7/20/06

Damn! Is this week over yet? Today there was a Bored Meeting. My telephone equipment failed! The microphones on the table weren’t being heard. I'm still not sure what the deal is. I'm going down to check it out after while. Oh, and I'm just sitting down at my desk for the first time at 1400 again! Fortunately there weren’t a ton of e-mails to answer when I got up here. I was going to relate the story of the Mustang today but the day is already shot. Ok, you talked me into it. Saturday morning I met up with John and we “cleaned” the shop some. After parking Mr. Wiggly we went to lunch. Gregg called to say he was on his way to the shop and I told him I'd call when I was done eating and would meet him there. John and I had Chinese at Lotus. Meh, it was ok I guess. Mom called at some point to tell me I had a package from Summit. It was the tachometer, volt, oil, and water combo gauge I mentioned yesterday. I called Gregg as I was leaving the restaurant. He said he was going to the store so I said I'd head to the house to get the gauge. I got to the shop and found him sitting in his truck waiting for me. We ogled the gauge for a moment and then got to work on the Mustang. We took the rear wheels off of Mr. Wiggly and set him on jack stands. We put the wheels on the Mustang and they filled the wheel wells! It looked like a sixties super-street dragster. We stood back to look at it for a bit. It looked tough! It would never work on the street, but it looked totally badass. We then spent the next several hours trying to figure out how to get the front of the Mustang on wheels. I know what you are thinking, “Why didn’t they use Mr. Wiggly's fronts?” I'll tell you why, we couldn’t get the jack to work on the gravel without dragging the jack stands out from under the rear. We decided that I'd buy a set of white-letter tires for the turbine wheels I had bought for Mr. Wiggly and sell Gregg the steel wheels and tires that came off. The turbine wheels won’t fit. Yep, the Camaro uses 5x4 ¾” bolt spacing while Mr. Wiggly has 5x4 ½” bolt spacing. Gregg talked me out of buying steel wagon wheels and tires because we all knew they weren’t what I really wanted on the van. Actually, once he pointed out I'd be dropping at least $500.00 to do it I decided against it. We had a look at my trailer and found it had 5x4 ¾” as well and wouldn’t work. On the bright side, I have some bitchin’ turbines for my trailer now! So, Gregg decided that he needs wheels and tires for his other trailer anyway and we went to Tractor Supply to buy a pair. They had some 13” wheel and tire combos in the right bolt spacing so he bought them. We went back to the shop and met Marty Smith. I went back to my trailer to torque the lug nuts and heard Gregg yell something about the new wheels not fitting. When I got to the other end of the shop I saw that they did fit and that he was just yanking my chain. With the tiny wheels in front and the huge things in the rear, it really looked like a sixties dragster! We took a few pictures with my camera phone but I haven’t figured out how to transfer them to anything else yet. John? Of course the front brakes were totally seized up. Gregg lay down and pushed with both legs and got the thing to slide onto the ramps. Gregg repositioned himself and squat-thrusted it again and the left front broke loose. When he repositioned a second time and pushed, the right side loosened enough that the car rolled off the trailer. Fortunately they were still tight enough that it didn’t roll through the side of the building. We took the Mr. Wiggly wheels off of the Mustang and replaced them with the flats then put Mr. Wiggly back on the ground. As I was finishing up with that, I asked Gregg when he needed his new trailer tires. “Not for a few weeks,” he replied, “if you don’t mind.” I told him that was what I had hoped he’d say. Marty and I went to Angelo’s for some ribs and then I went home to crash for the evening. I decided I'd had enough of the shop for one weekend and didn’t even leave the house Sunday except to go grab some tacos from Taco Casa for dinner. So, there you have it. I hope the story was worth the wait. Actually, I couldn’t really care any less, now that I think about it. Well, I think I'm about through talking to y’all today. Buh bye.