9/28/09

16,023 nights without CPAP and I'm still, miraculously, not dead! I cracked myself up with this thought last night, “Tonight on ‘Not a Euphemism Theater,’ mom walked in on me ‘cleaning my carbine’ today!” But that is getting ahead of the story. Well, Shichi runs again. If I don't sound too excited about it, it is because I'm beginning to think I might have gone awry with this engine. Here is what we did. Saturday morning I get a call from John asking about my status. He is waiting for a store to open but it isn't looking like it will. I ask if he remembered the nylon spacer thingies for the carburetors and he makes a non-committal swearing sort of noise. I take that to mean he didn't. He says he’ll go back home for them and we’ll meet at Mimi’s for breakfast. These things are done. From Mimi’s we go to Lowe’s to look for “O” rings for the spacer dealies. We fine a set we think will work and buy them. Now we’re off to the shop. I sit down and start installing carburetors while John works on stripping the window out of a 510 door. When he’s done and watching me, I ask if he’d be willing to remove the valve cover and set the torque wrench so we could re-torque the head studs. He is and does. Once I have the carburetors all snugged up, I hit the studs with the torque wrench. A few of the nuts made a horrific “POP” noise as they broke loose from the washers but the torque was all pretty close to correct. They are all good now. John reinstalled the valve cover while I messed with the linkage and fuel lines. It was to a point where I had no more excuses, we had to try and start the car. It fired up pretty quickly once John began holding the choke mechanisms open. Yes, “open” is the correct term for a DCOE/Solex/Mikuni side draft style carburetor. They employ an auxiliary... know what? It’s not that important. Look up how it works if you really must know. Anyhoo, we got it running, but it ran like crap. Looking back, I'm sure we were merely clearing out the gunk from the carburetors because... well, that’s getting ahead of the story. We tuned on them for a while and John called Marty Mary to ask his advice while I was out for a test hoon. Marty ‘splained that he set those carburetors up to run well up in the RPM range where the cam is happy. Basically, it is set up for “balls out, idle and drivability be damned.” He went on to say that he’d be willing to change the main jets for a more suitable set if I wanted. We’ll see. When I got back, we re-synced the throttles and John set the mixture and idle screws where Marty told him. I'm not sure if I drove it again or if it was just John. I was a little too annoyed with myself at that point and wasn't hearing any news, good or bad. John left and I played with the hood for a bit. I'm not sure why. I trimmed it to fit around the throttle linkage and reinstalled the rubber finishing trim stuff. I set the hood on and went home. Sunday I decided I wanted to go shoosting. I put Big Millie in its holster in my belt, Pixie and The Judge in the gun bag, and carried that along with Space Gun II down to the car. I took a little hoon out FM5 before going to the range. I shot The Judge first because I really wanted to see how that laser would work. I almost hate it. The button is in such a terrible spot that I cannot hold the gun properly and make the laser come on. It pisses me off that I spent $300.00 for something this useless. I popped off the five Federal 000 buckshot rounds which came with the laser then loaded up five of the Cor-Bon .45 Colt loads. I'd forgotten just how scary those things are! The report was LOUD and the flash very impressive. Couple those items with the massive bullet and huge cavity in the hollow point... if I ever have to use them... it will be ugly, that’s all I can say. I tried a cylinder full of Winchester Silver tips, “Werewolf Ammo,” and liked them much better even though they might have kicked a little more due to (tee hee, I said doo doo) the heavier bullet. I put The Judge away and got out Big Millie. I really like that gun. I was way more accurate with it than The Judge, which isn't surprising since I was actually aiming this one and not relying on the laser. Oh, I'll still fuck the hell out of a bad guy’s day with The Judge if need be, but I'm not going to be dotting his eyes like I could with Big Millie. After thirty rounds through Big Millie, I put it away and got out Pixie. I'm even more accurate with that, if I remember correctly. I also learned something, always shoot Big Millie before Pixie. Going down in caliber helps my shoosting. The other way, not so much. I blew through 85 rounds in Pixie and then moved on to Space Gun II. Now that is where I get really accurate! At 20 yards I was rapid firing into a 2” circle with all seventeen rounds from each magazine. Many shots were overlapping in fact. When I'd shot all I was going to shoot, I swept my brass and packed up to leave. I paid and headed to the shop. The plan was to clean the guns and ignore Shichi. I ignored the guns instead. I found a choke cable and had a look at length. It looked long enough to make it to the rear carburetor so I removed the old choke cable and installed this one. It wasn't long enough after all. I took the middle out of the old cable and fed it through the carburetors then linked the end of that to the choke cable. I tried it out and it worked. I shrugged and gave the key a turn. The car fired right up and warmed up nicely under choke. It settled into a lumpy-cam idle and I stood back to watch it for a bit. I decided to add ¼ turn more idle to the screws and watched for a bit longer. The damned thing just sat there and ran. I texted John to see if I now remembered what it was he was telling me on Saturday, that bit about it being a “balls out, idle and drivability be damned” setup. He said we should probably still go see Marty about the jets, but that I needn’t be worried about the car. I shut it down and ceased to be worried about the car, for now. I went home and started cleaning the guns. I was just about to finish with the last one, Space Gun II, when mom walked in to ask what I wanted for dinner. That was what brought about the “Not a Euphemism Theater” thing above. It cracked me up so much I had to enter it as my status on Face Buick. And that is about all there is to say about the weekend past. I gotta go pee now so I guess this is a good quitting point.