4/5/10

Well, the RX-4 is off the trailer. Aaaaaaaaaaand, that’s it. John came to the house at 0830 h, I think, and we headed to the shop. The car was ready to go so we hooked up and grabbed the come-along and skates, just in case. We got to John's house and backed into the driveway. We unhooked the straps and set up the ramps. One nice gentile push and.... nothing. The car would not budge. Oh, I say that, it scooted back until the tires hit the break over at the top of the ramps and then, no more. We pushed and pushed until I pulled my left pectoral muscle. Yes, it does still hurt, thank you for asking. We tried jacking that corner up to roll on the jack but it just sank through the rotting wood of the trailer. Eventually, we hooked the come-along to the differential and the bottom of one of the ramps and pulled the car down. It slid down the ramps but then would not roll into the garage. The skates got the call all the way off the trailer and up to the ridge at the garage door. We used the ramps to make the hop over that ridge and then the skates carried the ass end the rest of the way. By this time it was 1130 h so I knew we were pretty much done for the day. We played the, “Well, let’s go to the shop and see how things look at that point,” game but I knew. We ate lunch at... um, where did we... oh right. We ate lunch at Parton’s Pizza then took the trailer back to the shop. Like I said, I knew we were done so I didn't even make any attempt to work on The Seven. John drilled out the last few rivets holding the one remaining flare on Timmy and took them to the truck. I fired up The Seven for Marty Smith, who stopped by while we were unhooking the trailer. We bailed out and went to my house. I contemplated going back to the shop but my cat convinced me to take a nap instead. She’s very persuasive. Eventually it was too late to go back to the shop so I wound up wasting the rest of Saturday. Tony had called Friday evening and was going to be at a loose end on Sunday so I said he could come out to the shop and look at the Brookland Windscreens I used to run on The Seven. He wants to make his Seven look less like “Paul’s car” and more like “Tony’s car” so he’s replacing the mirrors and windshield. Paul was the guy who built that particular car and Tony is tired of everyone calling it “Paul’s car.” So, I bowed out of going to church with mom and told Tony to come on out. He showed up around 1000 h and we took off to the shop. He said, “The car is making a funny noise. Can you hear it?” Oh yeah, I could hear it. It sounded like the left rear wheel bearing so I asked where it sounded like it was coming from to him. He said right rear wheel. We both decided it was the differential. We got to the shop and rolled The Seven out and backed his car in. By the way, this is his Subaru, not his Seven. We jacked the ass end up and had a look. Everything felt OK and looked fine. We were stumped. We dumped in a few more ounces of rear end oil and lowered it back to the ground. I pulled the Brooklands off of the old scuttle and we haggled. New, genuine Brooklands are selling for around $250.00 or so. Mine are used and not genuine Brooklands. We settled on $75.00 for the pair and dropped them in his trunk. We locked up and went to Genghis Grill for lunch. Oh man, I love GG! On the road to GG and back to my house, we listened to the differential. It sounded just ever so slightly better, perhaps. I offered to follow him home but he declined. He didn't call for me to come pick him up on the side of the road so I guess he made it home. And that’s about it for the weekend. Oh, I forgot about Friday. Well, rather than go back and put it at the beginning where it would make sense, I'll tell y'all now. Friday morning I got up around 0930 h. I goofed off for an hour or so and then went to the ticket fixer’s office to hire him about that speeding ticket Thursday. From there I met mom at the church and we went to lunch. After a nap, I got to work in the garage. Fortunately, Nadine wasn't as buried as I'd feared. I put the wheels on, after airing one of them back up, and lowered the car off the stands. The one tire I had to air up, and seat the bead for that matter, was leaking at the stem and was about to be flat again. It took about an hour to be too flat to roll so I think it will still get us on the trailer. I jacked the nose back in the air and set it on stands again. I moved the stuff out of mom’s way and called it a day. OK, so THAT gets us all caught up on the weekend. Perhaps I'll rant more tomorrow, we’ll see.