4/9/09

Well, we didn’t get anything done on Shichi last night. Oh, I say that, we did decide to trust my engine building skills from when I originally built the A-14 for Gil. What I mean by that is we’re going to put the $1,000.00 cylinder head I just had done for Shichi on the cammed bottom end I built for Gil and put that combination in Shichi. We are not going to crack into Gil’s engine, except to replace the head of course, and trust that the bottom end I built is good. With that free-revving 1,400 cc rotating assembly, which I'm sure I had balanced, under that free-flowing head, which will finally be getting the valve lift it is ported for due to (tee hee, I said doo-doo!) that Nissan Motorsports cam, I feel reasonably comfortable predicting at least 110 horsepower and 7,500 rpm capability. Then again, the 1,500 with a stock cam pulled to 7,500 a time or two with that head. Yeah, I know that is why the bottom end let go. I've been saying that all along. This ought to be a screaming little bastard once I'm “done” with it. Tee hee. Oh, there was a complaint during the cruise Sunday. The polished aluminum skin on the back of the car was blinding Tony as he followed me. That got me thinking about painting the exposed skin after all. I'm thinking flat black because the car isn't invisible enough. John suggested a sort of Chickenhawk motif with all the exposed bits becoming yellow. I could gopher that, in a pinch. It shouldn’t be too tough to do, except for the “Datsun” script and number “7” on the back. I suppose with some meticulous tape work, they could be painted around. We’ll see. So, since we didn’t work on Shichi, what did we do? Good question. What we did was install the studs in the front hubs of Roku-Hyaku and got one wheel on, sort of. John drilled the hubs then we put the studs in. On the one hub that had already been drilled large, we zooked the studs into place but the other was a tight enough interference fit that we didn’t feel it necessary. He painted the hubs then installed them on the car. On the first one, when his hand slipped on the wrench, he hit his head on the fender. Juan would think he’d learn from that. On the second one, when the wooden handle of the rubber mallet he was using to back up the tightening broke, he hit his head on the other fender. Of course this time he managed to cut his eyebrow on the one sharp corner on the car. It bled pretty good too. I felt a little bad, but refused to show it. Gotta be a man, you know. Once he regained consciousness, he put the passenger side wheel on and tightened up the lug nuts. It looks really good. We decided to call it an evening there and washed up for dinner. We went to Benito’s on the way back to his house. I dropped him off and headed home. And now I'm here talking to y'all. Well, I think I've rambled enough for today. Since I'm not working tomorrow, I probably won’t have a rant for y'all. I want to go to the shop and get Shichi as close as possible to being ready to pull the engine, but mom has things she wants me to do. We’ll see what happens. Oh, he didn’t really lose consciousness by the way.