6/11/2012

Ok, remember how we had Lil' Wiggly up and running last time we spoke?  Yeah, not so much now.  Saturday morning I hopped in Lil' Wiggly to go to the shop.  It fired up, eventually, and got me there but I was a bit put out by its performance lacking luster.  When I arrived, I saw John with my motorcycle outside.  I pulled up and asked, “Do we have a buyer coming?”  “I hope so,” he replied.  We tried to start the bike but it would have none of it.  We removed the battery and stuck it on the charger for a while.  Once it was holding a constant 7.1 volts, we reinstalled it and tried again.  The thing would start but die pretty quickly.  We couldn’t quite get it to keep running.  We walked away from it before I set it on fire.  We discussed Lil' Wiggly's situation.  I said flat out, “Either the head goes or the car does.”  We began the search for another oval port cylinder head.  When all we could find were round port heads, we began to consider the single side draft manifold.  Fortunately we did find an oval port head.  It was decided that we’d take it to Automotive Machine and have it cleaned and freshened then we’d put the valve train from the $1,000.00 albatross on it.  I pulled The Seven out of the bay and nosed Lil' Wiggly in then we drained the coolant.  Eventually the buyer for the bike arrived and we got back on trying to make that run.  The more we messed with it, the better it got.  Eventually it was running pretty well and they took it for a spin around the complex.  The kid bought it and we loaded it in the back of their truck.  I gave John a $50.00 “birddog” fee and dropped the other $600.00 in my wallet.  When they had left, we got to work pulling Lil' Wiggly's cylinder head.  Wait, did we do that after the sale of the bike or before?  Not that it really matters.  Anyhoo, I started pulling intake and zorst while John removed other sundries.  With everything out of the way and the nuts off of the head studs, we began pulling the head up.  It came off with a little wiggling and we had a look at the situation inside.  I'm still convinced that the ports are just way too big and all gas velocity is shot to hell until the thing hits 5,000 rpm.  Needles to say, it is just as undrivable in Lil' Wiggly as it was in The Seven.  Well, it probably could have been tolerated in Lil' Wiggly if I were willing to live with soggy acceleration.  No, it was undrivable.  But I digress.  We had a look and I noticed that #4 was fouled pretty badly.  I thought about it later and now think we oil-fouled the plug when we had the PCV hooked to that cylinder and it never cleaned out again.  That would ‘splain the continuous misfire I felt it had.  It might also contribute to the soggy acceleration, but I'm still blaming over porting.  John scraped the head gasket residue off of the block and we cleaned everything up to prepare it for the “new” head.  You know what?  I do think we pulled the head before the kid arrived to buy the bike now because we took off for lunch pretty much right after they left.  Again, not that it matters.  We met John Ullom at Wasabi for sushi, duh, me in The Seven and John in his car.  I had the “new” cylinder head with me and was planning to drop it at the machine shop after we ate.  I called and found out I had thirty minutes to get it there so I hauled ass.  I got there just as their “Shut it Down!” alarm was going off.  The guy remembered this head and felt bad about how poorly it performed.  I said, “No!  I told you to hog it out to the max flow on the flow bench.  It was all me!”  He took that and we discussed what we wanted to do on this head.  He’s going to take a few thousandths off the deck face, enough to true it up, and tap a couple water temp ports for me.  Oh, and he’s going to clean the thing as well.  John and I will lap the valves into the head and install the seals and stuff when we get it back… in three weeks!  Oh well, what are you going to do?  From there, I went home and parked The Seven in the garage.  I went in and found that my stripper clips had arrived!  I took them up and resisted the urge to load all sixty of them with ammo.  I knew I otter try one of them first.  Yeah, they won't work.  I tried to load a magazine with one but it just slipped off.  There isn’t a guide slot in the magazine for the clip.  “Ok,” thought I, “I’ll just cut a guide slot in the top of the mag.”  This I did.  Now the clip does guide into the mag very nicely.  It even pushes the follower all the way to the bottom and allows half of the bullets to go in with it.  Unfortunately, Juan can NOT then remove the clip from the bullets leaving them behind.  I tried a few more unsuccessful experiments but finally had to concede that they were not going to work.  One of the experiments wound up ruining one of the clips but at least all of my magazines still function.  So, I'm now sitting on fifty-nine 7.62x39 stripper clips which I can't use… unless I buy an SKS rifle.  But I'll save that story for tomorrow.