5/1/06

I'm going to resist the urge to comment on it already being May. Damn! I blew it didn’t I? Oh well. So, what did I do over the weekend? Mom was at some church retreat so I forgot to eat dinner Friday evening. I had given some thought to going to the sushi bar for some bait but never got around to it. Saturday morning I spent on the internot updating my “wish list” on Amazon. I added about eight pages of DVDs that I'd like to own someday. My brothers use that to shop for my Christmas presents each year. They had complained that I hadn’t updated it in a while, like since 2002 or so, and weren’t sure if the list was still good. Well, now they have a really extensive list to choose from. Pat called about 1030 to see what I was up to and we planned to go to the Pate swap meet at the Texas Motor Speedway when he was done at the Motorsport Ranch for the day. I closed down the internot at about noon and took a shower then waited for his call. He called and said he was on his way just as I started watching Bruce Lee in “Fists of Fury” on Spike TV. He arrived and we headed north. I told him about forgetting to eat so we stop at On The Border by my office for some lunch. We eat and head north again. We walk about two thirds of the meet and then go check out the car corral. Once we were satisfied that there wasn’t anything we needed we headed south again. We stopped off at the retirement facility where his dad lives to look at a 510 wagon that has sat for a while. Pat had spoken to the lady and she said, “Make an offer on it.” We looked it over and talked to his dad for a bit then left. Pat dropped me off at the house and I watched TV for the rest of the evening. I forgot to eat dinner again Saturday night. Sunday morning I headed for the shop with the intention of at least mounting the transmission to the engine for George. I took my camera so I could get some shots of the carburetors on the Seven. When I arrived I decided to go for a hoon instead of working. I took the pictures and headed out. I won’t bore you with the details of the drive but it was the standard FM5 run and back. I decide to go to Lowe’s for some nuts, bolts, and washers to mount the fender mirrors and the Albatross. I hop back in the Pimpmobile and head for the credit onion to get cash. From there I go to McDonald’s and then to Lowe’s. I get the bits I need, including four cans of flat white spray paint for George, and head back to the shop. I mount the Albatross, which is the aluminum air horn thingy for a DGV carburetor, to the DGV for Mr. Wiggly and then start thinking about an air filter. I abandon that line of work and move on to the fender mirrors. I know I should have waited until I had the engine in before mounting the mirrors, but I didn’t. I measure the spots where I want them and drill the holes. I mount the passenger side mirror but it pops right off again. The gasket thingy needs to have the arrow pointing to the rear of the car, not the front. I turn it around and re-mount the mirror. It holds this time. I go to adjust it but find it is floppy. I curse a bit and tighten the screw. It is still floppy and it pisses me off. I adjust it and sit in the driver’s seat to see what I can see. Basically, not much is what I can see. I'll reserve final judgment until I get it out on the road. I install and adjust the driver’s side and can’t see any better in it than the passenger side. I mark the door behind the car where the borders of the inside mirror hit and adjust the others to see just outside of those spots. The parallax might be too much from the proximity of the door though. I need to use the wall across the road instead, now that I think about it. Anyhoo, I move on from there. It is still early and I'm not ready to call it a day so I take a look at the SU carburetor I bought on e-Bay. I take it all apart and make sure it is mostly all there. It appears to be so I blow out as many passages as I can and reassemble it. I spend the next few hours figuring out a way to secure the jet since the choke mechanism is missing. I make an “L” shaped arm that bolts to the carburetor and passes through the jet’s clevis. A spring on the other end holds the jet up against the adjusting nut. I think it will work, assuming my shitty aluminum weld holds. I'll probably rebuild it in steel since this one is really close to the valve cover and won’t allow much more enrichment. It was 2000 by the time I finished with that so I cleaned up and went home. There I shaved and took a shower then watched TV and went to bed. Now I'm here and that’s what happened. Oh, you may have noticed that I didn’t mount the transmission to the engine like I had planned. Well, I decided that since I didn’t have the bolts to do that, I probably should wait. I made a list of nuts, bolts, and washers that I need for this project and will make another Lowe’s run before long. Another thing, last week I mentioned that it looked like the Slant Six valves the dude sold me were stock and not oversize, I took a measurement and they are 1.7” and 1.44” like he said. If it is true that the stock size is 1.62” and 1.36” then the head I bought also has the oversized valves already. I guess I need to go back to that Slant Six page and see what the stock size is. According to the Chrysler “Direct Connection” manual, which is the factory “hot rod bible” for Mopar engines, the stock sizes are 1.62” and 1.36” so it looks like I have big valves in the head as well as a spare set. Well, I'm done. I have nothing more to say. Oh, I probably do but I'll save it for another time. Buh bye.