10/9/06

I mentioned my costume ideas to mom yesterday. She actually laughed and thought the “Drag Racer” was pretty good, just not for this event. I forgot to mention the juxtaposition idea, really tall guy with tiny car, because I forgot about it. She did like the idea of me as an MIB with Mr. Wiggly and her wearing the “driving suit” and helmet by the Seven. I think I might not go through with that plan though since I'm just about ready to buy tires for the 10” turbine wheels and mount them up on Mr. Wiggly. I came really close to doing it yesterday. Ok, so here’s what happened over the weekend. Saturday morning I met John at the shop after stopping at Lowe’s for the bits to mount the Plexiglas top of the K&N. He worked on his 510 while I played with Mr. Wiggly. I drilled the base and top for the 10-24 threaded rod I had bought and cut said rods to length. I took the velocity stack air filter off and installed my K&N. It looks so cool! I took the doghouse and cut out a hole where the carburetor would be and covered it with another piece of Plexiglas. I should have made it bigger but it shows the Albatross off nicely. With the doghouse completed John had a look at why the alternator was so flollopy. It appears as though a bushing was left out when we installed it last week. We found one that we thought we could make work, and did. I tightened the belt asbestos I could but it still squealed when it hit 16 volts. I decided I'd continue to wait and worry about it later. We installed the doghouse and I fired it up again. It took some pumping to get it going but it ran fine once it fired. The difference in noise was amazing with the doghouse in place. I decided I was going to drive it to lunch. We settled on Don Pablo’s and took off. I'll say this right from the start; six cylinder engines sound silly with true dual exhaust. Mr. Wiggly was no exception. The 2” pipe made for an almost buzzy sound over 3,000 rpm at any amount of throttle. It’s like if no one knew what a big six or V8 was supposed to sound like making a buzzy four cylinder’s sound “bigger.” It’s kind of a booming buzz. Take the sound a big rig makes on its “Jake Brake” and reverse it so it goes up in tone and you have something like Mr. Wiggly's zorst note. I don’t hate it, and in fact might grow to like it, but it is weird. I'm going to roll with it for a while. Maybe at a later date I'll expand the post-muffler pipes to big slash-cut tips like you see under the bumper of pickup trucks. We’ll see. After lunch I decided to run home to introduce mom to Mr. Wiggly. As I was pulling onto the freeway the voltage dropped back to about 14 volts and stayed pretty steady from then on. The squealing belt went away as well. It didn’t squeal constantly of course, just when revving up the engine during takeoff and shifts. I got to my neighborhood and noticed a different buzzing sound that was engine speed dependent. I shrugged it off and moved on. I called John to tell him about the voltage and the new buzz and we decide that either the battery really did need 16 volts for a while to charge up or the voltage regulator finally opened and started working. We didn’t come up with what the buzzing might be. I showed mom the van and headed back to the shop. At the 2871/377 intersection I decided to go ahead and drive to the Motorsport Ranch to show off. That thing is a hoot to drive! Not like the Seven or Matilda, but just for its silliness. I pulled up to the garage at the Ranch and Pat says, “You’re dragging something.” “Aw crap,” I think and imagine the zorst tips on the ground making sparks all the way down 377. As I get out and walk around to the passenger side to see what it is, Ray walks out and says, “You’re dragging something.” I crawl under to see that it is just a vacuum hose from the vapor canister underneath and pull it off. They look the thing over and laugh at me. I fire it up for them and give it a listen. I think the new buzz is coming from the alternator. The more I think about it, the more I think I popped another one. I looked at the voltage regulator and judging from the accumulation of dust on top, it hasn’t been changed in a while. I convince myself that it still has a bad VR and that running the alternator wide open burned up one of the brushes. That, I'm convinced, is the buzzing. Pat, Ray, and I chat for a bit and I head back north. I decide to run the headlights to see if the voltage drops. It does, but not much below 12 volts. I'm going to replace the VR and I guess the alternator again. Well, I'm at my arbitrary cutoff point so I think I'll stop.