10/24/06

I made it sound like the vanilla colored Magnum I followed was just some random dude, didn’t I? Yesterday, when telling the story of Saturday I mean. It was John in the Pimpmobile in case you didn’t figure it out from my cryptic message. Anyhoo, I told y’all about Saturday and now we’re up to Sunday. I stopped off at Lowe’s to get some rivets and silicone for the Plexiglas doghouse top. I found some in the right diameter that were like twice as long as the ones I had before. I also bought a package of washers to back the rivets up with and headed to the shop. I stopped along the way and bought two breakfast burritos from McDonald’s and ate them as I drove. At the shop I had one last look at the fit of the top and decided it needed just another touch up on the grinder. Once I was happy with the fit, I glopped on a bead of clear silicone, which I had bought along with the rivets and washers, and attached the top to the doghouse. It looked pretty good, I think. I took it to the van and installed it. I took out my phone and snapped some pictures of it and the intake, header, and chrome valve cover. I took a few of the outside as well and will send them all to Spiderman to post on the web someplace. I went back inside and called the Boys of Pep to see just how much an alternator and voltage regulator were going to cost. They’ll be around $80.00 or so. I called John to see what he thought but got his voice mail. I knew I was borderline broke so I decided to wait until I heard from him before going and buying them. Of course now I'm officially broke and have to wait for this weekend to buy them. Oh well. I sat in the chair in front of George and contemplated what I was going to do next. I made a monumental decision and cleared off George's hood! I had a look under the hood and decided to paint a few parts. Yeah John, that was why your skin was crawling all afternoon Sunday, I was painting! Mu wah ha ha ha! I took the down pipe off the turbo and hung it up along with the carburetor-to-turbo pipe and its bracket. I sprayed on a nice thick coat of runny, drippy, black paint and stood back to have a look. “Good enough,” I exclaimed. I also had a look at the jet holder mechanism I had built for the carburetor. It was fouling the valve cover and I needed to redesign it. I finally wound up making a safety-wire strap thingy and attached it with a spring. I think it will work unless I need to go leaner on the setting. If so, I may need to make a shorter one. Anyhoo, with that done, I had a look at the oil drain from the turbo situation. I decided to eliminate two hose connections and welded a section of pipe to the oil/air separation reservoir thingy. Oh, I had painted that earlier as well now that I think about it. I used the hose from Mr. Wiggly's PCV to interconnect the drain of the separator reservoir thingy and the drain plug in the oil pan, which I had just installed. While waiting for paint to dry, I had a look at the radiator support. The radiator I'm gong to use is considerably wider than a stock 1200 part and thus some of the core was shrouded. I took out the Dremel and a stack of cutoff wheels. On a 1200’s radiator support, on the LHD passenger side, there is a hole surrounded by a bigger hole that is only partially cut out. I cut the two vertical bits of metal on that bigger hole, only breaking one disk in the process much to my surprise, and bent a flap out of the way. I also bent a bit of the support on the other side of the cut to make room for airflow. I hit that with some paint and sat back for a look. I like it. I'm debating attaching ducts to the two holes in the core support to direct cool air on the intake and air filter. I probably won’t do it, but I'm not sure why. When I had decided the parts I had painted were dry enough I put them back on the car. I was in the process of installing the carburetor again when mom called to ask me to return home and help unload the car from their trip. I washed up and did that. Mom went for tacos and I settled in for the evening. I think I have a plan for the completion of George. I'm going to ignore the interior and concentrate on finishing up under the hood. Once I have that done I'll move inside. I had been working in a rather willy-nilly fashion bouncing from engine bay to cockpit and back and it was getting me nowhere. I'm going to try and not be distracted from finishing George. I had a mantra at one time of “Gotta get George going!” I need to get back into that frame of mind. Well, there’s my report on the weekend. Hopefully I'll have more to say about George’s progress Thursday since the plan is to go to the shop Wednesday evening. We’ll see.