Today my brother came over to help me try to get it running. He brought his air tank over and filled up the tires. Next we pulled the plugs. They were remarkably clean and evenly gapped so we just cleaned them with some starter fluid and a wire brush and put them back in. Next we tried to charge the battery a bit but it just wouldn’t take a charge. So we went down to the local auto parts store, recycled the old battery and another dead battery for $10 store credit and bought a new battery. Got home, put in the new battery, put in a few gallons of gas and rolled it outside to try starting it.
Before we started we knew there was some sort of electrical issue. We actually found a wire missing off of a capacitor like device, can’t think of the name of it right now, put that back and tried starting it. Nothing happened, the gauges showed that there was a draw on the battery when it was cranking but there was nothing happening. We checked over all the connections on the starter and while rusty they were solid. My brother thought maybe the starter was a bit jammed up so he started tapping it with a hammer and almost immediately it started cranking!
He put some starter fluid in the stock 2 barrel Solex carb and it fired up and promptly died as soon as the starter fluid was burned up. We tried a few more times and it wouldn’t re-fire. We figured it was a dead spot in the starter so we put it in gear, rolled it back and forth a bit to move the starter to a new spot and tried again. She started right up and kept running. Checked over a few more things, stopped and restarted it several times and it all appears to be well now.
The upper and lower radiator hoses as well as the radiator cap need to be replaced and there is a lifter that is a bit sticky. Other than that it is going amazingly well. None of us can believe that the car has started this quickly after having sat for nearly 10 years with no more than an hour of running that whole time.
German engineering at it’s finest I guess.