7/30/12

Well, John and I both are having summer heat doldrums… I think.  We’re fighting a starting issue on Lil' Wiggly.  I'm not sure if it is battery, starter, compression, timing, or what… but it is causing both of us to contemplate selling all of our toys and getting out of the car hobby.  Of course the 115° temperature outside doesn’t help.  No, don’t worry, we’ll get over it and continue with the idiocy of Dimlight Racing.  It is just frustration and heat I'm sure.  Anyhoo, here’s what went down over the weekend.  Saturday morning I rolled Fiona and Fifi out into the street and drove The Seven to the shop.  I beat John there by about half an hour.  I managed to remove the old battery, which isn’t all that old actually, from Lil' Wiggly and was ready to install his Optima battery in its place.  We did this and gave it a try.  No luck.  We hooked up the charger and put a little juice in it before switching on the jumper function.  We got the car to start but couldn’t tell if the alternator was charging.  I drove it down to the lake and then halfway back to the gas station before returning to the shop.  It runs better than it did before but it is still a little soggy on acceleration.  It is drivable now but nowhere near as quick as I feel it otter be.  Back at the shop, John had me park it and we rolled The Seven in to the bay.  We jacked it onto stands and crawled under to change the oil pan.  I had thought we were going to drop it off and do the pan next week, but John wasn’t ready to send me home in Lil' Wiggly.  Ok, did we find a different pan before removing the old one or did we look for one after we had the dented one off?  I don’t remember.  Anyhoo, we did find two pans in the paint booth and cleaned up the one with the straightest rails.  Unfortunately, upon further inspection, it had a dent and a hole in it.  We cleaned up the wavy-rail pan after hammering the bolt-hole areas flat again.  This we installed with a new gasket.  We refilled the sump with the oil we had drained earlier, making a small mess of it in the process, and then fired up the engine.  “That’s a new noise,” I said.  We realized that an A-15 requires an A-15 pan due to (tee hee, I said "doo doo!") the increased stroke.  The number four rod is making contact with the pan.  I was in no mood to pull it off again and decided we’d see if it would clearance itself.  It won't.  It isn’t hitting the pan hard enough to dent the metal.  The pan just springs back to its original shape every time.  It is acting much like a drum skin.  It is quite annoying.  I am irked.  On the plus side, I now have much better oil pressure at RPM than I did with the pan mushed up against the pickup.  Hmm, I wonder if a second stage could be added to an A-series oil pump to make a dry sump system.  No, the oil filter boss is built into the housing.  Then again… if two housings WOULD bolt together… it could work.  Hmm, of course a single pump might not scavenge all of the oil from the pan.  We’d really need three A-series pumps, two to scavenge and one for pressure.  It would be easier to just buy a dry sump pump and make the brackets and belts to run it externally.  Hang on, I'm going to price dry sump pumps.  Ok, it WOULD be easier, but not cheaper.  A dry sump oil pump runs from $700.00 and up.  If a three stage pump can't be made from Datsun pumps, I ain’t doing a dry sump.  I wonder if an L-series pump would bolt to an A-series block.  It seems to me that a multi-stage pump could be made from L-series pumps easier since they do not have the filter mount cast into them.  I might have to take a look at that.  But I digress.  After we decided against taking the pan off again, we tried to start Lil' Wiggly… um, again.  Of course, it would not.  We pushed the car inside and planned for me to buy a new battery before next Saturday.  We cleaned up and went to Wasabi where, despite saying we wouldn’t, we ate too much sushi.  After we were finished, a dude came in and started asking about The Seven.  We went out and talked to him for a while before calling it a day.  I started to go for a hoon but made it as far as FM 2871, Gun Club Road, on I-20 before realizing it was way too fucking hot to hoon.  I went home, parked The Seven, Fifi, and Fiona, then took a shower and a nap.  And that was the end of my productivity for the whole weekend.  I didn’t do shit until this morning when I came in to work.  So there.