7/13/06

I just ordered a cool quad-gauge thingy for Mr. Wiggly. It incorporates voltmeter, oil pressure, and water temperature gauges into the face of a 10,000-RPM tachometer. I know 10,000 RPM is overkill for Mr. Wiggly, but that’s how it comes. The voltmeter is slightly superfluous since there is one in the dash, but the other three are necessary. Speaking of necessity, I'm thinking about doing away with the little covered cubbyhole in the dash of Matilda and adding a mini triple gauge there. I probably won’t do it, but I am thinking about it. But back to Mr. Wiggly, I can’t decide if I want to mount this new gauge the easy way or the better-looking way. The easy way would be to use the swivel base thingy it comes with and set it on top of the dash. The better-looking way would be to replace the stock cluster next to the speedometer in the dash. It has the non-working fuel gauge, a questionable temp gauge, the voltmeter, and an oil pressure light that may or may not be working. I think I will see about removing that and loading the combo unit in there. Of course a speedometer would be nice then. But if I did all of that I'd have to go with the Autometer quad-gauge that has oil, water, volts, and fuel level in a unit that matches the speedometer. No, because then I'd be without a tachometer again. I think I'm doing it the right way. I can’t decide if I'm going to build a rorty zorst or take it to Steve/John. Since the thing is thirty years old, I think I can legally ditch the catalytic converter. I know, pollution this, and smog that, and “What about future generations?” blah, blah, blah. The way I look at it is screw the future; I'm going to be spending most of it dead. Selfish? Yes. If you don’t like it, get the hell off my planet. Anyhoo, I think I have just convinced myself to take it to Steve/John to have the rorty zorst installed. You missed out on the whole thing because it all happened in my head while I stared at the screen. Basically, I thought through the process of removing the old system, building and installing the rorty zorst, and decided I'm far too lazy for that. We’ll see though. I really need to poop or get out of the Ganges on George! It has sat for a few weeks while I've persistently not worked on it. Speaking of George and the turbo engine, I went back to re-read the July 2004 entries and found that I was in the process of psyching myself up to build the turbo engine for that car! I had bought the fuel injection system, which I'm not using now, and was planning to bring the car in and get the chassis ready for implantation. I never did it though. What finally got that engine put together was the Seven! I was going to use the turbocharged A-13 in the Seven. That seems so weird now. I'm sure the turbo engine would have made the car much faster, but would it have been better? Ok, thinking back to the car I drove at Birkinstock three months ago, the one with 100 horsepower more than mine, I think I can say that it would have been better. Not that the car isn’t fun the way it is powered now, because it really is. Oh well, I'm not going to sweat it. I never intended for it to be the fastest Seven ever, or even the most fun I suppose, but it is fast enough and really is fun enough. In fact, pulling into the Motorsport Ranch Sunday to pick up Ray I did something I never do. I held a drift through the entry gate and onto the main road until I needed to catch the next gear at the bridge. That car is so controllable it’s funny. They’d still be picking bits of my corpse out of the fence if I'd tried that in the Cobra. That car was so uncontrollable it wasn’t funny. No doubt about it, I made the right decision moving away from that and into a Seven! Ok, I seem to have gotten sidetracked. What was I talking about? I don’t know. I think I'm going to go to the shop either tonight or tomorrow and make a list of stuff I need to buy for George. That way we can make a parts run Saturday and get cracking on some productive work instead of goofing off all morning. Yeah, we’ll see if that happens. Of course I could plan to clear out a spot for the Seven in the “Paint Booth” so John can move his 510 inside and get to work on his stuff. I'm not sure what we’re going to do with that cabinet in the PB or the shelves and crap in the back of Mr. Wiggly. We’ll probably stick them in the houseboat. That seems likely. We really should load a bunch of trash into Mr. Wiggly and make a dumpster run as well. Ok, so it looks like a shop cleaning day Saturday. That would be a good use of our time. Well, I've been away from here for a couple hours now. I think I have said enough for one day anyway. I think I'll call it complete. Toodles.