4/19/06

I'm beginning to get excited about the Southwest Sevens Festival this weekend. I'm still not sure if I'm going to enter the NASA event just to run a few more track sessions. I really don’t want to have to sit through the classroom stuff. I know they are probably teaching valuable information. Know I could probably use much of that information. I know I don’t know all there is to know about car control and race craft. I know I'm not the greatest driver who ever lived, which is not a sarcastic way of saying I'm not a good driver but my acknowledgement of my limits. I'm not so testosterone driven as to think there is nothing anyone can teach me about driving. I just don’t want to sit through the classes. Besides, it is a whole lot cheaper to rent the “track” at Miserable Smells for a day of hooning. Also, if I wanted to drive the Motorsport Ranch track, I know enough members that I could mooch a session sometime. Of course, having said all of that, I'll probably sign up for the HPDE sessions once I arrive Saturday morning and do the event. Juan never knows. I need to go in and make a list of stuff I need to buy and have ready to take with me Saturday morning. I think I'll do that in my work computer though so I can print it out and have a checklist. In fact, I think I'll go do that now. Done. I haven’t printed it yet because I might add some more to it before the week is done. Ok, so on to other things, I bought some exhaust manifolds for Barbecue Bob today. I was on e-Bay again when I came across a set of factory “ram horn” manifolds. They were $40.00 “Buy it Now” priced and looked pretty good. I have always, well, not so much “liked” but disliked the least, the “ram horn” manifolds. I'll have to say they are some of my more favorite of the factory manifolds. There was another set with the alternator bosses but they didn’t have a “BIN” price. What they did have was a picture of the center exhaust ports. I always assumed the front and rear cylinders just dumped right in on top of the center ports and they all went down and out. That doesn’t appear to be the case after all. It looks like the center ports are divorced from the outer runners until they all meet up in the “collector” of the manifold. They are more of a “shorty header” design than I had originally thought. I like them more knowing that. Oh, I called John to ask if they were worth a damn. He said they were which is why I went ahead and bought them. It is entirely possible that I'm going to screw around and move Barbecue Bob in front of George in order of completion. I should drop the engine in George tonight. John and I should bolt the A-13 to the dogleg five-speed and drop it in the car tonight. We shouldn’t get sidetracked by any other projects and just get it done. We will get sidetracked of course, and we won’t get it done, but we should. I think if I have the engine in George with all of that turbo gear hanging from it and out of the way, I can justify putting wheels back on it and rolling it out again for a little while. Then we can get Barbecue Bob in and start on that installation. Barbecue Bob with a V8, air, and five-speed wouldn’t make a bad daily driver. I could sell the Pimpmobile to John's sister and have an extra $500.00 a month. Or, I could have $25,000.00 to play with while still making payments. That would be dumb. Yeah, I know I did the same thing when I sold the Cobra but it was dumb then too. Pat bought a Subaru wagon the other day. It is like a 1986 or so and has the selectable four-wheel drive. I mean, it can be shifted from four-wheel low to four-wheel high to two-wheel drive rather than full-time all-wheel drive like the Scooby-Doo had. I'm somewhat jealous but not too much. I’m a little worried about all of the noise the engine is making. It might just be an exhaust leak, which it has by the way, but it also might be a rod knock. I know where he can get a spare engine though since my neighbor across the street has had a ton of old Subaru cars in the past. Well, I'm getting a bit hungry. I think I'll call this rant done for the day and go eat. Buh bye.