10/10/2011

Feh, and now I'm thinking about selling all my “toys” and getting out of the car hobby again. Ok, not ALL of my toys, I'd keep The Seven, but the rest of them… feh. Meh. And psh. And of course if I had The Seven, which of course I will, I would keep a toe in the car hobby, of course. Yes, that last one was just to be redundant over and over again. Indulge me for a moment. I think my big tool box, welder, plasma cutter, air compressor, and that rolling metal work table in a two car garage with The Seven would not be an unreasonable maintenance shop. I think I could even get all of that in one side of a two car, or in a one car for that matter, garage leaving the other side for Fiona, or not as the case may be. Hell, the garage at the Burkett house has that nice little kick out which could be used for the above listed items, minus The Seven of course. And it has the back patio where I could park the trailer fairly securely. Oh shit! The trailer! I just realized, ok I actually realized it this last weekend and it is one of the things annoying me about the car hobby right now, that John's B-210 is sitting on the trailer which I'm going to need for that East Texas Sevens tour next weekend. Not this weekend the 15^th and 16^th, next weekend the 22^nd and 23^rd. We have to do something with that car, and possibly re-deck the trailer again, this weekend. I'm thinking we can drop the car into the spot where the trailer is parked and I can take the trailer home for the week. I don’t really want to do that though. I'd rather it remain at the shop, but we don’t have the room. I suppose if we had John's junk guy come haul off a dead car or two we’d have a space for it. I guess we’ll see. Ok, I just took off for a few minutes to drop the kids off at the pool and now I'm back. I've totally lost that last train of thought so I'm going to move on. I drove The Seven to the shop Saturday to install a vent in the side in an attempt to keep my feet and legs cooler. Yeah, it didn’t work. Here’s the story. I first went to Sutherland’s to look for those 3” soffit vents I'd found a few weeks ago. They had 2” and 4” but not the 3” I wanted because I had a 3” hole saw at the shop, or so I thought. In hindsight, I should have bought the 4” and a hole saw blade. Anyhoo, I left Sutherland’s and went to Lowe’s. They had the 3” vents. I bought a bag and headed back home. There I hopped in The Seven, along with the scoop thingy I'd bought on e-Bay, and headed to the shop. No, it was raining when I got home from the hardware store. I took a nap and went to the shop later when it looked like the rain had let up. It was a lull. I got rained on as I was driving down 2871 between I-20 and 377. It wasn’t too bad though. At the shop it stopped raining and I got to work. I looked for the 3” hole saw and found that what I actually had, and this makes perfect sense now that I think about it, was a 3 3/8” hole saw. Let’s see, how would Juan put a 3” zorst pipe through a panel in a Lotus Seven? With a 3” hole? No, he’d use a 3 3/8” hole, wouldn’t he? So yeah, I don’t have a 3” hole saw after all. I began to cipher and figger on it and then found a piece of silicone hose with a 3” ID and about a 3 3/8” OD. I also found a piece of aluminum with a 3 3/8” hole cut in it and gave it a test fit. “I think this might work,” I said to myself. I grabbed the drill and the hole saw and went to work on the side of the car. Yeah, I drilled it a little too far forward. It is right next to the clutch pedal and goes through the fiberglass end piece of the foot box. I'd hoped to hit just aluminum but alas t’was not to be. I installed the soffit vent with its corresponding silicone filler and sat back to have a look. I don’t hate it, but I don’t particularly like it either. I did a test fit of the scoop but when I couldn’t think of a way to mount it, I gave up on it… for the time being. I may revisit it at a later date. In fact, now that I think about it, sine it didn’t work so well suing the soffit vent, and I don’t particularly like the way it looks, I will probably revisit the scoop. Anyhoo, after getting that vent installed, I put the bonnet back on. I decided I'd go ahead and replace the safety wire on the passenger side hood pins, since they were both broken. With that job done, I locked up the shop and headed home. At first I thought the vent might be working, but then realized it was that my left shoe was wet from washing my hands and not cooled by a nice breeze. What I really need to do is close off the other wind intrusions from the engine bay. The worst offender, I believe, is around the steering shaft bearing. I'll have a look at that someday I'm sure. I took the south route back to the house and had a mini hoon. Yeah, The Seven will remain in the fleet no matter what… barring a stupid money offer, of course. So, I guess that’s enough for today. I'll have more tomorrow for sure because I want to rant about Apple and all the i-shit.