9/17/12

Juan might have noticed I've been away from the intergooglewebs for a little bit.  There are two factors at work here.  John is in California for that big Japanese car show and my computer thing what lets me get on them intergooglewebdotcoms broke.  I went to Radio Shack the day it quit and bought a new wireless rambler and Mohawk thingy… or whatever the hell they are called, the thing I just mentioned in the last sentence… but with the wireless hoozis which lets my laptop talk to the thing.  Anyhoo, to make a short story long, I couldn’t make it work.  Nothing got broken, though I wanted to sooo badly.  I resigned myself to not being on line until someone came and made it work.  My brother came over yesterday and finally fingered it out after a couple hours of messing with it.  I do NOT have that kind of patience with computers.  I was ready to smash the damned thing after ten minutes.  So there’s that going on.  As for John being in California… oh yeah, I guess I'm just wasting my time right now.  I don’t think he’s going to be back for another couple days.  Hmm.  Well, I never heard from the guy about the three-speed transmission.  You may remember that when I bought the 289 V8 he said he had a three-speed and was planning to be in Fort Worth on Saturday.  We agreed on $50.00 for it but that was the last I heard.  Well, that’s not entirely true.  I did send an e-mail asking about it during the week and he said he’d have a look for it.  THAT was the last I heard of it.  So, I guess we’re shopping for a transmission now.  I don’t think the car NEEDS a five-speed.  I'd be just as happy with a three or four speed in there.  According to John though, four-speeds are like hen’s teeth and therefore expensive.  Three-speeds are cheap and somewhat plentiful since that is what everyone takes out and has no use for.  Five-speeds are plentiful but still a bit on the spendy side since that is what everyone wants… except me.  I really think I could be happy with a three-speed.  If the rear gears are right, I probably won't even need first gear.  I can see this thing being driven as a two-speed most of the time… and I don’t have a problem with that.  Of course we need to get the car back to the shop and get started on it.  I guess John and I will meet up at the shop Saturday morning and drag the trailer to my house to get it.  I imagine we’ll yank the valve cover and see if we can see what went wrong this time.  While we have Fifi at the shop, we’ll discuss whether or not we want to just drop the V8 engine off at a rebuilder or do it ourselves.  I'm leaning towards dropping it off unless the price is prohibitive.  I'm sure it is going to need some machine work so it will have to go to a machine shop at some point.  If they have the facilities to do it all, I say we gopher it.  Of course if the estimate is in the $2,000.00 range I might have to reconsider.  Of course, I'd probably wind up spending just as much if I tried to rebuild it myself.  And I know me, I wouldn’t settle for stock replacement bits.  If it needed a timing set, I'd buy the $99.00 gear drive instead of the $40.00 chain.  If it needed a camshaft, I'd buy… oh I don’t know, a Comp Cams Big Mutha Thumper or something.  If I bought a cam for it, I couldn’t run the cast iron intake and two-barrel carburetor, I'd have to buy an aluminum intake and four barrel.  Then I'd want aluminum heads for it.  And the list goes on.  T’is a slippery slope.  No, Lil' Wiggly needs a plain-Jane, bone stock, two-barrel, cast iron head and intake, motor.  Oh, I will replace the distributor with an HEI unit, but that is more for reliability and getting rid of points.  I'll probably replace the valve covers as well so they don’t say, “Powered by Ford” anymore.  I'd love to finger out a way to make some Nissan or Datsun covers for it.  I'm sure we could have the centers of a couple A-series covers welded to some plain steel Ford ones.  I doubt we’ll go to that much trouble though.  Well, I'm bored with talking to y'all.  I'm going to lunch.