Well, I put the starter back in. Damn. And I installed a new clutch cable too. Man, that was a chore. Getting that cable end to hook in the notch on the pedal was impossible! Took me about 2 hours because I didn't have the right tools. So I made a tool, a hook out of stiff wire, and finished the job in 10 minutes. Heh.
Charged the battery. Went out today to try it and the same problem. Half-crank and click-click-click-click...but I kept cranking. A puff of smoke or two came from the starter, and it started working again. WTF.
But it didn't start anyway. I cranked a while. Discovered that no fuel was getting to the carb. Checked the tank, holy cow, I think I'm outta gas. I shook the car, no sloshing. So I go get 2 gallons of gas. Went to Home Depot and picked up a 2 gallon tank and a few mounting brackets for when I re-mount the ignition. And went across the street to the Shell to get some octane. Looks like it's the pump. So now I am looking to replace the pump. It makes sense. If the pump burnt out or was burning out, it would have left me stranded like that on the side of the 15. Possibly, I could have burnt it out by running out of gas? But I couldn't tell..even after putting in 2 gallons, I could just barely get a sloshing noise from the tank by violently rocking the car.
So, anyway, I made some progress. I'm going to put in an electric pump this week if I can. Hopefully that'll fix things.
Next on my list when that seems to work:
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