In this one, you’re hanging out with me, Angus, and Ben (our t-shirt guy) as we try to put his 1966 Ford Fairlane 500 back on the road after it’s basically been dead to the world since around 2000. It was Ben’s first car, he’s owned it since 1991, and somewhere along the line it got upgraded from a 289 to a 351 Cleveland with a 4-barrel, backed by a Top Loader and a goofy Vertigate shifter that will absolutely confuse me the entire time. We take the safer “don’t hurt the motor” approach: check oil, make sure it spins, clean up nasty battery connections, and then chase down the classic no-spark issue by sanding corroded points until we get a healthy spark. From there it’s the usual carbureted revival recipe—make it spin, make spark, put something flammable in it—and the Cleveland fires. It also immediately tries to turn the driveway into a fuel spill, so I tear into the Holley on the ground and find the wrong power valve gasket (yep), replace gaskets/diaphragms/pump, and get it sealed up. Then we do the part everyone skips and regrets: brakes. We fight a single-pot master, delete some sketchy “line lock/union” nonsense, make a new brake line, and get it good enough to risk an eight-block maiden voyage. And yeah—first drive in 25 years, it runs pretty decent, needs timing, and it’s “just red” again after a Comet scrub-down.