4/30/07

I feel like I actually accomplished something this weekend. I arrived at the shop to find John hard at work on his 510. I went straight to the paint booth and rolled up the door. I stood there staring at the pile for quite some time before committing to doing something. John finally wandered over and helped me move the cabinets out of the way. Once that was done it was a simple matter of shifting stuff around enough to make room for the Seven. I hopped in and drove around the building to get the proper angle of attack on the door. The front tires went in just fine but the bracket holding up the exhaust crashed against the 2x4 that used to be the bottom of the paint booth door. I backed out again and went on a search for the circular saw. I finally found it on the floor next to the vice at the end of the workbench. I drug it and an extension cord out to the offending piece of wood and made my cuts. I pried the wood up and, much to my delight, the nails came out of the concrete with it. Huzzah! I pulled the car in with no trouble this time. Next I moved on to “cleaning” up the hole for George to go in. I was not inspired so when John made “I'm done for the day, what’s for lunch?” noises, I quit and cleaned up. We decided on Razoo’s and I had a lovely bit of grilled gator tail in a rather spicy sauce over dirty rice. It was quite tasty and didn’t give me the “hot hole” I expected. I went home and goofed off until such time as mom and I got hungry. I suggested tacos and was sent to Taco Casa for the usual. They were having a car show at the Sonic so I really wish I had driven the Seven, or even Mr. Wiggly, home for the evening. Oh well, maybe next week. We ate and I wasted the rest of the evening watching TV. Sunday morning I headed back to the shop. My plan was to “clean up” the second bay and move George in. Oh, wait. I just remembered something. One of the things that had to be evicted from the paint booth to make room for the Seven was that right hand drive firewall and dash unit of John's. I removed the two screws holding the dash to the firewall and took it to John's 1200. I then set the firewall section on the sawhorses and cut out the steering shaft hole and brake supports. I mean I cut out the metal surrounding the steering hole so it could be matched up to John's chassis at a later date. Oh, never mind. John and I know what I'm talking about. I took all of those parts out to his 1200 as well. This left the main portion of the firewall sitting on the sawhorses when we left Saturday. I decided on the way in Sunday that I'd hop in the Seven and drive to O’Reilly’s to buy some gloves. This I did. On the way back to the shop I decided on a hoon instead. I tried to drive around the lake but they had the road closed for some reason. I went out to FM5. I had a good time with my hoon and spent about an hour and a half driving around. I got back to the shop and parked the Seven then moved on to “cleaning” George's bay. I pulled Mr. Wiggly around by the door and took the receiver hitch out of the back. I loaded that big assed box the Seven’s boot came in with trash and put it in the back of Mr. Wiggly along with some other stuff to throw away. I drove to the dumpster and threw it all away. Back at the shop, I tried to move George in. No such luck. It is amazing how much better a 1200 rolls on skinny tires with no engine in it. I finally gave up and parked it back on the side of the shop again and left. As I was driving out, Gregg called to see if I was going to be at the shop for a while. I told him to come on and I'd head back. I stopped at McDonald’s and got a couple of their Chick-Fil-A style sandwiches and a large Dr. Pepper. I really like those sandwiches. I ate them as I drove back to the shop and when I got there I started playing with the Toyota supercharger again. I chucked it up in the vice and started messing with it. I'm not sure what I had in mind though. Gregg arrived and we rolled George in. We both had a look at the supercharger and I started to take the clutch assembly apart. Nothing came sproinging out to kill us and I got it stripped down to a bare nose assembly. I drilled out the rivets holding the clutch to the splined thingy and started to look for a suitable V-belt pulley. I think the Saab pulley from the Chickenhawk's water pump will work but I'm going to dig through those boxes of stuff Kevin left behind before making a final decision. We messed with the supercharger for a while then started talking about him building a Seven of his own. I think he’s going to do a Locost and build the whole thing, frame and all, himself. If he gets it done I'll be a tad jealous. [ I will be frikkin' amazed... - SM ] We finally left for the day and went our separate ways. I think that gets y'all caught up. Oh, the air card from e-Bay arrived and worked pretty well for a while. It did have a stronger signal on Friday night but Saturday night it kept dropping off and losing connection. I pulled the antenna out and upon reinsertion bent the wee little tiny tip of metal. When I tried to straighten it, yep, it broke. So, I'm back to the reliability and “speed” of dial up. I'm not sure if I'm going to try and get this thing replaced, if I'm going to see about finding an antenna locally, or have the service shut off. It isn’t any faster than dial up and it sure as hell drops out more often. We’ll see.