10/30/2012

I remembered something else I did on Saturday.  In between having the oil changed in Fiona and Fifi, I went to the YMCA in Beenbroke to vote.  Yeah, early voting isn’t at the YMCA this time.  It is at the Lion’s Club over by Beenbroke Elementary School.  I went there and voted.  Now, I'm not 100% sure I'm a Romney supporter, but I know for damned sure I want Osama Bin President OUT of office.  (I'd like to see him and his cronies put in jail, but I’ll settle for out of office.)  I made sure that I let them know that by making a great big black “X” in front of the “Straight Party Democrat” line.  That otter teach them!  So… there’s that going on.  I'd also like to send a big shout out to Sandy for fucking up all that “Blue State” early voting.  You go girl!  I wonder if Mike Meyers will go on TV with Kanye West and say, “Barak Obama doesn’t care about white people!”  I'm not going to hold my breath for that one though.  So, John just called to tell me what rear axle we need for Lil' Wiggly's V8 project.  Those of you who are paying attention might remember that one of the things which got the ball rolling on this endeavor was the fact that John already HAS a Ford 8.8” rear axle in his garage.  Well, apparently what we actually want is a Ford 8” axle from a ’65, ’66, or ’67 Mustang.  That will have the right wheel bolt pattern and will only be 2” wider than the B-210 axle.  It will also already be set up for leaf springs and won't have the extra ears on top of the punkin which the 8.8” housing has.  I've been to Craigslist and found, I hope, the one we’re going to buy.  Some dude in a Not Texas area code has two axles for a Falcon, a nicer one for $100.00 and $75.00 for the less-nice one.  I sent him a text asking if he still has either of them.  I'm awaiting his reply.  I forwarded the listing to John and haven’t heard back that it is wrong… oh wait.  I won't hear back until I check my dimlight65 e-mail address.  I just checked and he says it sounds perfect.  Of course that means the dude has already sold them.  Dang him!  Oh, I guess I shouldn’t dang him to heck until it is fo shizzle that he sold them.  Anyhoo, there’s that going on.  On another front, Larry's sister just bought a new Hyundai Elantra and now has a superfluous ’92 Toyota pickup on her hands.  She’s of the opinion it isn’t worth anything.  I told Larry, “Get me a price, I will buy it!”  The two things “wrong” with it are 1) it is a slush box and 2) it is the POS 3.0 V6 from that era.  I'm on the phone right now with Kevin to find out what the thing otter be worth.  Ok, I think I'm going to offer them a grand for it and might be willing to go as high as one and a half.  Oh, I really otter get mom on board first.  Hmm.  No, I'll finger out a way to make it happen with or without her.  I'm of two minds about the thing.  On the one hand, it would be nice to have a backup car that she can drive.  On the other hand… I FRIGGIN’ HATE AUTOMATICS‼‼‼  Of course the first thing we’d do is leave it the fuck alone for a while.  Dang, now I'm getting excited about this truck.  Well, we’ll see what happens.  Ok, I promised y'all the 510 cross member story today.  So after we removed the engine from Lil' Wiggly, we had a look round to see what else could get us in trouble.  We settled in on the cross member.  We took measurements and determined that a 510 cross member really will “bolt right in” to a B-210.  We discussed various schemes for flipping it to be a front-sump friendly orientation.  See, the way the control arm bolts to the cross member is with a single-shear stud/bolt thingy.  Juan cannot just flip the cross member around or said stud/bolt thingy will be pointing the wrong way.  Juan cannot just turn the stud/bolt thingy around either because the bung in the cross member is tapered.  So, Juan has to choose between cutting the center out of the cross member and making it go the other way somehow, or boring out the tapered bung to accept a really large bolt through it and the control arm.  We decided to go a different route.  John asked if I had a hole-saw just a tad larger than the bung.  I did.  We drilled out the welds.  He then flipped the cross member over and asked if I had a smaller hole-saw just a tad larger than that end of the bung.  I did.  We drilled out that weld as well.  We cleaned up the bungs and the holes so that the big end of the bung fit in the small(er) hole on the cross member.  We then found some plates to fill the gap between the small end of the bung and the big hole in the cross member.  Once we were happy with stuff, I tacked and then zooked the bungs in “backwards.”  That is, backwards from the way they came from Japan, correct for our usage.  When it began to become obvious I was morphing from a “Tim CAN weld” day to a “Tim CANNOT weld” day, we called it… um, a day.  I'll go back and finish zooking them in next weekend… unless we’re going to Not Texas to buy an axle, of course.  Anyhoo, after cleaning up and closing the shop, we went downtown to… uh, that Chinese restaurant with the Salt & Pepper Calamari.  I can't remember the name of it.  It isn’t Pei Wei is it?  No!  P. F. Chang’s!  Anyhoo, from there we went our separate ways and called it a weekend.  So, there you have it.  Have a day.