1/16/13

Once again, we’re back to work.  Anyone keeping score might notice that I have yet to do a full five-day workweek.  I'm thinking I might take Martin Luther King Day off next Monday to keep the streak alive.  No, I won't do that.  Anyhoo, Friday I hung out with mom until I heard from John around 1430 h telling me to meet him between 1500 and 1530 at his work.  I should have hung out for a little while before leaving… but didn’t.  I was waiting for him at 1445 h.  Oh well, he was doing ME a favor so I'm not complaining.  He told me where to park Fifi and then loaded Lil' Wiggly's “new” engine in the back.  I thanked him and he sent me on my way.  Saturday morning we met at the shop with the intention of finishing up the front brakes and getting the struts back in the car.  I'm not sure where we’d left off the week before, and I'm too lazy to go look for that information, but we “finished” making the brackets for the calipers.  Oh!  We had been discussing how we were going to make the coil-over thingies attach to the struts and decided that I would commandeer John's coil-over tubes and he’d go buy a set like I have from Smiley’s at a later date… for his car… sort of thing.  We dropped his tubes on with my tubes over them and had a look to see if the height was going to work.  We’re pretty sure they will.  We decided that the bracket thingies needed some lightness added to them so we cut off the four corners.  They looked much better.  While he was helping some dude with 210 parts, I added even more lightness by drilling a 2” hole through each bracket.  They looked much better.  Then we went to install them on a strut.  Yeah, you saw this one coming didn’t you?  The caliper didn’t fit into the bracket.  We forgot to take into account the pistons on the caliper and they fouled the bracket.  We decided it was time to break for lunch.  Oh, speaking of breaking, the chop saw’s blade got broken because we were using it improperly to try and cut aluminum.  It bound up and snapped the saw.  Fortunately it was on the last… wait, no it wasn’t on the last cut, was it?  No, we had to make the last corner cut with a hacksaw.  Ok, we STARTED the last cut with a hacksaw and then I realized we were idiots and broke out the saw-saw.  By the way, that would be a Sawz-All for those interested.  It made pretty quick work of the cut.  We, as I mentioned before, broke for lunch when the brackets didn’t fit.  John was sure I was pissed to the point of causing damage… and it was lunchtime.  I think I was calm by then but we’ll just let it slide.  We ate at Buffalo Wild Wings and called it a day... for the time being.  I went home and found my oldest brother there.  We chatted for a bit then he went home.  It was about 1530 h so I decided to go back to the shop.  I took the aluminum brackets and cut off about an inch of material from the back side… the side fouling the caliper.  They looked much better.  The brackets are now nice and light and look like a shape that was intentional.  I installed the first caliper and rotor then stood back to have a look.  “Psh, what the hell?” I thought, and put the spring, top perch, bearing, and all the other sun-dried bits together on the top.  I then took it out of the vice and over to the car.  Fuck a duck those things are heavy with all that stuff installed!  When I had the first strut in place, I shot a picture to John for the build thread and went to do the other up.  Yeah, it was just as fucking heavy as the first!  As I was installing the second strut, mom called to say she was getting hungry and ask that I come home.  It was 1800 h so I fingered I could do that.  Sunday I was sore as shit from schlepping those struts across the shop and hefting them in place.  I hung out all day with the cat since I knew I was going to “abandon” her for almost two days.  Eventually I went for a really long hoon in Fiona and called it a day.  Well, it is lunchtime so I'm going to save the Odessa trip story for tomorrow.  Toodles.