here's my two cents, I've brought back half a dozen old motorcycles to life, couple old cars, and Mud Dog an old 302 engine (you can find that post on this forum), two years of sitting aint nothing
1. Check Oil with dip stick (oil is the life blood of the engine it lubricates) you are just making sure there is plenty there and it looks brown or black, either one is ok for now, as long as it does not look like a light brown milk shake or coffee with cream (that is bad means water in the oil, strongly doubt it)
2. Remove each spark plug one at a time so you know where it goes, squirt WD 40 using the red straw provided with each can inside the spark plug hole, that will lube up the dry pistons, piston rings, inside your cylinders, spray and count 5 aligators per squirt, it's ok the WD-40 will burn off, give it 30 minutes to soak in,
3. put the plugs back in carefully not to cross thread them, lightly tighten them do not over tighten, snap the spark plug wires back on make sure they are on right, check the coil wire that goes to the distributor cap press each wire down to make sure they did not come loose
4. get yourself one of those cheap clear tube with rubber ball gasoline pumps, it looks like the thing to test your blood pressure with and pump out all the old gasoline, you can use the old gas in a lawnmower, then poor a gallon of fresh brand new gasoline into the tank, don't wanna poor too much in, in case there is a problem with the gas tank and it needs to be removed (strongly doubt it)
5. take the radiator cap off and stick your finger in the coolant, is there water there, or is it dry as a bone, if dry add some water, water will be fine for now, if there's stuff there is it rusty looking or green like it's supposed to be
6. charge the batter overnight, test it with a volt meter, it should read around 13 volts (yes I know we call them 12 volt batteries, but each cell is like 2.2 volts and there's six cells) or do the poor man's test turn on the lights, do they go on, if it's daylight, beep the horn is it loud, turn on the windshield wipers do they work, turn on the radio does it play, etc, otherwise take it to an auto store to test it under load to be sure it is good, check the born on date sticker, I think it's in a month year format, anything older than 5 years can be toast even if you didn't use it
7. You may need to prime the carb, pump the gas pedal a few times, but not too much, if you smell gasoline in the engine compartment, you flooded it, don't panic, wait 15 minutes it will evaporate, don't pump the gas pedal again just try to start it, if that doesn't work, you can poor some gasoline inside a glass bottle, (it will disinigrate a plastic cup) remove the blue air cleaner off the carburetor, and poor a shot of gasoline inside the carb, try to start it
8. If it won't start but it is turning over, and it has a good battery, then you can clean the carb a bit with it on the engine, wearing safety glasses, squirt some carb cleaner into every crevice of the carb on the engine, take off a hose squirt some cleaner in there, be very careful it can come squirting back right in your face your eyes
ok, I am not saying you will have to do all these things, these are just some of the things you may want / need to do
