9/22/06

I totally forgot to send this to Spiderman yesterday. Oops. Well, Mr. Wiggly's aluminum manifold arrived yesterday. As did the flow-through filter top thingy. The velocity stack should be arriving today. I went to the shop to get the Seven for BNSF Family Day and took all of those parts with me. I decided to let the Seven be shown with its track patina in tact. In other words, I was too last to wash it. I played with the manifold and wound up drilling the holes in the Clifford Research one-barrel to two-barrel adapter. I need some studs and nuts to mount it though. I mad a couple studs but they are too short. I used them for alignment porpoises and saw that I hit the holes perfectly. I felt down into the bore and could feel just the slightest imperfection in the transition from adapter to manifold. It will be fine. I'm ready to get cracking on installing all of this stuff tomorrow morning! I'll still need the alternator back from Robert before I can run the thing but I can get started at least. So, I drove the Seven home last night and in to work this morning. I must block the heater hole in the scuttle! There is so much hot air coming in that it took an hour here at work before I stopped sweating. John suggests a hinged door of some sort so I can open it in the “winter” when I do want heat in the cockpit. I have something in mind that will be pretty easy to build. I'll take a piece of flat aluminum and attach it at the top of the hole with a hinge. Where it overlaps the scuttle around the hole I will “seal” it with Velcro. I'll put another tab, or two, of Velcro where it folds up flat against the scuttle when open. That way it will “fail safe” to the closed position if the Velcro lets go for some reason. I'll have to take the bonnet off to “turn on” the heater but I doubt I'll use it all that often. I suppose I could install another push/pull cable that would operate it. I'm thinking a sliding door to cover and uncover the opening would work. Or I could have the hinged door swing to the inside of the scuttle so that pulling the cable opens the “heater” and pushing closes it. I suppose I could even have two doors, hinged vertically in the middle, with two push/pull cables so that the driver and passenger could have different levels of heating. Interesting thoughts. Then again, that large flat area in front of the scuttle is a perfect location for a tool/spares box. Yeah, a solidly mounted plate covering the hole is probably the best course of action. No need to add more weight than necessary to close it off. Besides, I don’t really know A) how much winter driving I'm ever going to do, and 2) how effective that “heater” would actually be. Oh sure, it throws a ton of hot air out on a 90 degree day, but what about when it is 40 out? I think bundling up is the way to go if I have to drive in the winter. Well, that or drive a different car. Oh yeah, I'm not making a daily driver out of this car. Why am I worrying about such inanities as a heater? Never mind, forget I mentioned it. Oh, I might make the first hinged thing since it wont be all that much work to build and no heavier than a plate. Well, it is noonish and I'm getting hungry. I think I'll call this rant complete for the week and go grab some lunch.