4/22/13

We got some work done on our cars this weekend… but not very much.  Oh, I say that, John got more done on his 1200 than I did on Lil' Wiggly but I am getting pretty close to being done with the wiring.  Let’s see, I arrived at around 0815 h to find John slogging away on his car.  I got tucked into the harness of Lil' Wiggly and we both merrily worked away.  We discussed the Mini situation, with regards to making one rear-wheel drive via a Datsun floor pan and then had a look at the Honda engine I have in the paint booth.  We also talked a little about buying a Datsun F-10 and using its drivetrain.  I think I poo-pooed that out of hand though for a few reasons.  One, I don’t trust the F-10 transaxle to be strong enough and we have the Honda engine and transaxle.  I decided that the Honda engine would be the way to go and basically forgot all about doing an RWD conversion.  Of course I've got to get a Mini before any of this is really relevant, but we won't let details foul the narrative.  At some point Pat showed up and hung out for a bit then left again.  We talked about yanking the engine out of George but I decided against it for some reason.  I think John convinced me that if I don’t hear from the dude in Florida, it will be easier to move the engine and transmission in the car than as separate items.  Well, that turns out to have been a mistake.  Today I got a call from the dude who bought Super Karate-Monkey Death-Car and his buddy is interested in George… at my $700.00 asking price.  Unfortunately, his transporter is in Texas now so I might be pulling an engine during the evenings this week.  We’ll see.  After lunch, I came up to the railroad to take some measurements off of the TV we’re going to use as a confidence monitor in the Marketing Town Hell Wednesday so I could go back to the shop and build some angled stand thingies.  I took the measurements and went back to the shop.  I built one stand, didn’t like it, and went home thinking I'd come back Sunday and do something else.  This I did not do.  No, Sunday I hung out and waited for mom to get home from church then we went to Red Hot & Blue for ribs.  I've said it before and I'll say it again, “I may to have to revoke my Texas citizenship, but I prefer pork ribs to beef ribs.”  Anyhoo, after lunch, I took a quick nap then went for a hoon in The Seven.  I wanted to call B. R. Eastman to say, “We have got to get YOUR Spitfire going so you can come hooning with me!”  This I did not do.  Instead, I drove around for about an hour then went home again.  This time I wore ear-penises to protect my hearing.  It made me drive much faster than usual.  In fact, I'd say that it ramped me up to Fiona levels of assholitude.  I never realized just how loud The Seven is until I took out the penises upon turning onto my street to go home.  Suffices to say, I won't be driving without them from now on!  Nice double-negative, no?  Even doing little more than idling down the street in third gear, the din was almost unbearable.  I probably otter “invest in” some of those disposable foam ear plugs to keep in there just in case I ever have a passenger.  And by “invest in,” I do mean “steal.”  There are a few dispensers around campus I can raid from time to time… I believe.  Oh, there’s one more thing which happened Saturday!  When I got back from making the stand thingy I logged onto the computer and went intergoogleweb shopping.  I started off with Rumorpædia where I looked up the Honda D15 engine.  Turns out, the Civic VX from which my engine came, was the high-mileage version.  The D15 SOHC has VTEC-E which… well, I don’t really care actually, but it is supposedly a 92 horsepower engine stock.  I finger that otter move a Mini pretty well.  I then went to Mini Mania because they have kits to install Honduh engines in lower-case Minis.  I found the kit to install D-series engines and sent the link to John.  He pointed out that the kit cost more than the car in Little Elm but I don’t care, it will save us from re-inventing the wheel when doing the install.  I want it.  What I didn’t send him was the deluxe kit which included brakes and rear suspension… that was over seven grand!  Of course that kit is complete and would really save us time and hassle… and I have two and a half years to save up for it.  I don’t know, we’ll see.  Well, I guess I've gone on long enough, and I have to go pee, so I guess I'll call it a rant.  Have a day.