3/28/08

I'm not 100% sure what has had me so occupied today but it is 1435 h and I'm just now sitting down to talk to y'all. I found a grille for Darth Versa! It isn't exactly like the carbon fiber grille in Matilda, but it is close. It is fiberglass and it doesn’t have the smooth trapehedarhombezoidal center monolith. This one has an indentation, or more precisely a ridge around the sides and bottom. Most importantly it doesn’t have the Nissan “hamburger” indentation like the stock grille. I'm debating with myself about installing the Renault “diamonds” front and rear. The rear needs something as there is just a little too much black back there. I never thought that would be possible, but it is. I don’t think I'll put the “Clio” or “Renault” lettering on the car, but the diamonds are obscure and cool-looking enough to consider. Then again, I might put one of those rhinestone Hello Kitties on the back to break things up. Juan never knows. I didn’t win the auction for those carburetor spacers last week. I think I mentioned them. If not, don’t worry about it. I've bid on another spacer. This one is 2” tall and has four holes on one side and two oval-shaped holes on the other. It is designed to direct flow into a dual-plane four-barrel manifold but I think it will still work on my Torker II. I'll port it so that the center divider is more of a knife-edge thing than it is now. I bolted the dual DCOE adapter to my Torker II the other day and I'm certain I'm going to want to space the hell out of that to raise the carburetors up above the hood. By the way, we’ve stopped talking about Darth Versa and are now on to the V8 in Barbara/Eddie. I had a thought this morning about looking for a Toronado transaxle and making Barbara/Eddie into a mid engine drag queen. John, thoughts? Ok, unless he just jumped all over that as the best idea ever, I'm probably going to forget it. I wonder if I can crunch the numbers in such a way as to get this car into the Grassroots Motorsports 200X challenge some year. No, it’ll never turn and won’t be built nice enough for the Concourse judging. I'm not going to say I'm just going to build this car to sell, but I'm pretty sure a drag queen Datsun B-210 hatchback won’t stay in the fleet forever. Then again, Juan never knows. Oh, I need to make sure I get that GM 10-bolt axle from Gregg sometime. That will make the swap one step easier I'd think. I won’t have to cobble together a Chevy-to-Datsun driveshaft. Make that two steps easier because I also won’t have to worry about shredding a Datsun ring and pinion the first time I step on the gas. Yeah, that would be ugly. Well, I’m having a little trouble with my eyes right about now. I can’t see me staying until 1700 h today. I think I'm going to call it a rant and go home. Perhaps I'll have Boyd shop news for y'all on Monday. Toodles.