11/21/06

I saw a really funny T-shirt on the internot today. It was Winnie the Pooh, dressed in a purple cape with tiger stripe cuffs, collars, and trim, matching wide brimmed hat, gold chains, and a pimp cane with a gold beehive on top. The caption read, “Bitch betta have my hunny!” I just about had a fit I was laughing so hard. I almost bought one but couldn’t think of an occasion where I could wear it. Aw, who am I kidding? I could have worn it. I would have worn it. I'm probably going to go back and buy one after all. Speaking of buying things, Amazon.com just informed me that my CDs and DVD of Theremin music have shipped finally. They are still waiting for the book and don’t expect it until late December or early January. That’s cool. I'm still trying to finish reading the Mil Millington book that John loaned me earlier this year. I just don’t take the time to read anymore. Dang, I had something else to say just now but forgot what it was. Oh, I remember now. We’re doing thanksgiving at my sister’s place in Granbury this year. Mom is going down there today and I was supposed to go down Thursday and she’d ride back with me. I joked, last week when it was cold, that it meant I couldn’t drive the Seven. Well, with the weather warming up again, mom has arranged to stay another night and asked that I do drive the Seven down there. I agreed to do that so I'll be cruising down 377 day after tomorrow in style. Woo hoo! Good thing I finally took the muffler off and fixed the broken tail pipe. Oh, that’s right, I haven’t told that story. Remember how I took the car to the church for the Halloween Trunk or Treat thing? Well, some kid stepped on the tail pipe and broke it off at the muffler. Actually, it wasn’t broken all the way but was hanging down, I broke it the rest of the way off so it wouldn’t come off on the drive back to the shop. Sunday, as in the day before yesterday, I got tired of messing with the speaker installation in Mr. Wiggly and removed the muffler. I had a look inside and saw that there really are baffles in the thing. Here I thought it was a glass pack. I decided to go ahead and step up to 2.5” for the final bit of pipe and cut a Hugh bend into a turndown. I tried to weld it deep down in the recess of the muffler but wound up blowing holes. Finally I bridged the ½” gap and filled it with welding rod. Psh! “You can’t weld dirt and you can’t weld air,” my ass! I can weld dirt TO air. Of course it took three rods to fill the whole gap, but I got it done. I brushed off the scale, burnt paint, and soot then re-sprayed it with flat black. I reinstalled it and noticed that I missed the angle of the turndown just a bit. Instead of pointing straight down like I had hoped, it turns ever so slightly inward. Oh well, I'll say it is for sound muffling reasons or something. Speaking of muffling, I fired the car up with the muffler off. The idle wasn’t loud at all but it sure got that way with a little throttle! I gave the new tip a test fire as well. Sounds just like the old pipe, as far as I can remember. Did I mention looking up the price to build my 6.1-liter engine using all new parts from Summit? Yeah, we’re not going to be doing that anytime soon. Here’s what I found. A Dart iron block with 4.125” bores was $1986.95, which pretty much sealed the deal but I kept going. The Scat forged crank with 3.5” stroke was $989.95 while a set of Wiseco forged pistons was $547.99 and the Manley rods were $600.00 for eight. The grand total was $4124.89! Like I said, not going to happen anytime soon. I can always lie and say it has 4.125” bore and 3.5” stroke. Who’s going to know the difference? Yeah, there we go. I'll just say it has a 6.1 in it. Of course as long as I'm lying I might as well say that it is a Japanese copy of the small-block Chevy with 105-millimeter bores and 88-millimeter stroke. Yes, that comes out to 6096 cc or 6.1 liters, as if I hadn’t done the math already. Psh! Ok, one last question before I call it a day. How can people drink Coca-Cola? The machine was out of Pibb Extra this morning so I went ahead and bought a Coke. Man! That is some nasty tasting crap. Blech! There’s a buck down the tubes. Oh well. I'm done for today. Talk to y'all tomorrow.