12/21/11

Well, John has successfully made another complete trip around the sun today. Happy birthday dude. So he asked me to order some wheels for him the other day. See, I've got a Disco Tire credit card so I can buy wheels and tires on a moment’s notice if need be. Anyhoo, he offered to trade me a set of wheels and tires if I would buy these particular ones for him. They arrived yesterday. When I sent him a text telling him about it, and asking if we were going to the shop on Saturday, he offered to come right away and pick up the wheels… just in case we won’t be at the shop, you see. So I'm sitting there watching TV about half an hour later and the doorbell rings. “Who in the fuck,” I ask myself, “Is ringing my doorbell at 2000 h? This better be damned imp… oh wait.” Yeah, in just half an hour I totally forgot he was coming. Of course, knowing me as he does, John was not surprised at all by that. We loaded the boxes of wheels into his car then stood back to look at Fiona. He said he spent a couple minutes grokking it before ringing the bell. Apparently I got it right. I thought they looked good but he confirmed that I got it exactly perfect. “You couldn’t have planned that better,” he said… or something to that effect. It made me glow a bit. Yeah, I think I might be “done” modifying Fiona for a while. The only other thing I can think of would be a cold air intake. Unfortunately they cost almost $300.00 and appear to be a bit of a PITA to install. Then again, 13 horsepower is significant. That would drop my power to weight ratio to under 12 pounds per horsepower. Hmm, I guess the installation isn’t any worse than the springs… and John would probably “take the tools from me” anyway. I just need to finger out if I can afford to drop another three hundred bucks I guess. Perhaps after the middle of January paycheck. Yeah, we’ll see. Oh, one other “dress up” item I'm considering is different lug nuts. I'm not confident that the stock lug nuts are deep enough. The studs on those spacers are really long. I'm afeared that they have crashed into the closed end of the nuts. I can't see any evidence that they have, and they did seem to torque down fine… but still. I'm thinking of those lightweight aluminum nuts I see on e-Bay. I can't decide between red and purple though. Red would “match” the shift knob and seat inserts, but purple is my favorite color. Oh, another thing red has going for it is the fact that Juan can just make out, if he looks really closely, the red Brembo brake calipers through the wheels. Ok, I think I've decided to get red “Tuna” lug nuts. I guess since the tuna is a fast swimming fish they call the “racing” lug nuts that… I don’t know. I'd do it now but my work computer went into “screen saver” just as I typed in that decision. I don’t feel like entering my password and all right now. I'll do it later. Ok, so as to the wheels I mentioned at the beginning of the rant, before taking off after that bunny, John got a set of Drag something or others which are so totally bitchin’ that I am jealous as hell. Perhaps he has included a link to a picture of one… I'll see tomorrow. His offer to me was for the faux Panasports on his B-210 for Lil' Wiggly. Yes, I know they aren’t really faux Panasports, but at a glance they do resemble Panasports… sort of. Anyhoo, we’ll be putting those on Lil' Wiggly as soon as he’s back up and going… if not before then. There really isn’t all that much more to do to get that one back on the road. We need to install and hook up the dash and gauges, replace the rear brake and possibly the clutch slave cylinders, bleed the hydraulics, and… um, probably some other stuff. I won't have it at the January JNC meet, but Frerbruraryr isn’t out of the question. Yes, I'm going with superfluous, superfluous R’s again this year. Speaking of the January event, I wonder if it will be on the first or the 8th. Oh, I just got a series of e-mails and had to wake up the work computer. I guess I'll go look at red “Tuna” lug nuts. Still seems like a dumb thing to call them. Ok, they are ordered. Yes, I know John told me I didn’t need them, I didn’t need the whole damned car either. Besides, these were only $35.00 whereas the car was… never mind, I don’t want to think about it. Ok, so NOW the only thing left to do to Fiona is a cold air kit. We’ll see. And on that note, I think I'll call it a rant. Perhaps tomorrow we’ll discuss the new plans for the N600.