217 startup question

[Lakermatt]

I am going to try to start up my 53 tomorrow and want to know if I can use a 12 volt battery to just do a turn over. I am going to convert over to 12 volt but just need to turnbit over to see if the damn engine works first. Let me know

[Niel Hoback]

Sure, just don't grind on it too long. Assuming you have no points in it yet? To be safe, use jumper cables from the battery to the block and the terminal on the starter. It won't hurt the starter in short bursts. 15 seconds or so.

[james curl]

Just do not feed the 12 volts to the instrument panel because you might damage the fuel sender. You can just hook the 12 volt positive to the starter solenoid and jumper across to the other terminal to run the starter. BE sure to remove the terminals on the input side of the solenoid as they feed the rest of the wiring on some cars. The coil will take 12 volts for a short period of running, but it should have a ballast resistor to drop the voltage to 6 volts if you are going to run it for a prolonged period of time. To start the engine you can run a hot wire to the coil with a toggle switch in it to turn the engine on and off.

[Lakermatt]

I think I king to just buy the 6 volt battery... I am going to run it for a while to see how she runs down the street. Then I can convert over. The wiring is a mess in this thing so I better start with that and move forward from there.

[Niel Hoback]

There you go, do it the right way.