8/20/12

I'm not sure how to start today.  I guess a travelogue, as usual, will be the easiest thing to do.  Saturday morning I got a bit of a late start and met John at the shop around 0845 h.  He had already loaded the carburetors and albatross head into his car so he could try and sell it on them intergooglewebs for me.  The first thing we did was test the throttle linkage I had built for Lil' Wiggly.  I had about 75% WFO with the pedal to the floor.  We adjusted my bracket up some and now have full WFO.  We dropped the hood in place and rolled Lil' Wiggly outside then pushed The Seven into the bay.  John jacked up the nose and we set it on stands.  While he got to work removing the pan, I took a look at the loose muffler bracket.  The clamp keeps sliding off and allowing the thing to be all flollopy.  I decided to put a drill-point screw through the clamp into the muffler.  I rounded up the drill motor, ¼” drive thingy, and a drill-point screw then got to work on it.  John had decided to use an air ratchet this time and was making pretty good progress under the car.  I, however, was not.  The drill-point screw kept walking out of place while trying to drive it.  I decided to drill a pilot hole.  I took the clamp to the drill press and made a hole in it.  I then reinstalled the clamp and tried to drill the drill-point screw in again.  Still no luck.  The stainless steel of the muffler wouldn’t budge.  I drilled a pilot hole in the muffler as well THEN the drill-point screw bit and hunkered down.  I think this is going to work.  When John had many of the bolts out, he asked if I'd help him remove the starter.  I did and he got the pan off.  We had a look and saw where the #4 rod had been scraping the bottom.  We took it to the hydraulic press and bent a nice big dent in it to clear.  It wasn’t until we were looking at the mating surface that we saw that ALL the rods were hitting the side of the pan!  We knocked dents in those four spots as well and began thinking about installing it.  I had reservations.  We pushed out the dent in the original pan after all.  At the hydraulic press, we used an old pulley or drive shaft flange or something to spread the load and the majority of the dent pushed right out.  We bashed on the rest of the dent with a shift rod from a transmission until the pan looked good as used.  John pookied the new gasket on and reinstalled the pan.  I had a look at mounting the tool kit I'd bought for the car last fall.  It fit nicely between the brake master cylinders and the air horn compressor in front of the scuttle.  I just needed to finger out how to secure it.  I found the ratchet strap I had been using in Lil' Wiggly to hold the seat-back bracket in place.  I ran it under a piece of aluminum angle and around a frame support.  I showed it to John and he approved of the location and mount… I think.  Well, at least he didn’t DIS-approve.  Anyhoo, I loaded the drawers back into the box and we gave some thought as to how we could keep the drawers secure.  Of course we could have just installed it with the drawers facing the scuttle, but I mentioned that it fit better with the drawers facing out.  We found a piece of rod which would work and cut it to length.  Now that I'm thinking about it though, we wound up installing it with the rod… AND the drawers facing the scuttle.  Brain fart.  I guess I'll turn it around one of these days.  After John was through reinstalling the pan, we refilled the sump with the same oil we’ve drained from it twice now and fired it up.  Huzzah!  No more drumming sound!  When the air compressor fired up again, I tried to turn it off but the switch is stuck, apparently.  It just kept running.  We watched it for a moment to see if it would shut down but then I went to the breaker box and shut off the whole building.  John unplugged the compressor and I fired up the house power again.  Hmm, I hope the fridge came back on.  We never checked that.  Oh well.  We pushed The Seven out and gave some thought to swapping George into Lil' Wiggly's spot so we could work on it while waiting for the carburetor.  John pointed out we couldn’t because we couldn’t air up George's tires.  We rolled Lil' Wiggly back in and closed up.  John followed me to the gas station then to Wasabi for our usual sushi lunch.  On the way to the gas station we saw a new Toyobaru PMS, or SBD, or… whatever that 7/8 scale copy of the Hyundai Genesis Coupé is called.  Meh, I suppose it was kinda cool… but for about the same money Juan can get the ORIGINAL with a turbo or a V6.  I'm just sayin’.  Oh joy, I just realized people are going to start mistaking Fiona for one if they become popular.  Oh well, what are you going to do?  I’m going to call it a rant for the day and tell y'all the rest tomorrow.