11/30/12

In typical fashion, as soon as I got paid, I went on them intergoogles and started buying stuff.  I ordered the two seventy-five round 7.62x39 drum magazines I tried to buy with the last paycheck, and the parking brake calipers and Nissan Etcetera brake rotors for the rear axle in Lil' Wiggly.  So by next weekend I otter be, in addition to broke-ass, in possession of a bunch more cool stuff.  As for this weekend, tomorrow morning I'm picking John up at the Fjord dealer then we’re headed to the shop.  I may make a one-quarter hearted plea for breakfast at Mimi’s since we haven’t done that in a while… and I may not.  We’ll see.  At the shop, I intend to look at the new radiator for just a few minutes then get cracking on swapping the rear axles in Lil' Wiggly.  Oh, I just remembered unless we’re using the box steel on hand, we don’t have the material to make the spring perches.  Psh, the box steel we have should work.  They won't have the superfluous metal John wants on them, but they will be fine.  Yeah, we’re good to go with the rear axle, I'm sure.  Of course we don’t have wheel studs for the axle as yet so we may be getting a little ahead of ourselves putting the axle in.  No, we need to get that going so we can decide that we need to put flares on the car.  Yeah, I'm already resigned to the fact that we’re going to have to flare it.  Oh darn.  Hmm, how would 1200 rear fenders as a wide-body look on a B-210?  I almost brought out one of those fenders last week for a “test fit” when we were looking at the car.  If the outside door to the PB had been open, I would have.  Hmm, perhaps the wide-body Chickenhawk might get a revival with the VG-33 going in it.  No, the Chickenhawk has Omni flares.  If we’re going to do a wide-body 1200 it will need to be George or Super Karate-Monkey Death-Car.  I don’t see George getting that treatment because he’s going to be down on power for such a wild body kit.  Hmm, Super Karate-Monkey Death-Car with the VG-33 and a wide-body then go back to the plan of putting the KA-24 in the Chickenhawk?  I believe we have a set of fiberglass front fenders we could use as the huge “box flares” on the front of Super Karate-Monkey Death-Car, were we to go that route.  Then again, we might still have the steel fenders we were originally going to use for the wide-body.  Crap!  That is all I need, a reason to keep Super Karate-Monkey Death-Car in the fleet.  Well, I guess I otter go add it back to the DLR Inventory elsewhere in this laptop.  Oh wait, it is already in there under “Possible, but Unlikely, Future Projects.”  I'll leave it there for now.  Wow, somehow the word “now” in that last sentence got typed “meow.”  Kooky.  Anyhoo, back to Lil' Wiggly.  Now that I've had a think about the studs and spring perches, we might be doing radiator work after all.  No, we’ll do a simple “proof of concept” test fit of the radiator and then move on to the rear axle.  I wonder if we’re going to turn the car around ass-first so we’re not working on the axle in the door.  I think that was John's plan.  We’ll see.  Well, I just got off the phone with John and it looks like the wide-body Super Karate-Monkey Death-Car IS on the horizon after all.  He’s totally on-board… or perhaps over-board would be a better description of how we feel about this project.  What we need to do is finish Lil' Wiggly.  Then decide on who is next: George, the Chickenhawk, Super Karate-Monkey Death-Car, or the Spit.  By the way, that order is how I feel they probably SHOULD be done.  The Spit WILL cut in line somewhere though, of that I am sure.  Also, that is just how MY cars should line up with respect to each other, John's cars otter be put in the continuum somewhere as well.  As for the actual order of my cars, I see it going down this way: Lil' Wiggly, the Spit… aaaaand then it’s anyone’s guess.  Oh!  I just remembered something else we were looking at the other day!  We’re now thinking, but I'm not sure how seriously, that the 620 truck frame should be the donor for John's ’27 Track T kit thingy.  Of course that got me thinking about the other 620 truck frame out back and what I could do with it.  I'm thinking dune buggy, rock crawler, mud bogger sort of thing… perhaps with a crusty-ass 289 Windsor?  Ooh!  Basically, lose the body and bed, make a rudimentary floor or cockpit bucket sort of thing, and have a totally open-wheeled minimalist hillbilly hot-rod sort of death-trap!  Then again, we could plop Herman’s unibody onto that frame like I was thinking about doing with the Nissan Patrol frame I had way back when.  Hmm, a jacked-up four-wheel-drive looking truck framed 1200 with a 289 Windsor V8?  I need to get the measurements of wheel base and compare a 620 truck to a 1200 right quick.  Well, that might put the kibosh on this frame under Herman.  The minimum wheelbase for a 620 is 100.2” whereas a 1200 has a 90” wheelbase.  I'm not sure I could shorten the truck frame by 10”… although, I COULD lengthen the 1200!  Would it look goofy?  Yes, but the whole idea is goofy, so… hmm.  Crap on a cracker!  Now I have ANOTHER project on my plate?  Damn it!  Ok, I've been to lunch and back but I think it would be prudent if I stopped talking about this, and any other, wacky project for the time being.  Oh, there’s been a change of plans… sort of.  I have to come in to the railroad to make sure the 0800 h phone call works in the morning.  I'll come in at 0730 h and check the system, if it works for me then, I'll haul ass to the Fjord dealer to pick up John.  We’ll see what happens after that.