1/8/07

I am officially AWESOME! My ass is one of the worst, as in I'm more than just a badass. Here’s why, I figured out the riddle of welding aluminum! Here’s the story. Saturday morning I met up with John at the shop and we waited for some dude to come do a transmission bell housing swap or something. He was supposed to show up around 1000 h but called around that time to say he was just getting started on removing it from the car. We decided to go to Lowe’s for the fuel fittings I'd need on the pump and regulator in George. We discussed John's buying a Versa as well so I let him drive. When we got the bits I needed at Lowe’s we headed to the Nissan dealer to see what they had. They didn’t. We talked to my sales dude and he found us one somewhere in Texas. We semi worked a deal to trade the Pimpmobile straight up for it and he said they would try to get it for us today. From the dealership we went to a Mexican food place for lunch but I can’t seem to make the name look right. Hint, it is similar to El Phoenix. Anyhoo, Pat had joined us by this point so we all went back to the shop. I screwed all of the bits together for the fuel pump and pressure regulator but didn’t install them yet. We looked at stuff for a bit longer and discussed the alternate carburetor situation. John doesn’t want me to cut up the dual DCOE manifold because he has aspirations. What “sweat between the butt cheeks” has to do with it I don’t know. Get it? Aspiration: butt sweat. Oh never mind. I think the manifold is too far-gone to use but we’ll see. Actually, the point is moo now that I think about it but I'll ‘splain that later, if I remember. Where was I? I see now, he and I looked at manifolds and I think we decided he might try to use those motorcycle carburetors I have on his 1200. I think that would be really cool. The transmission dude finally shows up and Pat leaves. John tries to bang out the bell housing swap but runs out of time. They leave the two transmissions and we all head out. I had given some thought to taking Mr. Wiggly home but didn’t. Sunday morning I watch a few episodes of “Kids In The Hall” on DVD and wait for mom to get home. She’s not real hungry and neither am I so we blow off lunch. I head for the shop. My goal for the day is to cut up the DGV to SU adapter and have it ready to be welded. I got to work on that. First I cut off the SU portion at an angle I though would work. Next I cut off the DGV portion at an angle I thought would work. They wouldn’t. I cut the DGV part again and was somewhat happy with the new angle. I cleaned it all up and moved it to the car for a test fit. As Maxwell Smart would have said, “Missed it by that much!” The DGV would have sat at an angle had it been butt welded together. I had a look and gave it some thought. If it were welded at the top, then the bottom gap could be filled and it would work. I sat with it for a while and finally said, “What the hell?” and configured the welder for AC aluminum welding. Worst case, I'd screw up an already screwed up adapter. It was cheap. I chucked the thing in the vice and started trying to melt metal. After a few seconds of playing, gradually increasing voltage, I got what I thought looked like success. I shut down to have a look and guess what. Success! The metal had globbed together! I moved on to another portion and zooked it up. The more I did, the better it turned out. I was happy as a little girl, I must say! Once I had all of the gaps filled and went back over the original ugliness I shut down the welder to grok the part. It was, well it wasn’t beautiful by any stretch of the imagination, but it was wonderful. I did the shop dance and waved the thing around to cool it off. I installed it on the car to find my next problem. While the carburetor sits level, it is canted away from perpendicular. I think if I do decide to use it I will use that foam velocity stack filter I made for Mr. Wiggly and just let it stick out of the hood. I left it on the car and started to look at my DCOE options again. My thinking was that since I'm now such an aluminum welding stud, I'd take half a DCOE manifold and weld the SU face of a Z-car manifold to it then port it for flow. I decided to honor John's feelings and wait to see if I could find another DCOE manifold first. Today I did just that. I found a manifold to adapt a DCOE directly to a turbo! I bid on it even though it is in Australia. Now I need to find a junk 240Z intake manifold to cut the flange off of. So, I think we’re all up to speed on stuff at the shop. I'll tell the Pimpmobile trade-in story tomorrow. Ooh, cliffhanger!