Hi all! Diving in with a big project, just got the car yesterday. Probably in way over my head, but I'm hoping to learn a lot about these great cars, and be a part of this wonderful community. Hoping to use this thread to document as much as possible.

The car:

1985 GS. Pretty much all stock, previous owner thought they might have upgraded the suspension (but it's almost certainly shot now), and they'd swapped a new clutch in (records look like around 1994). I'm the third owner. The previous owner bought the car in 1992 for his wife to drive, and she did so until sometime in 1998, when she upgraded to something newer. The previous owner wanted to build the car as his "toy" at that point, but life was in the way, and it never happened. The car sat in his driveway until maybe 2016, then he had it towed to a relative's house, where it sat for another three years (in a covered carport!), until now.

Came with a stack of service records (latest stuff dated 1997), small box of upgrade parts (mostly just poly bushings) and even some NOS badges.

Believe it or not, this picture is after hosing the entire car down, scrubbing it with a towel, then hosing it down again. At the beginning you couldn't even tell there was a sunshade in the windshield. Don't mess around with pollen, y'all.



The build:

My main goal for the build is to get a weekend cruiser. I'd like to keep things factory if possible, but realize that parts availability and 35 years of technological improvements might leave it making more sense to modify in some places. Budget plays a factor in this too -- looking for fun with value, so I'll be looking to recycle where I can.

Current state:

My first goal is to start investigating the state of various components. Primarily, I need to see if we can get the 12A running, and make sure underneath the car that everything is looking structurally sound enough that it's worth putting money into. The interior is in surprisingly good shape (big part of why I bought it) with no water leakage or signs of infestation damage. Everything starts with turning that engine over, as I see it.

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Engine Test, Step 1: Turning the engine over.

Popping the hood, we see that we're missing the clutch fan and main radiator hoses. Guess that means we'll be going electric fan, probably with a GM alternator... for now I'll just plan to use a box fan on max to give some airflow over the rad. Should probably flush out that rad to make sure it flows, too. All in due time.

Nice bit of surface rust in here on everything, ain't humidity grand? Hopefully that bottom metal piece was just a ground shield, because it looks like it's ceased to exist at this point...



Other than a friendly neighborhood cockroach (who's probably now taking up residence in my garage), the air cleaner was free of debris, and the top of the carb looks nice and clean. I'm sure the carb will need a rebuild, but my hope is that this thing, having not run since the 90s, didn't taste ethanol gas... meaning it might not be gummed up beyond belief. We'll find out more about that when we drain the fuel tank.

A grab of the main pulley yields... nothing. No spin, no give. Okay, not surprising -- gas was under a dollar the last time those apex seals tasted any dinosaur. At least with the fan missing, it's easy to grab!

Pulling the bottom front spark plug (leading plug of front rotor) was pretty painless. The threads all look good, and the business end of the plug looks practically new (so hopefully those rotors are clean and dry!).

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Work fast approaches now. I'll pull the rest of the plugs hopefully tonight, and give the pulley another spin. Expecting to need to give the ATF treatment, but we'll see. Progress updates when they come; if at any point through what I document here anyone has any tips/questions/thoughts/notices anything, please, post and let me know!

 

Turning the engine over, continued:

All the plugs are out; painless process overall. No issues getting the plugs out, though two of them (trailing plugs on both rotors) were a bit rusty on the end... not promising.

With all the plugs out, still no turn or budge from the main pulley. 19mm on that pulley bolt, on a 3ft breaker bar, no turn or budge.

Decided to go with Marvel Mystery Oil instead of ATF. Figuring it's pretty bad in there, tried my best to just flood the plug holes with the stuff, rigging up some 5/16" OD vinyl tubing, a hole drilled in a coke bottle cap, and a coke bottle filled with the MMO.

My garage floor is a mess now, but it's in there. Half-reinstalled the plugs to hopefully keep as much in as possible. Letting it sit for a day, then we'll give spinning the pulley a try again... thinking about removing all the belts and making sure none of the accessory drive components are bound up as well...

Oh, and the hood's off now!

 

You can open throttle fully and put @2 tablespoons of MMO into each primary venturi to get oil into intake port on rotor housing. Let it sit for several days to get where it needs to be. Use a breaker bar and pull cw and see if engine pulley moves,don't apply brute force initially.
If it moves at all,stop and try to rotate ccw. Keep working gently back and forth,add more MMO and let sit as before and try again later.

 

Thanks for the tip. Unsurprisingly, MMO just in the plug holes didn't seem to do anything (at least not in a day).

I was able to get all the accessory drives/belts off, and no accessories/non-engine pullies were seized.

I'd been reading around yesterday and came across this old post where they mentioned pulling off the intake manifold to try and inject solvents and deal with a rusted-seized engine. I was sort of thinking about doing that and injecting MMO from the intake ports on the engine... do you think the results would be better than just going down the primary venturis? Better enough to be worth the extra effort getting the manifold off (and having to pay for gaskets and things to put it back on)?

 

You have nothing to lose and everything to gain by putting oil down carb venturies and letting it sit for several days. The engine has sat for 20 years,what’s a few more days?
I have had success more than once doing what’s outlined above,and done that needed a tear down to free everything and then a rebuild.
Take your time and don’t force things. If it won’t turn then needs to come out and apart. Applying too much force can break things.