6/18/07

I got quite a bit of work done on George this weekend, in spite of myself. I went to the shop with every intention of just watching and “helping” John as he did whatever it was he was going to do to his car. I got a normal start and was headed that way around 0845 h when he called to say he wasn’t going to make it. I was too close to turn back and go back to bed so I continued on to the shop. I got there and had a look around for the water neck thingy he needed for his 510 since we were still talking on the phone at that point. I couldn’t find it. We hung up and I began looking at George. I messed around with some stuff but only “clean” things since I didn’t want to change clothes yet. I don’t remember exactly what all I did though. I know I installed the carburetor to the turbo but I'm sure I did something else before that. Well, I guess the carburetor story is the one to tell then. No, wait I remember what I did. I decided it was time to start hooking up the gauges so I built the engine-end of the oil line and installed it to the oil pump. I put pipe tape on all of the fittings and hunkered down on them. I decided that I'd put the line feeding the turbo on the bottom so that if the restrictor in the fitting were to pop out it couldn’t go anywhere or restrict anything but the oil it was already restricting. With the line for the gauge facing up, I ran the hose into the car through the same hole that the tachometer lead came out. I discovered that the feed line for the turbo wouldn’t work the way it was configured so I changed one end from a straight fitting to a ninety. It fit with one or two more twists of the fitting to get the final alignment right. With the oil system buttoned up, well except for the gauge end, I moved on to the water temp sensor. I found a section of blue wire and terminated it with a ring. I attached the ring to the sensor and ran this wire in the same hole as the tachometer and oil line. I taped them all together and declared that part done as well. I looked at some other things and decided I needed to make a list and go to Steve’s Foreign Auto. I got there right around 1300 h and he asked why I was coming in after he closed. I told him I thought he closed at 1400 h. He doesn’t anymore. We looked for the stuff on my list and I came away with two brake master cylinders (one with and the other without reservoirs), a clutch master, a clutch slave, a distributor rotor (he didn’t have the cap though), and a radiator cap for a hundred bucks. On the way back to the shop, I stopped at O’Reilley’s and bought some vacuum hose and asked about the distributor cap. They didn’t have it either. I headed back to the shop and installed the radiator cap. I ran a section of vacuum hose from the “T” in the wastegate line to the hole in the firewall where I had run the oil, water, and tachometer things earlier. I then moved on to the carburetor installation. I found a section of rubber hose, that I'm really hoping is fuel resistant enough now that it is on there, and slipped it onto the inlet of the turbo. I clamped it down. Next I took the carburetor and the inlet pipe I had made up and slipped it into place. The support bracket from the carburetor to the valve cover lined up but the one from the pipe to the intake manifold did not. I took the assembly apart and messed around with it a little. I got it all to ling up, for the most part, but decided it needed a spacer between the bracket and manifold. I took the bracket to the vice and made an aluminum spacer then zip-tied them together. Now it all lined up really well. I bolted it all down. I hooked up the throttle cable, the fuel line, and ran another vacuum line from the air filter to the fuel tank vent. I knew the master cylinders would be a dirty job so I blew them off for the day. I don’t think I did much else before going home. Oh, before going to Steve’s, I replaced the bolt in the shifter and added a rubber tip to take up the slop. It shifts nicely now. We’ll see how long that rubber survives. I went home and wasted the evening watching “Our Man Flint” and “In Like Flint” on DVD. I'll tell you about Sunday tomorrow. Buh bye.