10/29/2012

 While it IS better than a weekend without a shop day, shop day on Sunday SUCKS!  Here’s how the weekend went down.  Friday after work I stopped off at the credit onion to grab some cash.  I think mom and I went to dinner somewhere, but I'm not 100% sure on that front.  Saturday morning mom and I went to Home Depot to look for yet another water cooler.  See, the one we had originally for so many years began to leak so we replaced it.  The replacement leaked.  We replaced that one with a bottom mount unit (one where the bottle is in the base of the cooler and has a pump to fill the reservoirs).  It seemed to be fine except the water never got very cool on the cold side.  When it began to leak, we decided to look for yet another unit, thus the trip to Home Depot.  We found one she liked and bought it.  I also bought a shit-ton of cyanoacrylate glue and some epoxy for projects at the shop.  We took the cooler to the house and then went to lunch at a deli mom has discovered on Camp Bowie called McAllister’s.  I thought that name didn’t sound Jewish enough though.  I'm going to call it McAllistein’s instead.  Anyhoo, it was pretty good eatin’.  Back at the house, we hooked up the new cooler and filled the bottle.  It seemed to work ok and the water was actually cool enough to drink.  Mom was happy.  I spent the afternoon getting the oil changed in Fiona and Fifi then used one of the cyanoacrylate tubes to refit the shift knob on Fifi and the left front center cap on Fiona.  I did not go to the shop.  Around 2100 h, while watching TV, I began to hear water dripping.  I ran upstairs to find the damned water cooler overflowing!  We cleaned it up and I decided that the bottle we were using had too short a neck and was letting the level sit too high.  Mom pointed out that she thought it might have a leak in the bottom as well.  “That,” I said, “would explain why the last cooler kept leaking.”  We decided to see if we could find a new bottle.  As we were driving to Kroger I realized something: a leak in the bottle would allow in air causing the cooler to overflow.  It wasn’t that the neck was too short; we have had a damned leaky bottle for the last few years!  That first cooler was fine!  I was pissed!  I am still pissed!  That first cooler was fucking awesome!  It made nice cold drinking water!  Aaaaarrrrrgggg!  Anyhoo, we went to Kroger and found out that they don’t carry five-gallon water-cooler bottles anymore.  We went to Wal-Mart.  They also don’t have five-gallon bottles.  Finally we checked a couple drug stores on a lark and found that they also, also don’t have five-gallon water bottles.  I said, “I have all that super glue.  I could try to seal the old bottle.”  Mom liked that idea.  Back at the house, we reinstalled the cooler to its spot at the top of the stairs and I flipped the bottle to have a look at its base.  Sure as shit, there is a crack which was visibly seeping water.  SON OF A BITCH‼‼‼  I opened another bottle of cyanoacrylate and covered the crack.  We let that sit overnight to cure.  Sunday morning I took the bottle to the sink and put in about a gallon of water.  It seemed to hold.  I flipped it onto the cooler and we made note of the level.  There was enough that if it did leak air, it would overflow but hopefully not so bad as to flood the house.  I took off to go to the shop.  As I was walking in the door, after sitting in Fiona for a little while enjoying the heater, John texted me to say he was on his way.  I had a look at Fiona's stock steering wheel.  I decided to forego trying to fill the switch holes with the epoxy and went straight for covering the fascia or escutcheon or trim ring or whatever that part is called with Hello Kitty duct tape as an experiment.  I was about to finish up when John arrived.  “It’s a bit odd,” he said, “but I don’t hate it.”  I test fit it to the wheel and decided that the general effect would work... just not with Hello Kitty.  It wasn’t the pink.  It wasn’t the Hello Kitty, obviously, duh.  It was the fact that it was just too busy.  I think we’ll get some vinyl and cover the thing.  I'm now debating doing it in red to keep up the theme of the interior.  We’ll see.  John set up his phone to document the engine removal from Lil' Wiggly and we got to work.  Here’s a link to theHugh Tube video.  We fingered it would take a lot longer than it did so the vid is a bit short.  Oh well, we’ll know better next time.  Anyhoo, since I'm not sure of the exact order in which we did everything, suffices to say that the engine is out of Lil' Wiggly and on a stand.  And since I've filled at least a page, I'll save the story of the 510 cross member for tomorrow.