9/14/06

I've got indigestion something fierce! Unfortunately, I don’t have anything else, like stuff to say in here. I did receive my swamp cooler for Mr. Wiggly yesterday. It is old and kind of dirty, but I think it might be ok. We’ll see. Speaking of Mr. Wiggly, I was wondering how I was going to show “him” and the Seven at the car show next Friday here at the BNSF Family Day. Well, the guy in charge of the event said he’s getting too many entries and wondered if I'd mind not showing Mr. Wiggly this year. I told him that would be fine. So now I'm off the hook for cleaning and making Mr. Wiggly presentable for next week. I can concentrate on the Seven. Of course by “concentrate” I mean go hooning at the Motorsport Ranch this weekend with Dick Brink and Bernie Long. Oh I'll probably clean it up a little bit on Sunday afternoon or Thursday evening of next week. Oh, I found something else for Mr. Wiggly on e-Bay this morning. As you may remember, I have a set of six-to-two headers, a new intake/exhaust gasket, a Clifford one-barrel to two-barrel adapter, and a Weber carburetor jetted for the 225 Slant Six all sitting on the shelf ready to install. I've had issues in my mind about the cast iron intake manifold from the beginning. Intakes should be made of aluminum, dag-nabbit! Therefore, I've been “shopping” for an aluminum manifold from day one, sort of. I've found the Offenhauser and Clifford four-barrel manifolds a few times, even bid on a couple. I've seen the Offenhauser dual one-barrel manifold, which uses two stock carburetors, once or twice. I would really like to have that setup! I've even bid on a few stock two-barrel manifolds but have lost out in the end when they went over my max “walk away” price. What I mean by that is, the price where I could justify not using the carburetor and adapter I already have on hand. Well, this morning I saw a stock aluminum one-barrel manifold for $20.00 that had no bids and was ending in 13 hours. I bid on it. I'll probably have to bid again this afternoon but we’ll see. I'm thinking that I'll mount the Weber to the aluminum manifold, assuming I win the auction of course, and then I'll have no excuse to not install the intake and header on the van. I'll need to decide on the zorst for it then. I'll run duals but I'm not sure if they’ll be under the floor with dumps ahead of the rear tires or full on side-pipes! Dumps would be cheaper but some “leg burners” sure would look cool. I'm trying to wrap my mind around the side-pipes and I'm beginning to lean towards dumps. Ok, so here’s how I'll plan to do it. I'll install all of the bits and fire it up. If it is just barely quiet enough to drive over to Steve/John’s, I'll have him install a zorst. If I don’t think I can make it across town, I'll buy a pair of Smithy’s mufflers, like I have on the Seven, and make my own system. Actually, I may do that anyway, now that I think about it. I was reading an article about the Slant Six the other day and the dude said that separating the exhaust of the front three from the back three and running duals all the way back really makes a big difference on these engines. I'm sure it won’t help torque all that much unless I keep my pipes small for velocity. That’s the beauty of the Smithy’s muffler though; it is a 2” inlet and outlet so the gasses ought to be hauling ass through those pipes. I think I might go to Summit right quick and order a couple mufflers and some Hugh bends. Well, would you look at that? I guess I did have something to say today after all.