Tony,
That's pretty funny! You'd better get used to it. The simpler, the more
innocuous the question, the more likely you are to receive a plethora of
potentially divergent advice and opinion.
And I am no different. In my rather varied experience in restarting old
cars, the oldest being a mere 75 years young at the time, I have never
encountered clogged fuel lines. The fuel returns to the tank where it
slowly goes bad. After a couple of decades, in one case, the fuel reduced
itself to a hard shellac coating that you would hardly know was there.
Until it started breaking up into chunks once on the move again. You are
very unlikely to encounter this. The fuel pump may be gummed up, and the
carburetor may have some shellac in it too.
My advice is to leave them alone and see if they work. I have yet to have a
fuel pump fail at this point. The rubber diaphragm will probably not be in
great shape, and may fail later, but all rubber is prone to that. If any of
the ports or jets in your carb are clogged that could be a problem, but a
good carb cleaning spray will work wonders. In my experience, it's really
only the tank you have to be worried about, and, even then, I have never had
one that kept the engine from running on an initial start up procedure,
unless, of course, it was full of holes.
There is at least one place in my city that will take your unused car and
prep it for you professionally. I mean they do the whole thing, including
brakes. It's expensive, but it keeps your hands clean. It is a little too
antiseptic for my taste. Getting to grips with your ride, literally, is
half the fun for many old car enthusiasts. It's your call.
Me, I would dump the gas, put in fresh, flush out the radiator and the
block, check the spark plugs and fire her up and see what I got. Not every
one would be this rough and ready. We had one old thang we thought was
deader than dead, not worth much effort, and it turned out to be one of the
easiest cars to get running. Go figure.
Hugh
> One other question, though, related to the old gas tank that I didn't ask
> earlier. Am I likely to find gunk clogging everything else from the tank
> to the engine - fuel lines, fuel pump, filters, carb, etc? If so, any
> special tricks to also clean these up?
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