9/10/12

Well, pretty much everything I've had to say regarding Lil' Wiggly and George is pretty much out the window.  Here’s what’s going on.  Saturday John and I met at my house and he drove me to the shop.  We stopped at that inconvenience store on Chapin Road to see what we thought about it again and decided it only makes sense as the future home of Dimlight Racing if I stay in the house on Burkett.  I really don’t need a house that big so it just doesn’t make any sense.  After that we went looking for the house with the pair of 510s out front.  They were gone.  We then went to the shop.  There we removed the dirty, crooked, and off-center Hello Kitty from Lil' Wiggly's hood and bolted said hood back in place.  I installed a set of “Tea Strainers” on the air horns to simulate air filters, to keep out people and motors and shit mainly.  I'm not sure what else we worked on but the engine situation of various cars was discussed.  We finally settled on the following plan.  I'd drive Lil' Wiggly until the plates expire next spring.  We would roll George in and remove the ridiculously over-bored A-12 turbo.  We would get cracking on… I think we decided on the Spit’ but it might have been the Chickenhawk.  When Lil' Wiggly's tags expired, we would move that engine onto George and install either a small block Ford V8 or the VG-33 V6, along with the Ford 8.8” axle John was to acquire Sunday.  The advantage of the V6 is with a 510 cross member, it would be a bolt in affair.  The advantage of the V8 is… it’s a V8!  Ok, no the advantage of the V8 is “simplicity.”  With the V6 we’d need the brains and wiring and stuff to do fuel injection, or go with the ridiculously expensive carburetor route.  With a V8, a carburetor and distributor are just a phone call away… if the donor engine didn’t already have them.  So, with a “plan” in mind, we went to lunch.  We discussed it some more and I made it clear, I think, that the worries John has about the V8 swap paled in comparison to the worries I have about the V6 swap.  After lunch I went for a hoon in Lil' Wiggly.  The car ran great!  I took off out I-20 to Otis T. Bumsniffer, or what the hell ever that road is called, and did my usual route down FM5 and out around Lake Weatherford.  I really had to pee when I got to White Settlement Road and 1187 so I turned back to I-20 and headed home.  I was quite pleased with Lil' Wiggly… until I got one house away from home.  It sounded like I ran over something and began to pop, bang, and lose power.  I thought I'd broken the zorst… except for the lack of power.  I fought the thing around to the back patio and looked under the hood.  It would just barely idle and was obviously popping back through the carburetors.  Something was broke.  I was…well, I was surprisingly calm, actually.  I went inside, apologized to mom for making all the noise getting the car parked, and texted John.  About half an hour later I realized it was a good thing I was home and not sitting on the side of the road out by Lake Weatherford.  Of course as soon as the phone rang I realized I probably would have CALLED John rather than texting him if I'd been stranded.  We discussed the situation and I said something to the effect that this cam is dead to me!  I think I said it was going to get cut in half when it comes out of the engine.  I'm sick of the damned thing.  It has NEVER worked right for me and has been nothing but a pain in my ass.  We decided to step up the program.  I began shopping Craigslist for Nissan 300ZXs with blown engines or Ford 289 engines.  Of course I found a 289 in Sherman, Texas with a price of “Make me an offer.”  I texted and asked for a picture then asked John his opinion of a price.  When we both perused the picture we decided to offer $200.00 for it.  I hesitated as I wrote the text and considered saying $150.00 while being willing to go up.  I didn’t do it though.  I sent the text and the guy said he would gopher that.  Damn!  I arranged to pick up Larry on Sunday morning so we could go to Sherman and then began “shopping” for hot rod 289 parts.  Sunday morning I took off in Fifi and picked up Larry.  We drove to Sherman and I bought a somewhat crusty 289 V8.  I asked the guy if he might happen to have a three-speed transmission to go with it.  It turns out he does!  It wasn’t at his house though.  He’s supposed to send me a picture of it today and he’s coming to Fort Worth next weekend.  I'll probably buy it from him since it is supposed to be the very tranny which came off of my engine.  Larry and I drove back and, after eating lunch at Benito’s, dropped the engine at the shop.  I took him home and drove through Boyd “on my way” home from his house.  I took a nap and woke up just at the time I needed to leave for the second JNC car show at Freebird’s this month.  I decided to skip it.  I've been doing some more shopping and stuff and I think I'm just going to go against my usual MO and run the thing with the a two barrel carburetor on the cast iron manifold.  I can't afford to replace the cast iron heads with aluminum so I'm thinking I'll just freshen the thing up and run it stock.  Sure, I plan to replace the points distributor with an HEI unit, and I'll block and plug as much emissions gear as I can, but for all intensive porpoises, it’ll be a stock 289 Windsor V8 making somewhere in the neighborhood of 210 to 215 horsepower.  Well, I guess I've gassed on long enough for today.  I'll talk to y'all again tomorrow.