Gas and oil

Yet another trip to Suzanne's house and I feel like I am making some progress.  I decided to put a battery on the old girl and see if she would turn over.  As soon as I hit the ignition switch she turned over without any hesitation.  I just bumped it at first, mainly to make sure that the old oil didn't get pumped all through the engine.  I'm not sure if the Marvel Mystery Oil helped, but it definitely didn't hurt!

  The next thing I decided to do was to pull it up on some ramps with my wife's Jeep Cherokee so I could get under it and change the oil.  My Dad always put Castrol 20w-50 in it, due to a recommendation from my uncle I'm pretty sure, so that's what I used to put in it.  Since that seems a little thick compared to today's standards, I decided to do some research.  I found that using heavy oil in these engines is pretty commonplace.  I did find that the recommended oil weight is 15w-40, and decided to use Shell Rotella 15w-40 diesel engine oil.  Primarily this is because diesel oil has similar levels of zinc and detergents that were used in gasoline engine oil 15 years ago and should help clean up the internals.  It's also just a little thinner, so maybe it will pick it up a little quicker  I won't go into the details, but a quick internet search provides plenty of info about the pros and cons of using this oil.

  I also decided to pull the old carburetor off to work on rebuilding it.  I will post my progress rebuilding it next time.  Hopefully it will go well!

For more inline six specs:
http://www.classicinlines.com/SmallSixSpecs.asp

And for all of the oil info you will ever want to read:
http://www.bobistheoilguy.com

First oil change after several years of sitting!