Tired to burn my truck up, got lucky...

[Montana71]

Hadn't started the '71 since November, thought it was about time to drive it some before it gets totally taken apart. So I charged the battery and fired it up. All sounded good, I go into the garage and when I come back out a minute later there are 4' flames in my engine compartment! Luckily my camper is parked right with an extinguisher just inside the door so I quickly grabbed it and extinguished the flames, whew. It charred some of the choke wires, but no real damage luckily. I investigated for the cause and found that my rubber fuel line from my filter to the carb was badly cracked and leaked gas onto the manifold, where I presume the HEI ignited it. After some thought I am thinking that maybe I used vacumm line and not fuel line when I installed the motor just two summers ago, hmmm... So a valuable lesson learned, I won't be starting any vehicle that has sat for some time without a close inspection, and plus not without an extinguisher close at hand.

I found and bought a short bed, and intend to really tear into the LWB to SWB conversion this summer.

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71 C10 LWB Cheyenne
68 C10 SWB parts truck
"http://www.cenlog.com/71chevy.htm"