7/16/12

Well, Fiona's steering wheel still hasn’t arrived so I'm still staring at “useless” controls on the stock wheel as I drive to and from work.  T’is quite irksome.  Anyhoo, here’s what’s been going on with me.  Thursday morning I get a call as I'm driving in to work.  Someone went into the War Room at 0600 h to make sure the system was operational for the 0800 call, something I do every morning at 0730 h anyway, but I won't get into that.  The touch panel which controls everything was dead, dead, dead.  The worry wart had called in telecom and desktop support before anyone remembered it was MY piece of equipment.  Anyhoo, when I got in I messed with it and determined that the panel, which was old when I started here eleven years ago, had gone “Tits Up.”  I got the call going with a desktop conference phone and was told we must get the “good” phone going for Friday’s call.  I called my company’s service department and gave them the 411 on the urgency of the situation.  We determined that we COULD get the “good” phone working with a laptop if a service dude were to come out and set it up.  We scheduled him for later in the afternoon.  I rounded up a laptop and went to babysit a management meeting in the TOB.  To make a short story long, the service dude got us up and running but I have to dial the phone for the 0800 call every morning until we get the panel replaced.  Now, by “every morning” I mean Monday through Saturday.  So, I had to come in to work Saturday morning rather than meet John first thing at the shop.  When I arrived at the shop, John was there… um, doing something.  I don’t remember what.  In fact, I don’t remember what we did at all for the first hour after I arrived.  Oh, apparently cleaning out the flammables and clearing the path to the circuit breakers was sufficient for the fire marshal.  They painted a line of “No Man’s Land” which we cannot allow to be blocked.  Eventually we got to work on Lil' Wiggly.  I installed the intake and header while Marty Smith visited with us and did NOT drop one washer or nut in the process.  I then told John to tighten them since I was so proud of myself.  We set the valves at 0.014” but the springs seemed to be stacking solid.  I made the Executone decision to open them up to 0.015” but felt we otter go more.  I didn’t voice that at the time but now wish I had.  The valves springs still seemed tight but I didn’t argue.  John put on the valve cover and handed me the wrench to put the final hunker on the nuts.  I did while he was doing something else so he didn’t see I had done it.  I hooked up the water bypass hose and temp sender while he hooked up the fuel hose to the carburetors.  We stood back and wondered if we should give it a try.  It was decided we would.  Of course the battery wouldn’t crank the high compression bitch.  We hooked up the charger/starter box thingy and gave it another try.  Nothing.  We decided to let the battery charge a bit and went outside to chat.  Oh, I remember what John was working on when I arrived.  He finished the stripe around the ass-end of the car.  It looks really good.  He kept asking if I really liked it because sometimes, when it comes to aesthetics, we differ in our taste.  He really likes the stripe and therefore thought I might not.  I do.  So, back to the starting of Lil' Wiggly.  We went back in and saw that the battery had been sitting at 12.5 volts for a while.  We tried it again.  Nothing.  We tried the starter function again.  Again, nothing.  Then John noticed no one had changed the charger back from six volts to twelve.  He flipped that switch and hit the 20 amp button.  Voltage began to climb up to 14 volts.  We hit the starter function again and cranked the motor.  Ok, when I said “nothing” up there, the engine cranked but not nearly fast enough to start.  Now it did.  It fired up and we got it to idle… much easier than before I might add.  We got it up to temp and John asked if I wanted to drive it around the building.  I did.  We removed stuff from the roof and I backed out.  Night and day!  The thing is ten billion percent better.  It is drivable, it revs nicely… well ok, it DOES still need some tuning, but it is so much better than before I can hardly believe it.  John had to admit that I was right about the ports in the other head.  “What?” he said, “Is that thing a 10,000 rpm head now?”  I said that it moist rikery was.  We cleaned up and called it a day.  We had sushi at Wasabi, duh, then went our separate ways.  Sunday I was supposed to meet Gregg to help him do the conversion on his father’s Saiga 12 but he rescheduled again.  I was NOT surprised.  Now we’re back at work and I'm babysitting that 0800 call.  Ok, that call is over but I'm waiting for the 0900 call they are having today.  I've got another ten minutes before that one dials in so I think I'll go play solitaire until time.  Toodles.