2/4/6/8

Who do we appreciate?  Wait, that’s not right.  First off, to old business.  I made Gregg the “Saiga 12+ Kushnapup for my Hot Rod Saiga 12” offer but he’s as broke as I am.  He said he would cipher and figger on it and let me know.  I'm not holding my breath.  Besides, I took my Saiga 12 out and had a look at it; it really is pretty damned cool as is.  I won't be heartbroken if I don’t ever get to convert one to a Bullpup.  My rail for the 7.62x39 Saiga arrived and it was a total waste of money.  Flexi-assed plastic piece of shit!  I may look into a replacement gas tube with a rail and reconsider the Kushnapup conversion on that gun.  Ok, I found a nice railed gas tube so I think I'm going to think along those lines.  Yeah, the more I think about it, the more I like the idea of a Bullpup 7.62x39 rather than the 12 gauge.  Of course if Gregg goes for the deal I offered him, and I can get into a Kushnapup 12 gauge for “free,” I'll probably go that route.  Anyhoo, here’s what we got did this weekend with Lil' Wiggly.  We did not get the brake pads installed but we did get the master cylinder on.  John was doing something with his car while I removed the 280Z master from Lil' Wiggly and set it aside.  It was determined that the rod from the pedal would work with the Etcetera master… and there was much rejoicing.  Yea.  I popped the studs out of a firewall brake adapter plate thingy and we sized it up to the master cylinder.  One of the bolt holes on the MC kind of lined up with one of the holes in the adapter plate but the “big hole” was too small for the MC.  We were going to have to “hole saw” it bigger.  I pointed out that the old MC was slightly misaligned from the pedal and had John look at it.  It was then decided that we’d drill the big hole off center to make a different bolt hole line up.  Of course there was no way to hold the part while drilling with the hole saw since we were cutting it “freestyle” without the alignment of the drill bit in the center.  I took a few minutes to make a bracket to hold the part and then we clamped it to the drill press.  The hole saw made quick work of the cut but we missed our height just a hair.  With the bolt lined up, the MC is cocked ever so slightly.  I made the Executone decision to roll with it since the only time it would be an issue is when the reservoir is almost totally empty… and hopefully it never will be.  To get the reservoir to clear the firewall, I decided that the adapter plate needed to be installed backwards.  Unfortunately this meant clearancing it to clear some pinch welds on the firewall.  This I did and then we installed the master cylinder permanently.  Unfortunately, when I went to hook up the brake lines, they wouldn’t fit.  The lines are 10mm inverted flare whereas the master cylinder is 12mm… um, what was it called?  Puffy nipple?  Something like that.  Anyhoo, John looked up adapters and found some on line.  I was annoyed but fingered it was what it was.  We did come up with a plan, but in hindsight it wouldn’t have worked.  What we were going to fail at… I mean “try,” was go get a section of 12mm ended pipe, cut it, cut off the ends of the car’s pipes, re-flare them, and use the 12mm fittings.  The reason why that would have failed is the aforementioned “puffy nipple” flare of the 12mm fittings in the master cylinder.  But that was what we planned to try when we broke for lunch.  I was going to the Boys of Pep after sushi to get that line and then go back to the shop.  We had our sushi and discussed various and sun dried things then I did go to the Boys of Pep.  I told the guy what I wanted and while ‘splainin’ what I was trying to do he said, “Wait!  What about this adapter?”  It was the very thing John had found on the intergooglewebs!  Unfortunately, the McCart store only had one of them.  I bought it and a roll of paper towels then headed back to the shop.  It fit perfectly!  I bent up the brake lines from the MC to the proportioning valve and installed them… more or less.  Then I went to the Seminary BoP for another adapter.  Back at the shop I installed it and called the brakes complete… until the parking brake thingy arrives and we have to re-do the rear line.  I shot some pictures to John for the build thread and called it a day.  When I got home I found two packages had arrived.  One was the aforementioned piece of shit plastic waste of money rail for the 7.62x39, and the other was the offset air filter base for Lil' Wiggly.  Sunday, after having lunch with mom, I took her “new” Lincoln to the shop to replace a blown turn signal bulb and install her front license plate.  But before I did those jobs, I installed the air filter on the engine.  It looks really good.  I stole the license screws from the 300ZX out back and “fixed” mom’s car then headed home.  There I watched the three episodes of “Top Gear” I had recorded on the BVD… wait, that’s not it, is it?  BVD?  SBD?  PMS?  That Tebow thing that records shows on the satellite receiver.  You know what I mean.  Anyhoo, after that I shuffled cars and took The Seven to the JNC thing at Freebird’s.  It was the usual suspects: me, the other Tim, and Jeff.  I wore the Russian tank driver’s helmet and was not uncomfortable in the cool night air.  I considered leaving The Seven out and driving it to work today but am glad I didn’t.  It apparently rained last night and the drive in was wet and nasty.  I'll drive it to again work someday.  Well, it is 1110 h and I have to go pee so I'm going to call it a rant.  Toodles.