Kevin and Luke have a pretty solid business plan: they find old Ford farm trucks, they get them to run again, and go about saving them as best as they can in-between in-shop projects like the LeManster and Luke’s Galaxie. And after last summer’s Satellite debacle, I highly doubt that program is going to change anytime soon. Kevin seems to have been tormented by his brief foray into the world of Mopar and might be scarred for life. I know that he never wants to hear another Highland Park Hummingbird starter ever again, that’s for sure. He’ll cringe and complain, but turn the dude loose on an old Ford and he’ll get right to work.

It’s probably a good thing he brought Luke along for this adventure, because you need to see the deep, dark pit that is the carburetor on the engine under the hood. Some carburetors make you wonder if you have a prayer of getting things to work…this one is the visual equivalent of “Abandon Hope, All Ye Who Dare” and the moment that the actual starting portion of the program kicks off, in the great theme of a J.R.R. Tolkien epic, their refusal to let the sleeping giant rest in peace is rewarded with belches of fire and the sounds of an ugly war brewing. This is old-school work at it’s best: gasoline, sanding of points, and suck-testing the vacuum advance before blasting enough carbon out of the exhaust pipe that I’d immediately run a borescope into the cylinders to see just what the hell is getting blasted through the cylinders. That’s an impressive…and frankly, worrying…amount of soot!