Oh the memories of our youth. I remember one time after my freshman year at college back in the sixties, my dad had me to help my brother rebuild the engine in dad's pick up. Well I wound up doing it by myself. After checking bearing clearance on bottom end buttoned it up and dropped in the distributor. It was a "55 Chevy pick up with the old 235 in line six. Dad told me to make sure the ball was in the center of the sight hole on the flywheel. Then go ahead and drop in the distributor and take it on home to the farm. Well I forgot one little detail, I didn't check to see if #1 piston was coming up on compression. Cranked and cranked on that darned engine but aside from back firing through the carb. nothing else happened. So the next day I drove our little Ferguson tractor with a couple lengths of chain into town and towed that truck 6 miles back to the farm. Try doing something like that now days and see what happens! I drove the tractor my brother drove the truck. I'd tell him so often to turn on the igintion and see what would happen. Nothing except every so often this big loud KA BOOM out the tail pipe. Dad got home that night we told him what we did and he said we were lucky we blow the damned muffler off the truck. Next day he goes out checks the timing sure 'nough it was 180 degrees out. He brought #1 up on compression made sure everything was okay my brother and me pushed that truck down our drive way and dad put it in reverse and let out the clutch and wham that engine fired right up. Truck never stopped running after that right up to the day he sold it with the farm back in the '70's. Oh I'll never forget that experience. Dad said us kids did pretty good excepting the timing of course. I still chuckle about it to this day.
