It started!

We had our expert (Pawpaw) come over after we put the carburetor on and we began pretending like we knew how to get this car running.  We discovered that we pinched a metal fuel line and leaked the foulest smelling gasoline I've ever smelled all over myself and the garage floor, but we routed it around the hole temporarily.  After replacing the points in the distributor and getting an education on timing we manually shoved the choke closed and cranked the engine until, to Eli's glee, the thing fired up and ran!

The distributor does what?

Then it promptly started spewing oil out of the bell housing.  35 seconds of elation followed by disappointment.

How does oil get into the bell housing?  Why, through the rear main seal, of course!  So, pull the engine back out.  The rebuild kit that we had used came with an old rope-style seal, and Pawpaw warned us at that time about those.  Well, after pulling the engine out we saw that it was, in fact, pinched and rammed itself over exposing about a quarter inch of rear main with no seal at all.  Hence the rather profuse leak.

We noticed two more bad things as well.

First of all, there were metal shavings in the oil pan.

yea.  NOT GOOD.

Upon further inspection though, it turned out that it wasn't as catastrophic as we had feared.  The flex plate bolts are just a little too long and apparently the new crank bearings have a side flange that is microscopically wider than the old one and the bolts rubbed their ends on it.

Simple fix: clean out the oil pan and get some washers for those bolts to make them shorter.  They probably had washers on them in 1968, but someone between then and now lost/discarded them.  We didn't lose them.  I swear.

Second, we noticed a leaking freeze plug.  Rookie mistake here: we should have replaced the freeze plugs when we had the engine out the first time.  So, we decided to do it with it out the second time.  That meant we had to remove the exhaust manifold (which we also should have just done the first time around).  And we promptly broke 3 bolts.

new freeze plugs and a couple broken bolts.

So, drill, drill, break drill bits, tap, buy new bolts, etc... No problem.  What a pain.

Putting the engine in with the transmission already in the car was a new challenge, but we man-handled it just right and got everything bolted back in.  We even put in the new fuel line tube.  Then, with no exhaust pipe connected, we cranked it over again and it started right up and ran!

All of this happened in about a week.  Eli is more excited than ever to drive the thing now.  He scrubbed the old carpet and put it back in with the old seats.  He then put all the fenders back on except the drivers side because we still need to fix that door.  Next up: exhaust pipe and brake system.

This stuff (freeze plugs, bolts, points) cost: $50

Total project cost: 3556.51