9/25/06

Ok, so what happened Friday after I left here? At about 1400h I went to the parking garage and moved the Seven to the car show for Family Day. I hung out there for a while and talked cars with folks. There was a really nice ’69 Charger and an ’81 Mercedes 380SL. Oh, there were Mustangs and Corvettes and other stuff too. I was parked next to a TR-2 and we talked most of the time. There was a really cool old Yamaha or Suzuki 100 cc bike there that was in nice shape but not restored. It was for sale too. I almost bought it but kept my composure. Another bike showed up after I wandered back to my car. I noticed this “chopper” rolling in and thought, “Damn! That guy is huge!” As it got closer I revised it to, “Damn! That chopper is small!” I also noticed it didn’t sound like a lawn mower and deduced it was a Japanese bike motor. I went over to check it out. Sure enough, it was a Honda 550 in a custom chopper frame from the seventies. It was way cool! I wandered back to my car and pretty soon a DeTomaso Pantera pulled in. I walked over to it and discovered it had an aluminum 406 cubic inch engine with twin turbos and nitrous. I looked it over and headed back to mine. I walked around and looked at all of the other cars, to be polite you know, and then hung out by mine. I had told myself I wouldn’t be the first or second car to leave so I waited for a while. After three others had left, I told the organizer, “While they aren’t Lucas headlights, I'm still going to try and get home before dark.” He laughed and allowed me to leave. I packed up and hopped in the cockpit. On the way home I debated going straight to the shop since I had heard a prediction of rain. I went to the house. Saturday morning I got a call from John about half an hour after I was supposed to be at the shop. He was there, I wasn’t. I got dressed, shaved my teeth, and stuck in my eyes then headed down. The sky was threatening to the north. I got the car parked and began to look at my bits and pieces for Mr. Wiggly. John was installing a quick release steering hub in his 510 and when he got to a “quitting point” we headed out to try and buy some argon. Blank’s was closed. We tried Tri-Gas but they were closed. We went to Home Depot and bought some other things we needed for our projects and headed back to the shop. I built an air filter housing that would fit around the Albatross while John built his seat bracket. I welded up both of those items and began making studs for my carburetor adapter while he installed his seat. Oh, I think we ate while we were out as well, Sweet Home Chicago. When John was done and I was at a point where a major time commitment of a job lay ahead, we left. I took him home and went home myself. While watching TV that evening I learned my cat is a puritanical prude and is easily scandalized. She was curled up in my lap while I was watching a thing about heavy metal music. They were discussing Judas Priest. They were talking about how Rob Halford’s metal studded leather attire, which has since become de rigueur for the well-dressed metal band, stemmed from his being a homosexual. When he said, “I have been known to frequent S&M bars,” she jumped up and stared right at the screen. I laughed so hard, and for the first time ever, wished that my life was on video! Nothing on TV could live up to that so I called it a day and went to bed. Sunday morning I went back to the shop intending to get started on the intake and header installation on Mr. Wiggly. I pulled the doghouse out and surveyed the situation. I began disassembling things. I took the air filter housing off and began to think about talking myself out of this. I grabbed a socket, extension, and a ratchet and began taking nuts off of the manifolds. I was surprised by how easily they were to both access and break loose. I got the manifolds un-done from the head and started looking at how I was going to remove them. I still needed to take the down pipe loose. I had taken all of the vacuum lines and mechanical linkages and wiring and plumbing loose as I worked so that was the only thing holding me up. I tried to unbolt the pipe, I really did, but the nuts were too well rusted on, not to mention the studs were a mile long. I finally grabbed the Sawzall and cut the damned thing. I removed the intake and exhaust manifolds and began to think I was on the downhill side of this project. It was then that I remembered the broken exhaust stud in the head. No, I didn’t break it. It was already broken. I looked in the hole and thought I might get off lucky. It appeared to only be full of schmutz and schmort. I grabbed a pointy thing, a tap the right size, and a stud from that spare head. I poked around with the pointy thing and discovered it was actually a broken stud. I went back in and looked for an EZ-Out. Remarkably, I found a whole kit of them! I took the drill out and, well, drilled out the stud. At least I attempted to drill out the stud. I drilled a remarkably well-centered hole and turned the EZ-Out into it. No luck. I quit before I broke the EZ-Out, unlike my usual modus operandi. I decided that since I had the tap already there, I'd go ahead and drill it and re-tap. I found the right sized drill bit and drilled. I ran the tap in but wasn’t happy with the results. I decided the problem was with my “open hole” tap. I needed a “blind hole” tap. I took the tap to the grinder and flattened the tip, making sure I left the cutting threads alone. It turned out pretty well, if I do say so myself. I tapped the hole and ran the stud in. It was straight and looked to be deep enough. I did a “happy dance.” I was at a point where I could have quit but I wanted to see what the headers looked like. I grabbed the front header and fought with it. No good. I'd have to snake it around the dipstick somehow. I grabbed the rear header and slipped it in place. No good. The old down pipe was in the way. I crawled under the van and cut it and the tailpipe loose with the Sawzall. Back up top I could now fit the rear header. The front also almost fit now. I bent the dipstick tube and finally got the front header on place. I was about to screw some nuts on when I thought, “I'd better put the gasket on just in case I decide to go ahead and bolt this sucker down.” I went back in and found the intake/exhaust gasket. I slipped it in place and fitted the headers to the head. The front fouled the water neck so I took it to the grinder. It fit after that. When I had the headers hanging, I decided I might as well drop the intake on. With the intake in place, I started putting nuts back on. Pretty soon I had the whole thing bolted up. I stood back and looked at it. I had to laugh. In just a few hours I had done it. I had swapped intake and exhaust on an engine I had never had any experience with. You’d think something as simple as George’s engine wouldn’t be an issue, but I digress. I hook up a few of the loose ends, the vacuum advance for the distributor and the fuel inlet, and think, “If I just had an alternator I could start this thing!” I still have no idea how I'm going to connect the gas pedal to the carburetor, but I don’t think that will be too tough. So, to make a short story long, Mr. Wiggly has headers and a Weber carburetor now! I'm as happy as a little girl!