5/8/06

We got quite a bit done on George over the weekend. First off, on Friday after work I stopped by a Nissan shop to ask if he had any of those thick cast iron washers that Nissan so loves for straddling the intake and exhaust manifolds on A and L series engines. He was sure he did but didn’t know where they might be. I saw one of the spring-loaded washers that Nissan uses on the VG-30 engines and asked if he thought they would work. He thought they probably would. I thanked him for his time and headed home. Oh, did I mention shopping for a Rolex last week? Well, for some reason last week I was on an “I want a new watch” kick so I shopped some online sources for a Rolex. Yeah, I'm not going to buy a Rolex any time soon. I did put a $12,500.00 Oyster Submariner Chronograph on my wish list on Amazon though, just in case. I showed it to mom the other night and she suggested we look for something more reasonable. There is a point to this digression, and here it is. When I got home from the Nissan place she handed me a Swiss Army Chronograph that does pretty much everything I need a watch to do. I thanked her by taking her out to dinner at the Parthenon. John called at some point in the evening to ask when I was planning to go to the shop. I told him I'd probably “sleep in” and roll out of bed around 0800 then go to the shop. He said he’d try to meet me at 0830 and then we’d go to Lowe’s. I awoke at 0700 and went to the can. When I was ready to leave mom asked me to look at her computer. It had locked up. I tried a bunch of things and finally held the power switch until it shut off. I restarted it and it booted up fine. Of course now the time is 0825 so I figure I'm running late. I head out and haul ass to the shop. I beat John there by 15 minutes anyway! I start playing with the throttle cable for the turbo engine and he shows up. We look the place over and do a few things, but I don’t remember what. We finally head for Lowe’s around 1000. We find the nuts, bolts, and washers I need for George and then get the fiberglass stuff for the floor. I want to lay some glass cloth or mat down then cover it with resin to seal up the rusty floors. Pat suggests mat over cloth so we buy that. We get some other stuff and then head back to the shop. I try to fart around but John is having none of it. Wait, did we eat lunch while we were out? Yes, we did. So, we left Lowe’s and went to Razoo’s for lunch. I was debating between the fried gator tail and the Rat-toes. The waitress talked me into the Rat-toes. Five minutes after ordering I regretted it and wanted the gator tail. Oh well. We ate and then headed for the shop. I tried, as I said before, to goof off but John cracked the whip. We bolted the transmission up to the engine and lifted it into the car. There is something to be said for putting the right engine in a car. It practically fell right into place. We bolted it down and I started on the manifold installation. I dropped the exhaust on and then the intake. I plopped the turbo onto its stub thingy and bolted up the outlet flange/support bracket. We put the up pipe in place then hung the carburetor off the back of the compressor and bolted down its support bracket. We, including Marty Smith, looked at the down pipe routing options for some time and they just about had me convinced to run it around the front and down the passenger side of the car. After they left I found another piece of 2.5” tubing and played with alternate routes. I found that I could snake it out and down to the stock location if I had some more “U” bends. I went ahead and welded the two ¼ turns I had back into a ½ turn and welded that to the outlet flange/support bracket. Oh, at some point we also installed the steering wheel. That was probably before the Lowe’s trip. After I had the down pipe as built as I could build it without more “U” bends, I decided to see if the hood would close. I had done really well with my measurements on the up pipe as it cleared everything really well. I didn’t do so well with the carburetor placement. The dashpot hit the hood. I took the ball peen end of a ball peen hammer and whanged a dent up in the hood above the carburetor. I could force the hood closed but it was riding on the carburetor badly. I decided to leave fixing it for a later date. Speaking of leaving things for a later date, I'm going to leave the story of Sunday for tomorrow. Buh bye.