5/16/2011

As I predicted, having a “clean” area to work does make it much easier to get stuff done and, more importantly, makes me want to go down to the shop to work. Saturday morning I get a text from John saying they were running late and would be at the shop around 0930 h or so. I said, “Cool.” I headed down and got to work clearing off the welding table. There wasn't as much trash on there as I thought but there was a lot of junk. The long and the short of it is I cleared off the welding table. John and Dave showed up and we chatted for a bit. Dave got cracking on Barbecue Bob while John and I hung the Super Hot Rod engine from the hoist. We installed the flywheel and clutch then began installing it in the car. Of course we couldn't find one of the motor mounts. I found one which I had cut a chunk out of and we decided to just weld in a patch. I got to use the welding table again! With the “new” mount in place, we began to drop the engine in the car. It went in with little drama and bolted right up... for the most part. I mean, I bolted up fine, but we did have to draw the engine and transmission together with the bolts, as one does but isn't really supposed to. I installed some studs in the head for the intake and exhaust manifolds then we hung them on there. It looks good. There is plenty of room, sort of, between the carburetors and brake master and everything else clears nicely. We hung out for a little while longer and finally went to Buffalo Wild Wings for lunch. I had the Ultra Super-Fire-Hot wings. They were quite warm. I could only eat a dozen of them and left the last six. My face was burning pretty good when we left. Later, I had “Fire Belly” all afternoon. Eventually I went for the Hot-Hole Poo I was dreading. It wasn't all that bad, actually. Jalapeños burn my starfish much worse. I also went on line to look for air filters and trumpets and stuff. I found a set of alloy trumpets which look pretty cool, they have a nice patina on them, but I'm not sure if they’ll fit. I bid on them and moved on. I went ahead and bought a set of 1.5” trumpets and filter screens from Pierce Manifolds. Oh, while I was still on e-Bay I bought a set of gaskets to mount the carburetors to the manifold too. Sunday I decided I wanted to go back to the chop and mess with the dash on Lil' Wiggly. I plopped it in place and had a look at how I was going to secure it. It looked like all I needed was three holes in the top and I could bolt it to the stock mounting tabs. This I did. The passenger side side mounting tab lined up pretty well so I bolted that in. The driver’s side side tab required an extension which I made and bolted up. The thing is in there pretty solidly with just a tiny amount of flollop in the very center. I may make a brace for that later, we’ll see. With the frame mounting sorted, I found the vehicle identification VIN number tag and pop riveted it on the “new” frame redundantly, over and over again. I remounted the frame and started looking at the face. I played with the one I had started for the B-210 dash frame and found that while it would have worked, it had the nice clean “factory” edge at the top where it was hidden and my raggedy-assed cut side on the bottom in full view. I hated it. I cut a new plate. Me rikee rots. I made a second plate to fill the passenger side of the dash and began thinking of how I was going to secure them. I found seven spring-clip sheet-metal screw “nut” thingies and mounted them on the frame. I drilled the face plates for the screw holes and gave it a test fit. All but one hole lined up. That’s pretty accurate... um, accuracy for Dimlight Racing. I sat back down in the driver’s seat and sketched out the arc of visibility behind the steering wheel for mounting gauges but then decided I'd done enough for the weekend. I washed my hands and went home. I'm pretty excited about having the dash built. I am not so excited about having to wire them up, but that’s just a cross Juan has to bear. I'm sure it’ll work out. We'll see.