2/14/07

It’s VD once again. My how time flies. I'm sitting outside the Bored Room babysitting another Board meeting. Actually, I'm sitting in a phone cubicle outside the Bored Room but that’s me just being pedantic. I met the guy at the courthouse and transferred the title to Barbara yesterday. I guess I need to go in and make an annotation to that effect in the other lists. Hang on. Wow! I just noticed something. All of the cars on the DLR inventory list are titled in my name with the exception of Herman, and he’s supposed to be going away. That’s big news. I may go in and remove him from the list just to get it all ship shape and Bristol fashion, whatever that means. Then again, I probably won’t until it actually leaves the shop premises. So, with Barbara in my name I need to poop or get out of the Ganges. I may offer it to Ray in trade for the Patty Wagon. Pat had made a suggestion about that car that really intrigued me. He suggested making it into a gas/electric hybrid. Here’s his thinking. We’d remove the rear drive shaft and lock the engine into full time front wheel drive. We’d attach an electric motor to the rear differential and have two separate drive systems. The electric RWD system would be used for short jaunts and when the batteries peter out you’d switch to gasoline power. I suppose the electric motor could be setup to recharge the batteries while driving on the gas engine but it sure would shoot the mileage to hell. It would probably negate any effectiveness of the conversion. Now, if the alternator, or an auxiliary alternator, were used to trickle a little charge into them you might have something. I'm thinking if the engine at idle produced a little charge back into the batteries, you could extend the range of the batteries a little bit without burning too much extra gas. Oh man, I just had a really wacky idea. What if we set up the electric side of the equation for maximum acceleration and used the gas motor just for cruising? Basically use the rear wheels to rocket up to speed and embarrass Mustangs and Camaros. It would be like electric nitrous! Juan could even use it once at speed to augment the passing power of the gas engine. If the electric motor was on a one-way clutch it could be enabled at all times adding torque to the output whenever the gas/rheostat pedal asked for more than the gas engine could provide. Once the batteries went dead it wouldn’t add any drag either because the clutch would slip in the “reverse” direction. Speaking of reverse, the gas engine would do all of the vehicle’s reversing while the electric motor spins free. Oh, I'd have to kill the power to the electric motor, or reverse its polarity, when the transmission is in reverse or the rear wheels would try to go forward when the pedal was pressed. I suppose the electric could be set to recharge the batteries when in reverse, but how often would they actually get much charge from it? Not very, I'd say. Well, this rant went off on a bunny trail I really hadn’t expected. I was all ready to talk about Barbara as a rally car again. Now I don’t really feel like it. I have some more thoughts on the hybrid Patty Wagon but I think I'm going to let them slide. It is an interesting idea but I doubt I'm ever going to do anything about it. So, here’s my justification for Barbara cutting in line ahead of George. Barbara is licensed for the next year and she won’t take too much work to get back on the road. If I forego the big tires for a bit it won’t even be too expensive to get on the road, probably. Then again, $500.00 for tires isn’t too terribly outrageous in the grand scheme of things. Yes, I could put rubber on it for half that price but it wouldn’t be the cool rally car stuff. Juan has to spend some money if he wants a certain look. Well, I think I'm going to shut down for a bit and conserve the battery in my laptop. I may be back later when I get to my desk. I'm not at my desk but I did go up and get the power supply. I swear, it is as if these people plan their “catastrophes” around each other. I'm sitting here with Nervous Nelly just in case something goes wrong with the equipment in the Bored Room. So because I'm supposed to sit here and not go roaming around campus, I get three calls to come hold someone’s hand, give them a projector, hook up some wires, or whatever. I know every time I leave, Nelly just about has a heart attack. It’s as if she thinks they are going to come storming out of the room, firing people left and right, if the least little thing crops up. Hells bells, I didn’t even shave before this, that’s how worried I am about the Board. I am sitting in a darkened phone cubicle though, out of sight as it were. Ok, I'm bored, pun intended, with this discussion. I'm going back to cars. So, I think I'll offer Barbara to Ray in trade for the Patty Wagon. Have I mentioned the electric hybrid idea? Just kidding, I won’t go off on that tangent again. Hopefully he won’t want to go for it though because the Patty Wagon runs whereas Barbara does not. He might though. If so, I'll probably plan to use the Patty Wagon as a parts runner and shop whore. Basically used for things that don’t require the services of Mr. Wiggly. It will also serve the porpoise of foul weather car since it has four-wheel-drive. Perhaps I should put the rally tires on there. No, not until it needs tires. Ok, so if Ray doesn’t go for the trade I'll plan on making Barbara the Faux Rally Car. Finally, I am going to build this thing. How many cars have I thought about using as the Faux Rally Car in the past? I suppose I could go into the list of cars I have owned and see but I don’t really feel like it. I know the Cosworth Vega was the first about twenty years ago. I also know John's 1200 was slated for that treatment for sure. I toyed with the idea on the Chickenhawk and George at one time or another. I actually started work on it with the HL A-10 510, now that I think about it. I actually planned to make a real competition rally car out of that one. I almost said “competitive” but realized it would have been far from that. I've probably considered it with every Datsun except Maxine, Marty, and Gil. I don’t know if I ever thought about it for Barbecue Bob though. Ok, I'm going to look at the list. I'll be right back. It looks as though nine of the forty-nine cars I have owned have been considered for Faux Rally Car treatment. I would have thought that number to be higher than that. Ok, so back to Barbara, I stopped off at the shop last night after transferring the title and had a look at some stuff. I think if I can get a stock intake manifold to fit with the header I'm going to go that route. If it looks like I have to use a cast exhaust manifold, I'll use that ceramic-coated one we took out of the back of Gigi. I had a look at the single DCOE manifold but there is only one way I can see to make it fit. I'd have to weld on some really long extensions to the runners. If I do that though I run the risk of hitting the strut tower with the carburetor. It was close with no extensions in Gil. I just went in and had a look at the pictures of Gil’s engine bay and there is no way I could extend that manifold out and still install the carburetor. Well, I could without an air filter or trumpets I suppose, but I'm not going to. No wait, I want to use the carburetor top hat and a snorkel, I almost forgot. I'm going to run a DGV on there no matter what. Ok, so I need to concentrate on making a stock manifold fit that header. I wonder if that head is tapped for an A-12 manifold. I think the later heads are but I just don’t remember. Thing is, an A-12 manifold will be the “cleanest” in that I won’t have to weld up a bunch of smog ports and stuff but if it is an oval port head I'm not sure I want to put a round port manifold on it. I guess I'm just going to have to wait and see. Well, another person needs me to hold their hand while Nervous Nelly sweats bullets for me leaving. I think I'm just about talked out for today as well since I just hit page three on this rant. I may split it up into two day on the internot, but I may not. We’ll see.