My 3 year old Assistant Mechanic, Ryan, is ready to go. He was actually part of my reason to start this project. You can't raise a kid that doesn't know how to work on his own stuff.
.
So the mechanic dude at the salvage yard told me that he had fired it up with starting fluid, and that it was shooting fire out the exhaust. Stuck exhaust valve, he figured.
The left side footrest had been damaged by a forklift at the salvage yard.
.
.
Here's the control panel:
.
And the hour meter. I'm reading just over 360. It was manufactured in January 1978 according to the S/N, and I think it's been sitting somewhere for quite a while, so this is probably about it. I'm not thinking it's rolled over: (edit 7/9/2011 - I now think its pretty certain that it was rolled over, as I dug into the project and learned more.)
.
.
Now the ugly part - the deck. No rust through, except for the belt cover, but it's got a lot of rust underneath, and the center spindle is frozen. With luck, it's just the pulley rusted to the deck and the bearings are fine. The other two seem solid:
.
.
