3/29/10

Well, once The Seven's engine burped that last little bit of air out of the head, she fired right up and settled into a nice 180 degree, 900 RPM idle. But I'm getting ahead of the story. I arrived at the shop to find John helping Dave Heeter with his car. They were changing the gazinta/gazowta gasket to try and lose a zorst leak. I had to shoo John away from The Seven and back to Dave a few times. Eventually, John sent Dave to help me install the harnesses in The Seven while he, John, did something over Dave’s head, I guess. We got the harnesses in and had a look at finishing out fitting the rest of the car back together. We got the boot cover installed, the boot liner in, the roll bar on, and... um, probably some other stuff. I took it around the complex. It felt good but John said it sounded a bit flat. I suppose it could have been a little crisper on throttle application, now that I think about it. We’ll dial in a touch more timing next weekend. Speaking of which, the plan is to meet at my house, roll to the shop in Fifi, hook up the trailer, drag the RX-4 to John's house, come back to my house, load up Nadine, take her to the shop, drop the trailer, and then drive The Seven and Fifi back to my house. It sounds like a doable plan for a morning, but it will take all day. I'm off Friday so I plan to spend the day making Nadine ready to load and go. I'll check air pressure in the tires and refill as needed. I'll button up stuff under the hood and in the cockpit. I may even put the wheels back on and see if she’ll still roll. Driving The Seven, if Juan can actually call what I did “driving” it, has got me excited about having a sporty car again. Hopefully that will translate over to project Nadine. I think it will be a really fun car once it is up and going. I know it will be a popular car with folks. Hell, just mentioning it gets people going. Some want to buy it, sight unseen. Some want to drive it, not likely to happen but we’ll see. Some just want a ride in it. I think I'll be able to get mom in and out of this car, unlike The Seven. See, I'm sitting here talking about it, I must have some excitement for it after all. Oh, one other thing about The Seven finally burping that last bubble, it makes me more optimistic about George's engine. There is one teeny, tiny, little thing bugging me about George's engine though. I'm not 100% sure I put the main bearings in right. Actually, there is a possibility that The Seven is the one with the bearings in wrong. You see, the main bearings for an A-series Datsun have one pair of thrust bearings, and four pairs of just plain “flat” bearings. Four of the “flat” bearings have a big groove down the middle parallel to rotation whereas the other four do not. On George's engine, I put the four grooved bearings in the block and the others in the caps. In The Seven's engine I put a pair of grooved bearings in the two and four mains and a pair of non-grooved bearings in one and five. Number three is the thrust bearing, I couldn't screw that one up. All of them have holes which line up with the oiling holes in the block but they lined up better in The Seven the way I installed them. In George, they must have lined up the other way or I would have questioned it at that time. I mean, I was ready to install them in The Seven the way they are in George until the holes looked funny. The diagram in the book didn't help and I was fifteen miles away from my computer at the time. “Gee,” I hear some pundit saying, “if you had an i-Phone you could have looked it up.” Sure, but I'd still be waiting for that “near dial-up speed” 3G bullshit to connect me. Anyhoo, I'm a bit worried about George's bottom end, that’s all I'm saying. I guess I'll burn that bridge when I come to it. Nadine gets the attention first. Of course, if an L-series were to forlornly call out to be installed in Lil' Wiggly, cutsies might be allowed in line. We'll see. Now, once Nadine is “done,” I'll be looking long and hard (Huh, huh. Long and hard!) at the rest of the fleet to see who gets worked on next. That won't be until next spring though so no point in worrying about it. So, if I'm not going to go into that, I guess I'll call it a day. I've got a dentist appointment tomorrow so I might not have a rant. We'll see.