3/16/06

I like my Seven again! If you remember, the plan was to put on a new coil and fuel pressure regulator last night. Thing was, I didn’t have the money to buy a new coil and fuel pressure regulator. I got to the shop, after swinging by the house to se if the AAR stripes were in, they weren’t, and started looking for the regulator I thought I might have. I found it but it was that rising rate unit I bought for the blow through turbo. I was disassembling it when John arrived and he said Z-Therapy told him to NOT use a regulator. I reassembled it and we began thinking coils. We searched all of the cars thinking we might find another used electronic ignition coil. We didn’t. I grabbed the box that contained some of the fuel injection bits from the other turbo project and found, along with an MSD 6AL, an MSD Blaster coil! We installed that and fired the car up. It sounded much better. We fiddled with the synchronization and idle then reset the mixture from the other day. It sounded really good! I hopped in and went around the building. It pulled like a mo-fo all the way to 6,000 RPM. John asked how it felt compared to the DCOE and I shrugged. I said, “It felt a little better, I guess.” He hopped in and drove around the building. He pulled up and said, “You are insane! This is 10 times better than the Weber!” He went on to say that he was now, officially, jealous of the car. Before he was just slightly envious, now it is fast enough that he is truly jealous. I giggled. I did the plunger test, where you lift the piston in the carburetor as it idles, and the idle did just what it was supposed to, ramp up a bit and then steady out. Unfortunately, the idle was sitting at about 1,500 RPM. I played with the various settings and got it down to about 1,000 and sent John back around again. When he got back, I popped on the Elf shoes and went for a quick micro hoon down to the lake. It felt as quick as the Cobra but without having too much power like the Cobra. I got back and Marty Smith was waiting for me. He saw me take off and the car “squirted away,” he said. I drove on back to the shop and parked. As I pulled in, I realized I had enough hands to install the block under the front of the seat cushion. I had John hold the seat shell while I screwed the block down. Of course I squished my thumb under it when doing so, but not too badly. I dropped the cushion in place and asked John to give his opinion. He said it would work and hopped out. We “glued” the cushion to the block and Marty Smith walked up. I asked if he’d like to give it a sit and he did. The pedals are too far away, as they were for the other Marty, but he liked the feel of the cockpit. I had to try out the “new” seat myself so I hoped in after he got out. I really like the nose of the cushion up like that. I think it is going to be much better for “long distance” driving now. I can hardly wait to go hooning again! Well, Killer is up to $520.00 now with under six hours to go. Hopefully there will be a bidding war near the end and I'll come away with a fair chunk of change. Also hopefully, it will sell to someone away from here and I won’t have to see it again or hear from the new owner. And on that note, I think I'm going to shut down for a bit and go eat lunch. Well, I had a nice Pasta Pronto lunch over at the Employee Center and now I'm sleepy. While dining with Dennis, we were discussing the weather. Hey, we’re a couple of old farts leave us alone! Anyhoo, it looks like we’re into the “bright and sunny all week and rain on the weekend” season again. Of course we are, I just got the Seven running again! Well, it will be sweltering hot soon enough. I wonder how much heat and sun I'll be able to stand in that thing. We’ll see. I don’t think I'm going to reinstall the heat shield on the foot box because it really didn’t seem to do anything. Hot air came in onto my feet with it or without it. It also interfered with the gas pedal and wouldn’t let the car come back down to idle. No, I think I'll just live with hot feet. Well, there are about two more hours to go on Killer's auction. I thought I could waste enough time in here that I could just pop in at the end, but it doesn’t look like I'm going to be able to. I think I'm going to call it a rant and head off to the internot. Talk to y’all tomorrow.