11/23/09

Well, we didn't touch Nadine over the weekend, but then again, I hadn't planned on doing anything with it anyway. What we did accomplish was the removal of Gregg's "Screamin' Demon" engine from Shichi. Yeah, I know I wasn't planning on having that done for another week, but John can really motivate when he gets working. We met up at the shop around 1100 h, well I actually got there around 1030 h and was already piddling with Shichi’s disassembly and when he arrived we got down to business. I wasn't sure how far into we were planning to get so at about 1400 h I made the comment, “We might have this thing out today.” John seemed surprised at my surprise so I guess that was his plan all along. I can't think of anything that really fought us, I guess having the thing apart twice in the last year or so helps with familiarity, but John may have other memories of the job. Once we had it on the ground with the transmission and flywheel off (I'm not giving Gregg “Explodotron”), we hunkered the A-15 bottom end up onto an engine stand. We cleaned up and went to lunch at Buffalo Wild Wings and had to endure the end of the TCU football game at 1,000,000,000 dB over the speakers right by our heads. It was awesome! After that we went to the AT&T store to look at new smart phones. As usual, my eyes glazed over as soon as we walked in and I decided my Dingleberry was still working just fine. John tried to get me to drink the Kool Aid on the i- (gotta-be-just-like-everyone-else) Phone. It pissed me off almost immediately upon picking it up. No, I would throw that bastard across the room within the first hour of ownership, I'm sure. He bought two. One for him and the other for his wife, Samantha. I think I may have rolled my eyes a time or two. After the three or four hours at AT&T, we finally parted ways. I was quite pleased with myself when I got home. Sunday, I waited for mom to get home from church and had lunch with her. I then went to the shop to tear into the A-15 bottom end. John and I had discussed how far I should go into the thing with him espousing a “budget build” approach while I argued against doing it “half assed.” I knew the pistons had to come out so I started with the removal of the pan. The pistons came out and number four is much uglier than the hole at the top alluded to. The bore is galled pretty badly too so it has to go in for machine work. The bearings were scuffed but might have been passable, I'll replace them. The timing chain looked a little iffy but I still wasn't sure about removing the front cover. I decided to look through the gasket collection at this point. Once I found the brand new A-series timing set, the die was cast: the front cover and crank were being removed. I found two or three complete engine gasket sets and selected one for this job. Ironically, it was one from which I'd already stolen the intake/exhaust gasket. Fortunately, there was another I/E gasket in the pile. I finished disassembling the block down to the point where the only thing left in it is the cam and lifters. If Automotive Machine wants to remove them they can. I'd have left the crank in but it cuts the weight in half! At this point I'm wishing I'd driven Fifi instead of Ms. Clio because I could have taken all this stuff to Automotive Machine today. What I think I'm going to do is this, I think I might cut out of here early, like 1500 h or so, go get Fifi and head to the shop. I'll unload the wheels and stuff then load the engine parts. I may or may not then go to Automotive Machine. Now I need to decide just how much I'm going to have them do to it. I know it needs a re-bore and new pistons. I'll spring for new bearings, while I'm in there. The question is, do I have the rotating assembly balanced? Another question is how much am I going to have them do to the head? I want the ports opened up to match the intake. It is a round-port head and I have an oval port intake. I'd like to have the exhaust ports between cylinders two and three knife edged since the manifold is an open plenum at that point and I feel like that ought to flow better. I want the water jacket ports to the intake welded shut along with the EGR port in the front of the head. It wouldn't hurt to have a couple thousandths shaved off the deck to true it up, and make a bit more compression. I don't know. I guess I just need to take it all in and ask how far my money will go. Yeah, I guess I'll do that. Well, with a plan in mind now, I think I'll call it a rant for the day.