12/16/11

Ok, so on Tuesday we got Fiona sitting pretty, if a little knock-kneed. I'll ‘splain that in a bit… if I remember. It was still “early” so John wanted to install his cross member. He crawled under and began fidgeting with it. I could see he was never going to get it by himself and asked if it was a two man operation. He said it looked like it so I crawled under with him. We fought with it for a bit until it was obvious that the “C” channel just wasn’t going to slip over the mushroom of the rubber bushings in the frame. I suggested spreading them a tad to get them on and allowing the bolts to squeeze them back shut around the bushings. He was on board. We took the cross member to the vice and chucked up one of the channels. He bent it open a bit then we did the other side. Back under the car… it still didn’t fit. No, just kidding. It plopped right into place and I got my bolts through the mounts and bushings. He got his side up and bolted and we crawled out to have a look. It is quite nice. He then grabbed the third-member he is going to use and took it to the vice. He removed the rear cover and filled it with oil. A “dab” of silicone (AKA half a tube!) and the cover went back on. Ok, he didn’t really use half a tube of silicone, but he always uses more than I think is necessary. He’ll argue that his shit don’t leak to which I'll reply, “Your face doesn’t leak,” or something. Anyhoo, with that done we called it a day. We headed downtown to Byblos for Lesbian food. We ate then stood around looking at Fiona for a bit. Ok, actually all of this next bit happened at the shop before we left. That is kind of important because I'm going to talk about taking measurements and anyone who knows me and/or John knows we don’t carry tape measures with us. So, we’re looking at Fiona and John says that when viewing the car from a ¾ angle, the tuck of the wheels annoys him. By the way, that is the knock-kneed aspect I mentioned above. I agreed, and we took some measurements to see how much the wheels needed to come out to fill the fenders. It was decided that the rears could come out 25mm and the fronts 15mm. A 25mm spacer is easy peasy lemon squeezy. 15mm? Not so much. As we left it, the thinking was 25mm all around and camber the hell out of the front to get them under the fender lip… I believe. We parted company and I went home to shop on e-Bay. Oh wait, while we were in the Byblos parking lot, John called Steve/John to see if we could get in to have a different resonator installed to tone down the rort of the zorst some. He didn’t have the right one but would order it and have it for Wednesday. I agreed to live with it one more night, THEN we parted ways for the day. At home, I got on the intergoogles and shopped e-Bay for spacers. There was a dude selling four 25mm spacers for $99.95 but he also had 20mm spacers for $56.95 in another auction. I shot him an e-mail asking if I could get two and two for that $99.99 price. (Eventually he replied that the $99.99 auction was for non-hub-centric spacers and that was why they were cheaper but I'd moved on by then.) I shot John a text assessing him of the situation and did a little cipherin’ and figgerin’ while waiting for the dude to reply. Yeah, it was after 1700 h here but “only” 1500 h in California. I was being optimistic. When it was obvious I wasn’t going to hear from him, I finally decided “Fuck it” and ordered two 25mm hub-centric spacers and two 20mm hub-centric spacers in two different auctions. Now, I've gotten so used to “Buy It Now” that I was surprised when I didn’t get the message, “Congratulations, you won this item!” right away. No, I had to wait another 52 minutes for the auction to end. Yeah, submit it to “my rough life dot com,” I know. I finally paid for them and then sat back to bask in my accomplishment. Wednesday morning I texted John from the toilet to say I was going to stop at Pearl Harbor for a new floor jack. The old aluminium jack has been plumb wore out for some time now. It was all the poor thing could manage to get Fiona off the ground. I asked if he wanted to join me there and he said he would be there in eight minutes. “Oh!” I replied. “I thought I had more time. I'll be there as soon as I wipe, dress, and haul ass.” We met at the store and picked out a jack. We shopped and picked up a few more items. At the shop John unpacked the jack and said they lied about the length of the handle. He was able to jack Lil' Wiggly up but I couldn’t manage to work the thing. See, I've had this pain in my side for the last few days. It feels like a cracked rib but I don’t remember doing anything to crack a rib. Probably just a strained muscle. Nevertheless, I couldn’t push the jack handle. I built an extension and painted it red. John cleaned and painted his third member, the one we’d left in the vice the day before. We then got to work on finishing the work on Lil' Wiggly's gauges. I removed the framework and trimmed it for the small gauges. John hung it up, along with the panels, and painted them. We made a couple wiring harnesses and got the under hood part hooked up. All I need to do now is install the actual gauges to the panels and wire them together. We left and went to Campo Verde for lunch. I LOVE their cheese sauce. Love it love it love it! We ate then went to see Steve/John. He moved a car off of the rack and I pulled Fiona on. She scraped this time. We debated the nice stainless steel Magnaflow versus the mild steel no name “hot dog” glass pack for a bit. I finally decided on the hot dog since it would probably attenuate the sound better. He cut out my factory resonator and zooked in the hot dog. It made all the difference in the world. The tone is still nice and rumbly, but it isn’t boomy in the cockpit any more. I like it. From there I headed to the railroad to get my keys and phone while checking to make sure there wasn’t anything pressing for Thursday morning. And that about wraps it up. Once we get those spacers, which hopefully will be at the house when you read this, installed I think I can call Fiona finished. She’ll be sitting pretty and sounding tough, just like her namesake on “Burn Notice.” Although, that Fiona is a bit of a “butter face” if I were to be totally honest. She wouldn’t have to beg me to do her, but she might have to ask politely.