8/24/09

Well, we went to the shop Saturday and got some work done. First off, I drove Shichi down there with the optimistic goal of leaving it in the main bay after moving Roku-Hyaku to the paint booth. I arrived before John and got to work. I had the front tires back on Roku-Hyaku as he showed up. We talked for a moment while looking for the lug studs and determined we didn't have any after all. Since he was in a better car for it, he went to the Boys of Pep for the studs. Oh, he’d called to make sure they had them first of course. While he was away, I readjusted the linkage on the Mikuni carburetors so they wouldn't go over-center. I think I might have done some other stuff too, I don't remember. He arrived and we took the rear hubs to the press to install the studs. The first one went in fine. The second one made a funny “Pop!” noise while going in but we assumed it was the stuff we had supporting the part moving. The third stud broke the ear off the hub. It was then that we noticed the other two studs had cracked their holes as well. Oops. We only installed two studs in the other hub and put them on the car. “Ok,” John declared, “mid engine it is.” We got the car on its wheels and rolled it into the paint booth. We picked up the main bay, ever so slightly, and rolled Shichi in. I was prepared to call it a success right there but John started taking stuff apart. He’s good to have around when I'm getting all procrastinatey. We had the engine stripped down to the head with the zorst manifold hanging loose and installed the center studs. We hung the manifold and I had worries about the linkage clearing the hood. It didn't. We shortened the rods and installed them in different holes and it worked well. All was going as planned until we had the zorst manifold bolted in place and tried to install the intake. Yeah, you guessed it, it didn't fit. We looked at other options. Grinding away at he intake was vetoed because it was looking too close for comfort on the “bustin’ through to the intake port” front. The original header I had on the car was vetoed because it didn't fit with that manifold either. A spacer between the head and manifold was vetoed, but revived in an e-mail you’ll read later, because of the way Datsun designed the lower mounting bolts. See, the intake and exhaust manifolds share four studs on the bottom. They use these thick cast iron washers to bridge the gap and pull both manifolds up to the head. I couldn't grasp a way to make it work at that time. It came to me later, but I'm getting ahead of the story. We then took a look at another dual DCOE manifold I had and what do you know, it fit. Thing is, I don't really like this manifold. It has had a hard life, let’s put it that way. The biggest concerns were the cracked lower mounting ear and the hogged out mounting hole up top. Oh, and the stanchions for the throttle linkage are set up for dual “front” carburetors. D’ do whut? I hear you asking. The one which won’t fit, henceforth the “pretty”manifold, has stanchions, and linkage arms, at the extreme front and rear. The linkages on the carburetors are at the front of one and rear of the other. The other manifold, henceforth known as the “ugly” manifold, has the stanchions setup so that its linkage arms line up with the front of each carburetor. We agreed that there would be way too much flex to use the existing front/rear linkage on this manifold. We decided to call it a day and think about it. We ate on the way to my house and discussed the situation. It was decided that I'd try to move the linkage from the rear to the front of the “rear” carburetor, modify the linkage from the pretty manifold to the ugly manifold, and we’d be golden. Here is the e-mail I sent to John after going to the shop Sunday:

I'll probably tell this again in the rant tomorrow or Tuesday. Ok, so I went to the shop today. Item the first: the "rear" carb cannot be made into a "front" carb since there is no nut or threads on the opposite end of the throttle shaft. The "front" carb is threaded and nutted at both ends and could be made into a "rear" but that will not help us. Item the second: even if we could attach the linkage to the opposite end of the "rear" carb, the linkages are mirror images and will not swap. The "rear" carb's bits could be moved to the "front" carb making it a dual fron/rear but again, that will not help us. I did find half of a Weber dual carb synchronizer link on that other DCOE on the shelf leading us to item the third: it is too small to mount to the Mikuni carb's throttle shaft. This could be worked around but then we have item the fourth: Webers rotate in the opposite direction so the link I have won't quite work. (It will if we design the other link piece right but we'll just have to wait and see.) Having said all of that, I think there might be some options. Option one: we make the Weber link hoozis work. Option B: if the carbs are swapped so that the front is the rear and vice versa, the two actuating lever thingies are side by side. If we then attach a link between the two existing holes and the cable to that, it is a direct pull upwards and should work. I couldn't get full throttle right now because the links hit the manifiold. With the gasket thingies you have at home, there should be space to swing the full arc. The problem with "B" is there is no way to synchronize the two carbs. How they wind up when the link is made is how they will be forever. Oh sure, if there is some slack we could synch idle, but if they aren't synched to the cable one carb will always start to open first and the other will never reach WFO. I haven't been able to wrap my brain around a way to synch them to the cable, yet. Now, i did find that the chunk of aluminum sitting next to the vice would be just about perfect as a spacer for the "pretty" manifold. If two spacers were machined from that, and the "pretty" manifold trimmed away so that the intake/exhaust big-assed washer thingies only pinched the spacer, we'd be in business. Oh, I think there is enough meat between the big-assed washer pinch area to drill and bolt the manifold to the spacer, by the way. Theoretically, the manifold could be welded to the spacer as well/instead of the extra bolt. For that matter, the spacer could be drilled and tapped for two studs, bolted to the head as if it were a manifold, and the manifold bolter to that. Where can we get two spacers machined? I'm beginning to like that wacky idea the best.

I spoke to Pat about where to get the spacers machined and he made some suggestions. John had some ideas as well but then made the most brilliant one of the day. He said, to the effect, “Why don't we take the ugly manifold to Automotive Machine and have that ear re-welded and machined?” He went on to suggest having the hogged-out hole welded and drilled and I said they could clean up the ugly ears on top too. We came up with a plan for synchronizing the carburetors to the cable as well so the stanchions are super-flu-us. They could be milled off as well. So now I have to decide between the cool assed spacers and the pretty manifold or having the ugly manifold made pretty. Either way is going to cost me machine shop time and money. I need to do some cipherin’ and figgerin’ on that. Well, I've got to go do some actual work and this is getting really long so.