9/4/08

I'm just about pissed off enough to say, “Fuck it,” and get rid of all my old crap car junk. In case you didn’t finger it out from that first sentence, no, it didn’t go well last night with Shi-Chi. Oh, punching the holes in the gasket for the intake manifold bolts went well. We made a cutting punch out of a double nipple brass hose barb union thingy and whango tango knocked perfect little holes in the gasket. That was fine. We got the intake and exhaust manifolds bolted to the head just fine. The zorst went together satisfactorily with the small exception of the muffler rising up about an inch off of its hanger at the back. I'll have to pull the muffler and tweak it to sit flush and level again. No big deal. The valves all adjusted up nicely and look to have a decent amount of additional lift due to the shaving of the head. I'm too annoyed to put in the usual “tee hee, I said doo-doo!” today, sorry. The valve cover went on with little fuss too. The battery went in, hooked up, and was secured with no drama and the coil slipped right back into place with only minor tugging required to pull the wires over to hook them up. Distributor cap and plug wires went on well and snapped right into place. Oh, I also installed the plugs in the head. I didn’t turn the engine over to make sure they don’t crash into the pistons though. Why know now? Let’s wait until it comes time to fire it up. Ok, so those were all the things that went well, or at least well enough. Now we get to the annoyances. With the shaved head, the heat shield for the carburetors now hit the frame rail and wouldn’t sit flush to the manifold. I trimmed it and now it looks like total hammered dog shit. Oh, and it still didn’t fit. It finally pissed me off to the point where I just said “Fuck it,” and went ahead with the installation. I knew that pulling up the nuts would force the thing into shape around the frame rail so I hunkered down on the nuts and moved on. I got all the ancillary stuff reattached to the intake, like the throttle cable, PCV hose, fuel line (which John actually connected, thank you sir), return springs, and stuff like that. By the way, that one fuel line was not the only thing John did. I just don’t remember exactly all the other stuff he did do, so, um, yeah. Thanks for everything, I guess. Ok, so everything is ready to fill the radiator and fire this biotch up, right? Right. I called Marty Smith and asked if he had any coolant and he replied in the affirmative. He brought back two gallons, or so, of 50/50 mix which I began to pour into the radiator. All of a sudden, my feet began to get wet. “Aw crap!” I exclaimed, to which everyone in attendance replied, “Did you close the petcock?” I told the peanut gallery to go sit on a tack and got down to close the petcock. I began to fill again and the lower radiator hose started leaking. I tried to tighten it some more but that just made it worse. I shoved the car out and yanked the hose off to drain all of Marty’s coolant on the ground. Happy friggin’ Earth Day. I was just about ready to walk away and let the gang put everything away when I remembered John rode with me. I'd have to at least stay and close the place up. I was still steaming when I returned from washing my hands and we shoved the car back in. John noticed another 1200 radiator so I got to work swapping them out. To make a short story long, it sprung a leak in the middle of the core. If I hadn’t had time to cool down while swapping the radiators, I would have been fit to be tied. As it was, I was only… ugh, the fucking car just popped up on my work computer’s screen saver. I had to stop and yell at it for a minute. Anyhoo, like I was saying, I was pissed off to the point of being numb to the whole situation. We fiddled with the radiator I just had checked out, the one I was going to install with this new cylinder head, and decided that I was right a few weeks ago when I decided it would not fit in the nose of the car. Oh fuck. I wonder if it would fit inside the frame. There is no reason why it has to sit out in the nose cone. Shit piss fuck cunt cocksucker motherfucker tits! Well, I might run back down to the shop to have a look at that this evening. We’ll see. We finally gave up and left for the evening. John said he'd look into possible alternatives in the newer car segment and I just grumbled. Something will work out, but right now I'm pissed off to the point of having a “fire sale” and getting rid of everything. So, the first person to hand me $50,000.00 gets Dimlight Racing: Shi-Chi, George, the Chickenhawk, Barbecue Bob, Mr. Wiggly, Johnny, Herman, Gigi IV (AKA the blue 240Z), the cut up junkyard 1200, the 200SX, the 620 “truck,” all the tools, junk, spare parts, trash, and stuff in the shop. Of course John, Pat, Ray, Gregg, and Marty Smith get to clear out the stuff they can legitimately claim as theirs first. This offer is subject to retraction and the price is subject to change without notice. Next week it might be $20,000.00, or it might go up to $100,000.00, you just never know.