4/18/08

Well, it looks like we may be going back to a weekly update on the rant. Then again, I might just give up on it and let y'all just wonder what I'm up to. We’ll see. Gregg and I were talking V8s again last night and I had an evil thought: “Do I really want a B-210 with a V8 in my fleet? Wouldn’t I be ‘happier’ with an all B-110 (1200) fleet? Why don’t I put the V8 in Johnny?” I'll just let that fester in your head for a bit while I talk about something else. Last night we had a big storm blow through. Well, it wasn’t really all that big, it passed by in under an hour, but it did dump a lot of rain and some hail. There was a little band of hail right in the middle of the storm which rolled right down I-30 through town. Well, I stopped paying attention to the weather once it passed us so I'm assuming it kept rolling down I-30. Anyhoo, we were just at the southernmost tip of that band of hail so all we got was a couple hundred pea-sized stones. I did move Darth Versa under the awning on the back porch once we heard the air raid sirens going off and turned on the weather. I don’t think he would have come to any harm, looking back at the storm, but I wasn’t taking any chances. I watched the weather until the worst passed over me and then surfed the channels after that and listened to the rain. I did stop occasionally on a weather report and saw that some places were literally white with hailstones. It was kind of cool. Well, being ice I guess it was around 32 degrees at some point, but I'm being pedantic. “What’s the point,” you ask? Well this morning I actually had a stereotypical “water cooler moment” with a fellow employee where we stood and talked about the weather for a moment. Of course there was no water cooler, but you know what I mean. So, has the idea of a Small Block Chevy 1200 twisted around enough for us to discuss it? Gregg suggested a Toronado transaxle so we’d have the engine in the middle of the car. I shot that down because it is going to be tough enough keeping the front wheels on the ground with all the engine weight out front. I think the thing would lift the rear tires off the ground when the rear bumper slapped the pavement if it were mid engine. I think we’re going to try and find a junk block sometime and do some test fitting. We’ll probably have to cut out the firewall and set the engine back just to get it in there. We’ll see. Then again, I could always go back to the idea of V8ing Barbecue Bob. No, I need to cull my herd. I need to trim it down to the following toys: the Chickenhawk, George, Johnny, and Shi-Chi. Three 1200s and one Faux-tus Seven are plenty of toys. In fact, when Kevin called last night to see what I was up to, I asked if he needed a B-210. He’s going to ask one of the foster kids if they want to buy it. Marty Mary used to ask about it every time I saw him too so there’s another potential buyer. We’ll see. I know Barbecue Bob will fetch some coin once we have an engine in and he’s up and running. The new Barbecue Bob question is, “Do we go with a KA-24 or the Z-20 from the Chickenhawk?” I think in order to justify keeping that bitchin’ header I built for the Z-20 in a 1200, I'm going to say KA in Barbecue Bob. Oh wait, John just bought some rally tires to go on Johnny as the faux rally car. Ok, Barbara/Eddie just got a reprieve as the V8 recipient. What’s one more toy in the grand scheme of things? Yeah, I'll probably talk myself into keeping Barbecue Bob as well sooner or later so I might as well forget about selling him too. We’ll see. I think we are going to plan on taking Mr. Wiggly and perhaps that Mustang to a swap meet and seeing if they will sell. Pate is coming up next weekend I think. Oops, I was supposed to look for information on the internot about getting a spot at Pate. I forgot. Dang, I need to talk to George now. I wonder if his number is still the same. Well, lo and behold it is! He may have a spot at Pate. He’s going to check on Monday or Tuesday to be sure. Now he’s interested in Barbara! He’s supposedly coming by the shop tomorrow to check it out. I need to finger out if Gregg has the title for that Mustang. I seem to remember him not having one. We’ll see. That car might have to be sold “as is” and take what we can get for it. It pains me to say it, but I think I'm going to have to go cheap on Mr. Wiggly as well. I think I'll post a price of $1,500.00 on it and be willing to come down from there. I don’t want to take less than a grand though. I'll put that spare head, the stock intake and exhaust manifold setup, the new valves, valve springs, and Offenhauser/Clifford four-barrel manifold in the back and see what they bring to the party. I say “Offenhauser/Clifford” because I can never remember which brand it actually is. As soon as I convince myself it is one, it becomes the other. I'm not sure exactly how it does that though. Well, I have to go pee and I think I'm going to check with a hottie about a meeting/party they are throwing this afternoon. I may be back and I may not. We’ll see. Ok, I'm back but probably not for long. It is just about noon so I expect a call from the desktop support guys to go to lunch soon. I just noticed that I never told y'all who won the bet about the pickup points on the 200SX axle. It was John. Now, you may be asking, “If John was right and the pickups point outward like you wanted, why didn’t you ever install a four-link in the Chickenhawk?” Of course if you don’t remember last week’s rant where I said the reason I think the pickups point inward is because I want them to point outward so I could install the four-link in the Chickenhawk therefore they must point inward or I would have done that some time ago, then you might not ask that. Whatever the case may be, I'm not sure why I never installed a four-link in the back of the Chickenhawk. I do however have a plan to make a ladder-bar suspension for Johnny using the existing pickup points. Well, that is if Johnny is still going to be a Z-20 powered faux rally car. If he’s getting a V8 he’ll have the ten-bolt axle which came with the Locost frame. We’ll see. Ok, desktop support has about five more minutes before I call them about lunch. I'm getting hungry. Well, since I've passed two page breaks in today’s rant, I think I'd better shut up. Oh sure, it makes up for the short rant yesterday, but y'all got that late as well so it really doesn’t matter. I don’t know what that means. Shut up. “This ideas is dildos!”