10/20/08

I guess I'm going to have to admit it, I really like Shichi. I think my familiarity with the car had pushed me into a “been there, done that” attitude, especially when it wasn’t running, and I'm just getting over it. Of course spending nine hours in it yesterday hooning the countryside helped! But let me tell y'all about Friday evening and Saturday first. Friday evening I went over to Amy and Sam’s house for a gathering. We sat around and drank beer for a few hours and then everyone went home. Who is everyone? Well, there were Sam, Amy, and myself of course. Edie, the girl who grates on my nerves about half of the times we’re all together, was there. She wasn’t being “annoying Edie” though so I didn’t mind. There were two other girls there, neither of whose names I can remember. One was cute in a “Roman” sort of way. She had this nose… I can’t even begin to describe it other than as being “Roman.” Not a classically beautiful face by any means, but I was digging it. The other gal probably had ten years on me but was still holding up pretty well. Roman girl got a “giggle-snort” out of me at one point, I'm not too proud to admit. I had made a movie reference aside to Sam in reply to something someone said, and she whipped her head around to me and said, “Well, I saw Ferris last night at Thirty-One Flavors and he looked pretty sick!” It was so off the wall, yet appropriate, and spontaneous that I snorted with laughter. Well, eventually we all called it a night so I went home. I shot John a text asking what time he wanted me to pick him up at the Nissan dealer so he could have Matilda’s oil changed. It has at least the 5,000 miles Gregg put on it, plus however many I did before buying Darth Versa, so it is past time. Saturday morning around 0600 h I got a reply saying “Don’t worry about it today.” Yeah, as long as my name is still on the title, I'm going to worry about it until you actually change the oil. I went back to sleep for a while after that. Around 0830 h I got up and got ready to go to the shop. I texted John again to see what his status was. He was waiting for someone so they could pick up an engine at the shop. Just as I was leaving, he texted me again to say he was leaving. I pulled up to the gate right behind them and we drove around back. Aaron was waiting and we all chatted a bit then loaded the engine up. John and I had a look at a 210 cross member to see if it would fit a 1200. We realized that without A-14 engine-side mounts, adapting the 210 cross member would be a waste of time. Oh, this is for putting an A-14 bottom end into George by the way. I'm convinced that the 0.120” (or possibly even 0.160”) overbore might have been a tad too much for that A-12 block. It shouldn’t have gotten that hot, that quickly, sitting there idling. Anyhoo, we made plans to use the Chevy V6 mounting brackets the guy had started building in Johnny to mount an A-14 in George. We also discussed some prop bars so I wouldn’t have to set my hood on the ground when showing Shichi. When the other dudes left, John and I went to Genghis Grill, duh, and had lunch. After that I went to Lowe’s and bought the stuff to build my bars. I got four 36” long ¼-20 all-thread rods, eight (nine actually though I only needed eight) nuts with flanges, eight (actually ten this time) regular nuts, four (yes, actually four) wing nuts, and twelve feet of ¼” ID hose. Back at the shop I threaded a regular nut and flanged nut onto the end of each rod. I set the flange at ½” from the end and jam-nutted them together. I then threaded 33½” of the rubber hose onto each rod. That was a pain in the ass I might add. Much thanks to Marty Smith for helping out with that project. I put a regular and flanged nut on the other end, with the flanges 1½” from the end, and jam-nutted them. They looked pretty good, I thought. I took them to the car, along with a 9/32” drill bit. I drilled the frame of the car and the hood then installed the rods. I slipped the long ends into the frame and the short ends I wing-nutted to the hood. It worked but it was extremely flolloppy. Eventually I made some spacers to keep the hood from tacoing and guy-wire braced it with bungee cords. It worked much better that way. I have an idea for something better than the bungee cords which I will implement next weekend. Gregg had shown up to collect his welder so he and I went for a hoon in Shichi with Marty following in his Miata. We had a good time. We stopped and ate at a Thai place and I sent Gregg back to the shop with Marty since I was keeping Shichi at the house overnight. Well, I hadn’t intended to get that involved in the Saturday story but since I did I'll have to save Sunday for tomorrow. Have a day.