8/8/08

Last week took forever, I'm still waiting for it to end, but this week just flew by! Kooky. I think we’re planning to go to the shop tomorrow. Steve/John called yesterday to ask if I could find him a set of defroster vents for a 1200. He can’t find his and is ready to get cracking on building his dash. I told him I'd round up a set. I immediately texted John in order to spread the blame when we both forget about it tomorrow. I finally heard back from Automotive Machine about my head. It looks like they are going to spend four days doing machine work on that thing, what with all the porting, flow benching, shaving, coating, and whatnot. However, in order to keep it from being a total mind-suck on the tech, they are spreading it out over a few weeks. So I'm still not going to get my head back for the rest of this month. I said to myself, “Myself, what with all the porting, flow benching, shaving, coating, and whatnot, this is going to be a $1,000.00 cylinder head when finished.” I then told myself to shut the hell up. Well, I was right. This thing is going to be $1,075.00, or so, out the door. Were it for some POS B-210 or even a 1200, I might start pulling back on some of the options. But since it is for Shi-Chi, I think I can justify the expense. Wait, I just remembered something. The turbo engine I'm installing in George, of all cars, cost me $1,500.00 in machine shop work. So I guess I am willing to throw tons of money at a 1200 after all. Yes John, I know we both decided that the quickest route to douche-baggery is quoting how much money Juan has spent on his car. Would you rather I got all weepy and Emo about losing my cat? I thought not. Ok, so since I know I'm stuck on the Shi-Chi project for another month, I guess I can rededicate myself to George. Wait, that sounded bad. I don’t mean, “I take thee George to be my lawfully wedded husband…” or anything like that. I mean I ought to work on the car called George for the next few weeks. His picture just popped up on the work computer’s screen saver. That will be a fun car if I ever finish it. It was a fun car with an optimistic 68 horsepower; it ought to be a real hoot with 110. Well, I say “optimistic,” with the Weber, header, and 2.25” zorst, it might have been putting out 70 or 75 ponies. I really should spend some time on a dynamometer with these cars so I'll know what they are really doing. For that matter, I should spend some time having the things tuned on a dynamometer sometime so that they are doing their best. Notice I didn’t say, “I should spend some time tuning…” because I think we all know I'm far too lazy for that. I'll turn the wrenches and build the things, but tuning whips my ass. If it fires up and runs, it’s tuned! Besides, I suck at tuning. Tuning and diagnosing are my weak points. Well, now that I think about it, I suck at diagnosis because I suck at diagnosis. I suck at tuning because I'm too lazy to take the time to do it right. I suppose Juan could argue that I semi-suck at fabrication because I don’t take the time to do it right, but then I'd just have to punch Juan in the knee-cap. Ok, so now I'm thinking about other areas where I don’t excel due to (tee hee, I said doo-doo!) laziness and/or lack of interest. Paint & body work as well as cleaning & detailing pop to mind. Well, this little foray into self-discovery has me doubting whether or not I should even be in the car hobby since I'm thinking of all sorts of areas where I'm lax. I think I'm going to go play solitaire or a while. I may be back after lunch. We’ll see. I was going to tell y'all about the hot interns but I don’t think I will after all. So, I mentioned having to babysit the CEO at some reception thing last night, remember? Yeah, well that was a total waste of time. He didn’t even use the microphone, no one did. I was left standing around with my thumb up my butt for four hours. I did manage to score a bunch of hoity-toity food from the caterers though. The Tequila-Lime-Jalapeño Shrimp was really tasty even though they couldn’t use jalapeños because of the salmonella scare and someone had drunk all of chef’s tequila. Basically, it was shrimp. Good thing I like shrimp. I mean come on, if you mess up shrimp you really don’t need to be cooking, right? Dang, I really like shrimp. The Salmon Wraps were quite good as well. I took home a whole take-out container of individual Beef Wellington thingies too, along with a big container of Spinach Dip. I think I know what I'm having for dinner tonight. Well, I think on that note I'm going to call it a rant. We’ll see if I have anything good to report Monday.