8/28/06

I've gone and done it again. Saturday morning I met up with John and Dave Heeter at the shop. We goofed off there for a bit and then went to lunch. I was about to say we did nothing but I did get the old Dodge horn button installed on the Grant steering wheel and that back into Mr. Wiggly. After lunch John was going to the muffler guy to take him some parts so I decided to tag along and have some rort installed on Matilda. Steve/John pulled the car onto the rack and they lifted it up. They had a look at it and decided to pop the rear muffler out at the flange and see how loud it would be. It sounded good and was not too loud. We decided to go ahead and put a glass pack resonator in there just in case. It still sounded good. I paid up and waited around for John. He showed up and we stood around looking at stuff and talking for an hour or so. When we left I began to listen to see if I had gone and screwed up again with too loud an exhaust. I had. It had a terrible resonance in the cabin, which did go away at about 3,000 rpm but was still too much. I decided I'd play with an insert on Sunday and live with it for the rest of Saturday. I went home, shaved and showered, then took mom to dinner at the Silver Fox Steak House. Every time I eat there I wonder why I even bother with chain steak places like the Outhouse. It is the same feeling I get when I eat at Tokyo Steak House and compare it to the stir-fry crap they serve here at the railroad. Oh, we took her car since I still haven’t mastered driving Matilda quietly. I wasted the rest of the evening waiting for my friend Amy to call and say they were going to a bar as they have the last few weeks in a row. She never did. Sunday morning I headed out for a hoon in Matilda to see a) what the new zorst did for performance, and 2) if I could drive it quietly. Answers: not much and no, I cannot. I went to the shop to see what I could scrounge up to make an insert out of and decided on a piece of conduit. Yes, the pipe on Matilda is small enough that a piece of conduit made a nice insert for the zorst. But for some reason I didn’t try to install it though. I farted around for a while and went for another hoon. Mom had called to see if I was having lunch with her but I declined. I offered to pick up $0.69 tacos from Taco Casa on the way home later though. She agreed that that was a good plan. I went to the Boys of Pep and bought a pair of ¼” spacers for the rear wheels of Matilda and had another look around for zorst insert materials. I found nothing I liked for the zorst and headed to the shop with the spacers. I pushed George out and backed Matilda in. I jacked the rear up and removed one wheel. The studs are too short to use the spacers so I reinstalled the wheel and had a look at the zorst. Two nuts and two rubber hanger thingies were all I had to remove and had the tailpipe in my hands. I cleaned up the slash-cut tip, which in actuality is just a piece of bent pipe with a severe angle cut making a turndown. Next I had a look at the insert. After a few more bends, and a few drilled holes, and I declared it ready to try. I inserted and removed it several times to make sure it wasn’t permanent and took it back to the car. Just as I was finishing, Marty Smith pulled up. I ‘splained what I was doing and asked if he’d pull the car out and around so I could hear it. It sounded good. He said there was no resonance so I decided to call it done for the weekend. I cleaned up and closed up the shop. Oh, we pushed George back in at some point as well. I took off and decided that I had in fact cured the boominess of the resonance, until I drove some more. Nope, it is still too loud. There is no way I can take mom in the car with it like this. It is even a bit too loud for me on the freeway. Oh, at 3,000 rpm it hits a resonance and is quiet, but only at certain throttle positions. Too much throttle and it is loud, too little throttle and it is too loud, just right throttle and it is perfect. Unfortunately, getting to that perfect spot requires going through the loud areas first. There is no way to get on the freeway quietly, or even semi-quietly. I'm going to go back to Steve/John and see about a Flowmaster or something. Oh, I just remembered what I did in the morning Sunday between hoons. Since I didn’t feel like getting under the car to look at the muffler, I decided to have a look at the intake. I wanted more honk so I thought I'd try to install that short-ram intake. I took out the battery and the air box to see what I could see. If I relocate the battery, make an adapter for the MAS/MAF whatever this engine uses, figure out a way to plumb in the crankcase breather, and do a whole bunch of other things, I may be able to make the short-ram almost work. I set it aside. I decided on a “Swiss cheese” job on the air filter housing. I cut the majority of the bottom out of the box and drilled a big hole in the side. All of the structure is still there but there is a whole lot more room for air to enter. Once I was installing it, I noticed that the front cover that holds the air filter in place could be drilled as well. I did that. I also trimmed a part off of the plastic part that holds the filter up so the new hole was unshrouded. With all of that together I took off for the second hoon. The intake honk is there now and I might even consider trying the stock muffler again to see if just adding honk will satisfy my need for noise. I probably won’t because, like I said, I'm planning to go see Steve/John again. We’ll see. Well, I think y’all are up to speed enough. I'm going to sign off for a while. Have a day.