4/23/09

Well, Shichi runs. John and I went to the shop last night, after picking up Ms. Clio from the Nissan dealer and stopping at the Boys of Pep for oil, a filter, antifreeze, spark plugs, a 180° thermostat, and wheel studs. The wheel studs are for Roku-Hyaku, remember? Anyhoo, we get to the shop and readjust the valves. Turns out I hadn’t set them at 0.014” after all. No, they were closer to 0.018” actually. We reset them to 0.012” since that was about halfway between the hot and cold numbers in the book at the shop. If that last sentence made any sense to you, congratulations. We then took a look at the coil bind. The exhausts were fine, we could get a .025” feeler gauge in there with room to spare. The intakes on the other hand, not so much. They were coil-bound. We re-reset them to, I think, 0.018” and checked bind again. Now they were fine. Of course we thought about it a bit and it appears as though the #1 cylinder might have a touch more lift than the others, which would ‘splain that pushrod being the only one bending in Gil. It doesn’t ‘splain the crescent moon indentations in all the pistons though. I'm thinking float at high revs caused that. Anyhoo, with the valves done, we moved on. I installed the valve cover while John put the washers from the old spark plugs on the new spark plugs, in addition to the new washers for indexing porpoises, of course. We installed the new plugs and to them lined up with the electrodes pointed away from the pistons. Well, depending on how you look at it of course. If you look at it as the tip of the wire is “pointing towards” the piston, then they are in that way. To make a short story long, the electrode wires shouldn’t make contact with the pistons due to (tee hee, I said doo-doo!) the way they are indexed into the holes. That’s all I'm saying. We then changed the oil filter, changed the thermostat, installed the alternator, installed the radiator, filled the crankcase, “filled” the radiator, and “set” the timing. The reason for the quotes will become apparent in a moment. At this point, I was running out of excuses so we hooked up the battery and “made starting.” John had to hold the throttle open quite a bit to get it to run, but run it did, sort of. John said we’d mess with timing, idle, and mixture once we got up to temperature. “What’s it read?” he asked. I told him, “One sixty.” He said, “Tell me when it hits one eighty.” Since it hit 180 in the middle of his sentence I said, “Now!” He was incredulous to say the least. “Two hundred,” I called out, and by now was picturing being branded the “idle-overheating-king.” John had me shut it down, of course, because something was amiss. We checked the radiator, which was stone cold, and it was low. Ok, big air bubble, that’ll do it. We topped up and tried again. Nope, still too hot. Now, by this point I'm pissed off and ready to chuck in the towel for the day. John wasn’t. He decided to check the timing. Yeah, apparently 28° advanced at idle is a bit too much. We backed the timing down and recapped the radiator. It held steady at 180° now. I began to have hope for George, but that’s for another day. I was still too pissed off to continue but John kept at it. Friggin’ pig headed, stubborn, not lettin’ me have my mad time, so and so, little razzin’ frazzin’… I tried to mess with the carburetors but they weren’t helping my mood. When I dropped the synchronization screw, I was done. I went in to change clothes while John and Pat kept messing with the car. My pants caught on my foot and got ripped to shreds as well, which made me feel just a tad better. When I returned to the bay, John and Pat were clearing the tools and stuff off so he, John, could take the car around the building. I tried, halfheartedly, to stop him by saying that he was going to lose the screw I'd dropped and was informed that he'd found it, but dropped it again when he burned his arm on the zorst, and would replace it later. I threw up my hands and said, “Whatever! Go. I don’t care.” I wasn’t pissed at him, by the way, it was the car, and him for not letting me be pissed at the car properly. Oh, I guess I was pissed at him then. Anyhoo, he drove around the building and asked for another turn on the mixture screws. This I did, and picked up the nose cone screws that were, miraculously, still on the scuttle. He went ‘round again. He parked the car and said it was… well, I don’t remember his exact words because I was still too mad to acknowledge that things were fine, but the gist of it was “Holy crap this thing is amazing!” I believe he compared it to a turbo car in that the bottom end is a tad soggy but when it “comes on the cam,” you’d better be holding on. He felt confident in predicting a strong pull through 7,500 rpm. When I pointed out that that head would let the “big block” 1,500cc rev to 7,500, he winced and said, “Then this might be a 9,000 rpm engine.” It still needs some tuning, but things are looking good. I wouldn’t see it, but that was the general consensus. I locked up while John and Pat washed up then we went to Buffalo Wild Wings for dinner. Meh, not that impressed. I mean if they’d had hot waitri it would have been different. Ours was a surly little thing who gave me the impression that she was a yankee “Jewish American Princess” forced to work because daddy stopped giving her an allowance. But I could be wrong. In fact, I might have been projecting my own surliness on her, come to think of it. John, thoughts? Anyhoo, it wasn’t as thought there were any other waitri who looked any better. Of course, I was still in a bad mood, so I'm not the one to ask. Ok, disregard all I said about Buffalo Wild Wings, I'm probably full of shit. In fact, my mood didn’t lighten, especially about the car, until today when I told the story of starting the car a few times. Now, obviously, I can talk about it without resorting to too much obscenity. Well, I've got to take someone a projector so I guess I'll call it a rant. Have a day.