3/20/07

Sunday morning I was supposed to meet John at the shop. He called to see where I was around 1000 h. I was still in bed, having stayed up way too late the night before messing with the house drawings in Paint. I got up and dressed, shaved my teeth and stuck in my eyes, then was on my way. I rolled up to find John sitting in Maxine waiting. I'm not sure what we did next. I know we were waiting for some dude, Nick was his name, to show up to deliver John's “new” 510, but I don’t remember how we wasted the time. When Nick showed up, John had him back the trailer up in front of my trailer since that was where he wanted the car dropped. 510s do not roll as easily as 1200s. We pushed and strained to get the car parked and John said, “So much for me pushing this inside by myself.” I suggested that we go ahead and roll George out and put his car in the main bay. He was planning to play hooky on Monday and do some work to it in an attempt to get it roadworthy as soon as possible. We did evict George and the three of us rolled the 510 in the bay. Nick left to go deliver another 510 to Steve/John. Well, he went home to get the other car to deliver that is. The plan was that he would call John when he was leaving his house and John would meet him at the Target on Precinct Line to get some more parts then Nick would go on to Steve/John’s. I decided to tag along but that is getting ahead of the story. When Nick left, John and I started messing with the car. He removed the air filter housing and we had a look around. He removed the hoses from the smog pump and we began a debate about what was going to happen with the open pipe at the air injectors. It was decided that we’d try to fire the engine and see. He dropped a battery in and hooked it up. He gave the key a turn and it cranked nicely. However, fire it did not. I put my hand over the throat of the carburetor, since the choke wouldn’t close, and he cranked some more. It was getting fuel, evidenced by the wetness of both the inside of the carburetor and my palm, but still no fire. “The smart thing to do,” John said, “would be to go ahead and install that matchbox dizzy.” I shrugged and said, “Mm-okay.” He got to work switching the hardware while I sorted out the wiring. I made a jumper for the test light and we tested wires. Once we were “sure” of what went where, I terminated the ends and we hooked them up. Hey, I just thought of something. This may be one of the rare cases when I actually helped work on one of his cars rather than sitting there looking pretty. Anyhoo, we get it all hooked up and he goes to turn the key. Nothing. I asked if he had hooked up the starter wire just as he was walking back around the car. He did that and we tried again. Success! Well, ok not really. It did crank but still no fire. We decided to pull a spark plug and see if it was getting fire there. It was. We were stumped and wrote it off to bad gas. Now, during all of this work, John's wife called a few times. I try to avoid that subject as much as possible, but it really does baffle me why guys get married. I just don’t get it. Anyhoo, she called to see when he was coming home. He made some excuse and then called Nick to check on his status after hanging up with her. He was about to leave so we began to close up the shop. Now was when I decided to tag along. We caravanned to the Target, actually it was the Albertson’s across the street but that’s just me being pedantic, and waited for Nick. He arrived and they sorted out the parts he brought for John from the parts for Steve/John. Pretty soon we head out. I lead Nick to Steve/John’s and John, I assume, goes home. He’d better have since I believe The High Command called again while we were with Nick. We drop the car off and Steve/John shows Nick around the place. When all of that is done, I head for the house myself. I stop at the Krystal’s Hamburger shop on Beach and buy a “Steamer Pack” of two-dozen burgers. Yeah, they are just like White Castle and I'm so very glad they opened one in town. I ate eight of them on the way home. I let mom try one, declaring them “The World’s Most Perfect Food.” She was unimpressed. About half an hour later, my bowels became unimpressed as well. Those things shot through me like Drano! I think I might have lost a little bit of brain tissue on that one. Whew! It was unpleasant. I am beginning to think I might have an issue with my gall bladder due to (tee hee, doo-doo!) this reaction whenever I eat lots of greasy food. Don’t get me wrong, I'm not going to stop eating it, I just have to stick close to a bathroom afterwards. Anyhoo, later on in the evening I thought about heating up a few sliders and that was enough to send me right back up to release another hostage. Needless to say, I did not have any more sliders that night. Ooh, thinking about them now just gave my guts a twinge. Kooky. The rest of the evening was a total write-off and then I came to work. My AEM Bypass Valve arrived yesterday so I'll be installing that next trip to the shop. Perhaps there will be a story there. We’ll see.