you did mention, would be to drain the gas tank and refill with fresh gas.

you found out that filling the cylinders with oil was overkill. all you really need was enouogh to coat the walls of the cylinders.

once you get it running on its own with new gas, i would change the oil and filter, and flush the coolant. then you should be good to go.

post some pics so we can see your car.

[blancojp]

the only thing I would have done that you did mention, would be to drain the gas tank and refill with fresh gas.

you found out that filling the cylinders with oil was overkill. all you really need was enouogh to coat the walls of the cylinders.

once you get it running on its own with new gas, i would change the oil and filter, and flush the coolant. then you should be good to go.

post some pics so we can see your car.

The car is not ready for these steps yet, I will get it to run on the fuel cell as much as possible to see if something else pops up. The tank is complete however the fuel sender is missing and the area is taped up so I can't really put any fuel in the tank. The fuel pump however works just fine and does not leak; which is a major plus in the state of the engine. In the time that it has been running, there were no oil leaks anywhere and the engine is smooth as silk running with the screwed up Solex.

Prior to the second long run, I installed the A/C compressor belt and would you believe the A/C works. It blows cold on the middle speed (only speed that works) but it shows that it needs to be recharged.

Once it stops raining, I will put the rear of the car on jacks and remove the rear wheels. Once that is done, I will check the tranny out to make sure it shifts and also to start bringing the working temperature up to speed. The fluid in the Auto tranny was not black as I expected, it had a nice semi-clean red color so I don't expect any problems.

I don't know yet if I am going to keep the car since I bought another GT last week which is ready to drive. But if I let it go, the car will make someone a good driver with very little dollars to spend.

[SteveGT]

Juan, if you intend on letting this Manta go...I will buy it back, I assumed from our conversations you were to restore the Manta, that's the reason you bought it so cheap....no profit on my side just wanted to see it restored and on the road for the enjoyment....I salvaged this Manta from the crusher not for profit but to save it from the jaws....if you are gonna sell it for profit I will trailer it back for someone that will restore it to a driver....I have a few contacts that will do so...please advise and I will come get it back and return your money paid....as you stated this Manta is in great shape for a restore and it runs fine....

SteveG

[blancojp]

Juan, if you intend on letting this Manta go...I will buy it back, I assumed from our conversations you were to restore the Manta, that's the reason you bought it so cheap....no profit on my side just wanted to see it restored and on the road for the enjoyment....I salvaged this Manta from the crusher not for profit but to save it from the jaws....if you are gonna sell it for profit I will trailer it back for someone that will restore it to a driver....I have a few contacts that will do so...please advise and I will come get it back and return your money paid....as you stated this Manta is in great shape for a restore and it runs fine....

SteveG

Like I said, I don't know if I will be keeping the car or not. For now, once it is fully driveable it will go into storage like the other GT. I have 6 projects running at this time so I need to keep the cash flow where I can get a return.

This car is a perfect candidate for a convertible conversion, perhaps next year I can tackle this after Stealth is done.