5/14/12

I made a discovery this weekend about which I am not too pleased.  Juan may remember that I had a theory as to why George “overheated” when we fired it up.  Said theory being that with the heater capped off there was not any water flowing out of the back of the cylinder head to “burp” it properly.  Yeah, the heater is not capped off on George.  In fact, it actually has an extra “circuit,” if you will, teed off of the heater to send water to the turbo’s bearing section.  I am at a loss now as to why the thing got hot.  I guess I should say I am AGAIN at a loss as to why it got hot.  I am back to a fear that the cylinder walls might be too thin.  I haven’t mentioned this to John because… well, I guess I just didn’t get around to it.  I fingered, I guess, we would “discover” it together when we brought the car back in to finish it.  So why am I bringing it up now?  Well, because it is 0900 h Monday morning and I'm already bored with work.  I'm afeared this is going to be a LONG week… made longer by the fact that John might not be able to come to the shop on Saturday.  Sure, we’re “planning” to go on Sunday instead, but I'm not holding my breath.  Anyhoo, we’ll see how all that pans out.  As for this last weekend, here’s what went down.  I got up at my usual 0530 h to feed the cat.  I think I might have tried to go back to bed for a bit but gave up pretty quickly.  I dressed and went to the shop arriving at around 0730 h.  I had the new Saiga, Woody, with me along with all the parts I was going to install: the trigger group, pin retention plate, and safety.  The recoil buffers I ordered hadn’t arrived but I knew I could install them at home.  I disassembled the weapon and cut the trigger off of the sear in the new trigger group.  I was in the process of fitting the trigger group when John arrived.  Since the new hammer was not trimmed for the Saiga’s bolt hold open, which is a total pain in the ass to install anyway, and the safety has a BHO notch cut in it, I discarded the factory BHO and its spring.  Ok, I didn’t discard it, but I didn’t install it either.  With the new hammer, trigger group, and plate in place, I tried out the action.  Oh yeah, that’s one nice trigger now.  Before it was almost awful, now it is very nice.  You just have to feel it to know the difference.  Anyhoo, I reassembled the gun and put it away.  Meanwhile, John painted the area under the grille, and the grille, of Lil' Wiggly.  It looks so much better.  I made the linkage for the carburetors even though the lever arm still hadn’t arrived from Italy.  We piddled around until about noon and went for sushi… sort of.  We didn’t have any Nigiri, which is the bit of bait on a blob of rice which most people think of when Juan mentions sushi.  No, all we had were rolls, which are still technically sushi, so I'm going to hang my hat on that.  We ate way too much.  Eventually we parted ways and I went to O’Reilley’s to look for a master kill switch and a momentary off push button.  I found the kill switch.  I bought it and a 12” black battery cable with rings on both ends.  Back at the shop I had a look at installing it.  My first thought was to make an “L” bracket to mount it to a vertical surface under the hood.  I couldn’t find any suitable metal.  Next I thought a flat bracket could be used to come straight off of the relay box next to the battery.  Again I didn’t find any metal I liked for the job… not to mention I could only find one nut and bolt combination which would fit the thing.  Then I noticed a flange sort of thing on the side of the radiator where Juan is supposed to mount the fan shroud.  I did a test fit of the switch and found it would fit nicely there.  I bolted the two battery cables to the switch and the switch to the radiator.  I hooked up the cables to their respective locations, chassis ground and battery, and gave the switch a test.  Of course it worked.  Next I moved on to filling the hole in the dash where the wiper switch used to reside.  I found a panel clip thingy from one of the Versæ and tried it in the hole.  It was too small to fill it.  I took a vacuum plug and stuck it on the clip and tried to insert that in the hole.  Now it was too big to fit.  I took the vacuum plug and stuck it on the clip from the back side of the dash and now the hole is filled.  It is a bit ghetto but I'm going to go with it for the time being.  Marty Smith showed up so I showed him a thing or two we had been working on since his last visit.  While showing him the headlights, the fuse blew.  I replaced it and the headlights worked again.  Eventually we both left and I went home.  Sunday I met mom at church then took her to lunch.  I thought about taking The Seven to get an inspection but decided I'd do it next Saturday at my usual place.  Besides, I need to change the oil and might as well do that while I'm alone at the shop.  So, I guess that’s about all I have for y'all today.  Smell ya later.