8/6/12

Well, Lil' Wiggly is back down again.  I bought a battery for it on the way home Friday and installed it as soon as I got to the shop Saturday.  I was in the process of firing up the engine, it barked on the first crank and started on the second try, when John arrived.  We listened to it as it warmed up and then I took it around the block for a test spin.  It IS more drivable than with the Super Hot-Rod Albatross head… but it is still a little soggy on the bottom end.  I never really gave it the beans, nor did I rev it past 5,000 RPM, because I was trying to see if the thing would be civil as a driver.  My thinking was, “Can I drive this thing and not sound like a douche?”  The acceleration was… meh, almost acceptable if you kept your foot out of it so as to not sound like you were thrashing the hell out of the thing… because it doesn’t go that much better if you do.  I got back to the shop and sent John out for a hoon.  He returned with and said that it would move pretty well if all the gears were redlined.  We decided that hushing up the zorst some might allow me to get past my mental block about doing that for fear of looking like a douche who redlines every gear in a noisy-assed car.  We discussed going to the muffler shop and having a turbo muffler installed.  We then got back on the “Why don’t we just put a single side-draft on there?” kick.  He called Aaron to see if he had the single side-draft manifold I used to have on The Seven.  He thought he did but wasn’t at home.  We were to call his girlfriend/fiancé/wife, whatever she is, and see if she could find it.  It was a million o’clock in the morning still so we deferred that call for another hour.  While waiting, we decided to go ahead and pull the dual side-draft manifold and carburetors.  We then had a look at the single side-draft manifold I have.  It is a round-port manifold whereas the head is an oval-port.  The round-ports do not cover all of the oval ports.  We found a round-port gasket which we fingered WOULD cover the ports and decided that Aaron probably didn’t have the manifold we were thinking about anyway… not to mention the fact that we realized it wouldn’t have worked with the header either.  We pookied the gasket and installed the manifold.  Now we were to the point of a decision: what were we going to do for a carburetor?  It was decided to break up the set and run one of the pair.  We went to install the carburetor but couldn’t find bolts/studs to mount it.  By now it was 1115 h or thereabouts, so we decided to break for lunch.  I was to buy bolts and we’d finish the installation next week.  After our usual sushi lunch, I went ahead and bought bolts at Lowe’s.  I went back to the shop and installed the carburetor.  While I was working on the throttle cable linkage, I thought, “Y’know, I really otter see if this thing is going to run.”  I fired it up.  It settled into a nice lumpy idle I attributed to the cam.  It DID sound pretty good… until I tried to give it some throttle.  It just went, “Fuuuuuhhhhhhhhh” and tried to die.  It would NOT rev at all.  Seriously, it would not go over 1,500 rpm no matter how much throttle I gave it.  I was stumped.  I sent John a text telling him I wish we’d just taken it to the muffler shop.  He was stumped at the situation as well until we realized that if one carburetor from a pair jetted to feed 1,400 cc was used by itself, it was only jetted to feed 700 cc.  The car was dead lean.  Duh.  We decided that I'd take a look at the DCOE I bought on e-Bay some time ago to see what it had for jets and go from there.  Sunday I went to the shop, after eating Chicken Tikka Masala at Maharaja, and tucked in to disassembly of the DCOE.  It was going ok until I got to the main venturi on the right barrel.  It was stuck.  I tapped on it.  It didn’t budge.  I banged on it.  It didn’t budge.  I got pissed and wailed on it.  It finally budged.  I kept wailing on it, because it was either fucked or was about to be, and finally got the venturi out.  It had corroded pretty badly to the wall of the carburetor and left behind some ugly gouges and scratches.  “Nope,” said I to myself, “This one’s fucked.”  I set it aside and cleaned up to leave.  I sent John a text asking how much for a new side-draft from his dude in Italy.  He replied back that he would check but thought it was under $300.00.  I told him about the junk DCOE and we moved on.  I had priced new DCOEs at Pierce Manifolds and saw that they were $375.00 for a 40mm.  When he came back with a quote of $285.00 for a remanufactured DCOE with “proper” jetting, I said, “Lettuce gopher it.”  This morning, while watching my screen saver, I saw a picture of The Seven with the single side-draft.  I remembered how much torque we gained when we switched to the SU carburetors and thought, “Hey!”  Now, John and I had discussed it and remembered that The Seven wouldn’t run with the super hot-rod engine and SU carburetors, but then I remembered that was with the Albatross head!  I suggested to John the possibility that the cam MIGHT work with a stock head.  Of course we don’t have a pair of SU carburetors so it is kind of moo.  He replied back that that cam didn’t allow enough vacuum at idle to make the SU carburetors work and that it had to idle at 1,600 RPM.  I countered with the “Giant Ports Make No Gas Velocity” argument.  We conceded that since we don’t have a pair of SU carburetors to try, it IS totally moo and quit discussing it… for now.  So, with all of that going on, Lil' Wiggly is down awaiting a new carburetor.  Oh, I gave a lot of thought to just reinstalling the dual carburetors and getting a new muffler until I remembered that we DID in fact pookie both sides of the gasket.  I don’t want to deal with scraping all of that off to go back to the duals.  Last night I drove The Seven to the Japanese car meet.  Yeah, I'm really worried about that #4 rod hitting the pan.  We need to fix that before The Seven's Festival next month.  Fuck, I really don’t want to crawl under there and change that pan again.  But we gotta do what we gotta do, I guess.  And on that note…