5/14/10

On the continuum of dumb ideas I have followed through on, the one I have for the shop tomorrow probably falls somewhere between “Come on, fire up the engine in George. What’s the worst that can happen?” and “Where was that ‘free’ 1200 again?” I'm thinking about doing the DCOE swap on Lil' Wiggly. See, John sent me a text last night saying that someone he knows was having the same “dry float bowl” issue I'm having and that the problem was the seal on the little glass window. I can see that. It makes sense since that carburetor sat for quite a long time before we resurrected it for use on Lil' Wiggly. In fact, I'm a little surprised it doesn't leak worse. So, here’s how I see the project progressing. Assuming John doesn't come to the shop tomorrow, which I believe I was told there was only about a 76% chance of it, I'll go down there and reconfigure the header which used to live on The Seven. It will need to have the collector realigned to a downward orientation and perhaps some of the “clearance dents” removed or reworked. I know the ones for intake manifold clearance are superfluous with the manifold I'm planning to use. We'll see. Once I have that ready, I'll tear into the car. Oh, I'll probably ditch the air conditioning system while I'm in there as well. Adding lightness, you know. The zorst is the one factor in this project which is giving me pause. I know I can make the two ends (header and zorst) mate up, but I always have trepidation going onto it. Well, with any luck John will come to the shop and talk me into working on Nadine instead. Speaking of trepidation! My “whelm” level with that project is very high still. I keep hoping that once I dig into it, I'll see that it isn't all that big of a job after all. Pshyeah, right! I said it and even I don't believe it. Well, it is now noon. I think I'm going to head down to see if the guys are ready to go to lunch. Woo hoo! No, I will not be doing anything with Lil' Wiggly this weekend. When I went downstairs for lunch a couple hours ago it was raining sideways. We wound up waiting for Larry Shuttlebus to come back from his lunch to drive us across the parking lot to the Employee Center. It was coming down a frog strangler. Lil' Wiggly is parked on the back patio and there will be quite the mud pit between there and the grass. That car is parked for a while. So, I guess I'll be starting in on Nadine after all, John or no John. Hmm, I suppose I could go ahead and get the header ready tomorrow. Maybe, we’ll see. I guess I'm just about done for the week. In fact, yes. I'm done.