1/2/13

Well, we’re back to work… and I'm hating life right about now.  I so do not want to be here.  And, to top it all off, my access to the railroad’s computers has been locked out.  I can’t even do anything, work wise, until that gets resolved.  Feh, hating life.  Anyhoo, we got quite a bit of work done on Lil' Wiggly while I was off.  The week before Christmas was spent, by myself, at the shop getting the rear brakes done.  Monday, after dropping off the keys and phone to the guy covering for me, I went to Smiley’s Racing in Kennedale for some brake brackets.  I chose the bolt-on kind for “large” GM calipers.  At the shop I compared them to the Nissan Etcetera caliper.  It looked like all I needed to do was trim the ears and drill some holes to fit them up.  This I did… sort of.  I cut the ears off of one bracket and drilled the holes.  I bolted that bracket to a caliper and started looking at how to fit it to the axle.  I was in “clean” clothes so I didn’t want to get too involved.  I called it a day.  Tuesday I went back and had a serious look at the bracket.  Where it wanted to be on the axle was on the cast-iron end piece which tapered down to the axle tube.  It fit nicely on one side of the bracket but had a huge gap at the other.  I ciphered and figgered on that for the day… and came up with nothing.  I finally shrugged and built the other bracket for the other caliper for the other end of the axle.  I decided before I left to go ahead and bolt up one end and put a wheel on for a picture.  This I did.  I sent the picture to John to post on the build thread that he has goingon ratsun.com when I got home.  Wednesday I went back to really finger out how I was going to fill the gap.  I wound up cutting three, ¼” pieces of 3” muffler pipe, cutting each of them in half, and making a “stack” of metal the right height to fill the gap.  I put that in the “loose” end of the bracket and bolted it back to the axle.  Wait, now that I think about it, I may have done that before the picture.  Anyhoo, Wednesday I zooked it all together.  I made the filler for the other end of the axle and zooked that on as well.  While I was messing with the hydraulic caliper, I was also messing with the mechanical, parking brake, caliper.  I never go it to work for me so I decided we’d finger out a parking/emergency brake later.  I'm still not sure how I want to solve that issue.  I fitted the wheels to the axle once both ends were braked… broken?  Whatever.  Thursday I had to go in to work to babysit a Marketing Town Hell.  John was off as well so we met up to go eat and see the new James Bond movie.  I'm still having trouble with Jenny Craig as James Bond.  The movie was pretty good but I'm not enamored with the new, more “realistic” direction the franchise is taking.  James Bond is supposed to be over the top with unrealistic gadgets and gee-gaws.  No, I'm not happy with it.  We called it a day as we were to meet Friday morning at the shop.  Oh, I just remembered something else about Wednesday.  My sister signed us up for DirecTV on Tuesday and the guys were to come install it Wednesday morning.  They did… unfortunately it caused me to miss coming to the railroad for Chicken Tikka Masala.  I was not pleased about that.  After they left was when I went to the shop to finish up the axle.  So, Friday morning I met John at the shop and we installed the axle to the car.  It was much wider than I expected.  There was a whole row of tire tread outside the fender!  We got to work installing flares.  I cut out the offending metal and John installed the rivnuts then bolted up the flares.  Oh snap!  The car looks so friggin’ bad ass!  John took some more pictures for the ratsun thread and we eventually called it a day.  Saturday I think I went to the shop but I don’t remember doing much if I did.  No, Saturday I think I met Kevin at the gun range in Whiskey Flatts.  Yes, that seems right.  His wife and daughter were there and we all shot stuff for a while.  Sunday my oldest brother’s family came over.  That caused me to miss the gun show.  I was hating life that day as well.  Monday I didn’t do anything but hang out and do stuff with mom.  Tuesday was Christmas so mom and I drove to my sister’s in Granbury.  We had a nice lunch and tried to get home before the snow fell.  We just about made it.  It was snowing on us as we drove down our street and into the driveway.  Wednesday I went to the courthouse and bought license tags for Fifi and The Seven.  I hung out with Kevin until one of his mechanics said he was looking for a kitten.  I called a neighbor whom I knew had a kitten to give away and then went to get it for the guy.  He sure was a cute little feller… and the kitten was nice too!  Bah, dum, bum!  Anyhoo, after giving the kitty a new home, I called it a day.  And since I'm just past a page break, I'll call this rant a day as well.