4/18/2011

Well, at the time it seemed like we got a lot done at the shop. Thinking back on it now... not so much. No, we got a decent amount of work done, I'm not saying we didn't, I just can't seem to make it all add up. In fact, I don't remember what we did at all. Oh wait, I got it now. I arrived and helped John roll the rear fenders on his B-210 some more then we got cracking on my project. We rolled Lil' Wiggly out and began thinking of how we were going to ge the engine from the paint booth to the main bay. I finally suggested we back Fifi up to the engine, slide it onto the tailgate and drive it over with the engine hoist dangling below. This worked perfectly. I drained the oil from the engine while John sold a set of wheels to one of the dudes from the Old School car meet thingy. We flipped the engine and swapped oil pans next. Oh, we spent a few minutes cleaning the grungy pan which came off of Lil' Wiggly before putting it back on the Super Hot Rod engine. We flipped the engine back over and installed the rocker arm spacers then readjusted the valves. We set them to 0.012” but I'm wishing now we’d gone ahead and set them to 0.013” instead. We turned the crank a few times to make sure the springs weren’t binding but I'd still feel better with a little more slop. Perhaps we’ll discuss that next weekend, if we got to the shop. We discussed the water temp sender and heater hose bypass situation. This head had an extra pipe-thread port in the back of the head so we popped the sender’s adapter into it and threaded the heater hose nipple into its spot. Of course this block has been modified and doesn't have the heater return port in the lower radiator hose pipe any more. I found a 1200 style inline “T” on Herman and cannibalized it. We found a section of lower hose to add it inline and set them aside. By now it is approaching 1230 h so we called it a day. We rolled Lil' Wiggly back in and sent to lunch. We had ribeyes at Hoffbrau. After lunch I decided I wasn't ready to go home so I went back to the shop. My pplan was to mess with the brakes. Oh, I had found the 510 brake adapter thingy we thought we’d lost last week which I may or may not have mentioned. I had a look at it one more time. It wouldn't line up when I tried to install it at my house but at the shop, when turned the right way round, it did... almost. One of the bolts welded into the plate to attach the master cylinder fouled the fire wall as the cutout wasn't quite in the right spot. I trimmed the firewall to fit. I zooked in four bolts and painted the resulting part. Yeah John, that was the disturbance you felt in the Force Saturday. With a little tweaking the part dropped right in and bolted up nicely. I bent the brake lines such that the master cylinder bolted up and stood back to admire my handiwork. I grabbed a brake push rod and crawled under the “dash” to see if I could install it. I use quotes because, if you will remember, there is no dash in that car right now. I pinned the yoke of the pushrod to the pedal and adjusted the length so there was just the hint of resistance then hunkered down on the adjusting nut. I played with it to see if the rod would fall out of the master cylinder but it never did. I asked John to have a look at it this weekend and he said he has an idea of how to “fix” it. I think at this point I was finally ready to go home, so I did. Sunday I waited around for mom to get home from church then we went to lunch. After lunch Gregg met me at the shop to look over the 328ix out back. He thinks it will make a good race car if the regular 328 front suspension can be swapped in. I don't give a shit. We hang out for a while then go our separate ways. I stop off at the gun range in Whiskey Flats and put 100 rounds through the 10/22. I like it. It shoots a bit high but I figured it would since I can't get my head low enough to get a proper sight picture when I have ear muffs on. From there I went home and cleaned the gun then finished off “World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War” on my Amazing Ken Doll. Good book. Read it.