7/23/12

I'm not sure how much time I have to rant today… ok, so I have just under an hour.  I guess I should have said, “I’m not sure how much rant I can do today since I only have an hour.”  Anyhoo, Friday evening they were supposed to move one of the train cars out so I hung out to watch that.  Unfortunately a storm cell blew in around 1715 h and they called it a day.  So did I.  Saturday morning, when I came in to dial the 0800 h phone call in the War Room, I had another look out the Board Room window.  They were making progress but it was so glacial that I said, “Feh!” and went to place the call.  After the call, I checked again and they had moved one car about two-thirds of its own length.  I knew John was waiting for me to come pick him up so I bailed.  I picked up John and we headed to the shop.  We… what did we do?  Oh, we yanked the valve cover and were met with way more surface rust than I thought we should see.  We readjusted the valves to 0.018” and retorqued the head studs.  We reinstalled the valve cover and had a look around.  I looked in the radiator and saw a film of oil on top.  “I guess we dumped a little oil in the coolant when we removed the head,” I said.  While I was looking at that, John pulled the dipstick.  This was bad.  It looked like chocolate milk.  Ok, since the oil was brand new, maybe 200 miles on it, it looked like… you know that whipped honey that used to come in those little tubs back in the ‘70s?  It looked like a fluid version of that.  We did a little cipherin’ and figgerin’ and decided that there wasn’t enough water to worry about the head gasket.  We fingered it was the water that came from the head draining down the return to the sump that we emulsified into the oil last week when we ran the thing for what little time we did.  We then had a whip ‘round the shop to look for an oil filter.  We tried an L-series filter on an old A-series oil pump and decided it would prossibly work.  “Prossibly” is just a little less certain that “probably” but not as uncertain as “possibly.”  I suited up and crawled under to remove the brand new, $5.00 Mobil One filter I had just installed a few weeks ago.  It was full of more whipped honey when I went to drain it.  The L-series filter wouldn’t fit so the hunt was back on for an A-series filter.  John found one and I found a gallon of Pennzoil.  John then remembered that he had bought all of that to change the oil in HIS B-210 but never did.  He filled the filter and I installed it.  I then jacked the nose of the car up and drained the whipped honey from the sump.  We refilled the sump with the fresh Pennzoil and dumped the whipped honey, AKA $25.00 worth of nearly fresh Mobil One Synthetic emulsified with a cup or so of water, into an old antifreeze jug.  We turned on the master kill and I gave the key a try.  No luck.  We hooked up the jumper box and tried again.  Slightly better luck but it still wouldn’t start.  We let it charge for a bit then tried again… and had to resort to the jumper… again.  We finally got it going and it sounded so nice!  We let it warm up and John asked Marty Smith, who happened to stop by, to help move the hood off of the roof… or for those of you across the pond, move the bonnet off of the hood.  I backed out and drove around the building.  It was so much better… well, not that much better than last week but so much better than with the $1,000.00 Albatross Head.  I hopped out and sent John around to get his opinion.  He seemed impressed with it as well.  We decided against driving it home until we replace the battery so we cleaned and closed up then headed to Wild Sushi for some Pizza.  No, of course we had sushi at a place called “Wild Sushi.”  I took John home and headed home myself.  I had called Gregg to see if he was still on for “converting” his father’s Saiga 12 and he was.  He left Grapevine about the time John and I were finishing up our sushi.  I had time to go home, round up the parts for his and my guns, pack up the SKS, and head to the shop.  I was just getting the doors open when he pulled up.  We rolled Lil' Wiggly back and set up a table.  I showed him how to strip the Saiga and replaced the piston puck and gas regulator.  I then got him started with the replacement of the butt stock and fore end.  I went to the vice and got cracking on the replacement of the hammer, trigger, and sear on my SKS.  I got it apart, with much cursing and beating of 2punches on pins, and was actually going back together with it when I hosed up one of the pins.  Yeah, when they say, “Tap the end to swell it slightly,” they do NOT in fact mean “Beat it until it mushrooms.”  Doing it the Fist of Ham way results in a trigger/disconnector which does not pivot as it should.  I was in the process of removing said hosed pin when Gregg said he was ready to move on with the fire control group on his project.  I put my stuff aside and went to his.  I removed the Russian FCG and was amazed to find that the bolt hold-open spring was missing.  “Oh yeah,” said Gregg, “that never did work.”  I am not surprised.  Fortunately I had a BHO spring in my spare parts kit.  We chopped the trigger off of the Arsenal sear and went to install everything.  I had forgotten just what a pain in the ass the BHO spring is… which is probably why it was missing from this gun.  Anyhoo, I got it all in and tried to install the Arsenal FCG Pin Retaining Plate.  It did not fit.  We trimmed it… well, Gregg trimmed it while I sat there and kept the rear pin from falling out thereby releasing the PITA BHO spring.  We finally gave up on the retaining plate and used the factory spring to retain the pins.  Of course when I tried to install the bolt it was discovered that an Arsenal sear will not work on a Saiga shotgun.  So, rather than cut on that to make it work, Gregg said, “Fuck it, use the TAPCO sear.”  Oh, fortunately I had a “spare” TAPCO sear in my spares kit as well.  We did and got everything back together… finally.  Oh man, the trigger is so friggin’ nice with a TAPCO sear!  I showed him how to reassemble the thing and we installed an optic mount.  The gun is quite nice now.  I went back and finished removing my hosed pin from the SKS parts and reassembled my fire control group.  Once again, the difference between a US made FCG and a COMBLOC FCG is night and day!  I liked my SKS before… I lurve it now!  We packed up and went our separate ways.  Well, I have to get across the street in ten minutes so I guess I otter call it a rant.