4/8/13

Well, we didn’t make it to the shop Saturday after all.  Instead, we went to Greenville, Texas to a swap meet to look for another cab for the Rat Rod.  We found one!  Too bad it had sold right before we walked up.  Well, I say, “Too bad,” it was close but not exactly what I had in mind.  Oh, I guess some up-to-speed-getting is in order.  Friday John called me with his usual, “Are you free?” then proceeded to start describing a suck-up truck exactly the way I had envisioned it.  We’re both thinking that the deck needs to be as low as possible, so low in fact that the drive wheels actually form part of the deck.  “Do whut?” I hear someone asking.  The rear tires of the truck will poke up through holes and Juan will drive whatever vehicle is being carried across the tops of the tires.  Relax, it makes sense to us.  Anyhoo, so now we’re thinking suck-up truck instead of… well, anything else, sort of thing.  We both grokked a few cabs on them intergooglewebs and decided to check out one in Outer Buttswana since it was “close” to the Greenville Swap Meet.  Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, that guy never replied to John's e-mail… but we went to Greenville anyway.  Hmm.  I'll go ahead and say that we stopped in Deep Ellum, Not Texas, on the way home to look at a 1948 Dodge cab but it was WAY too big for my needs.  But as for the swap meet, meh, it was ok.  It wasn’t really worth the drive, but I'll never tell John… oops.  Anyhoo, we did see something that I gave some serious thought to buying.  It was a $1,200.00 280Z in somewhat decent nick, except for the paint job.  I've been telling folks it looked like it had been painted with a roller, but that would have done a BETTER job.  No, this looked like they poured cans of paint over the car and let it run down the sides.  Of course that was not the deal breaker for me, I was fine with that, it was the lack of a title that I didn’t like.  I seriously considered offering the dude the $900.00 I had on me but came to my senses before pulling the trigger.  Oops, gotta run for a bit.  Be back later.  So, where was I?  Right, I didn’t buy, or offer to buy, the 280Z at the swap meet.  On the way home, John and I stopped to look at the Dodge, as I already mentioned, then I took him home.  Since I had a bunch of money burning a hole in my pocket, I stopped at Bloodbath & Beyond for some ammo.  They had two ammo can thingies, each with eighty rounds of 12 gauge 00 Buckshot, I bought them.  I also bought 100 rounds of .22 ammo and twenty-five rounds of .410 #8 birdshot.  Then I went home too.  I think John and I texted back and forth about the Rat Rod and other stuff and I came to the decision that we otter put the Rat Rod on hold for a bit.  We’ll keep our eyes open for stuff, but stop looking.  I said something to the effect of, “In a year or so, we might start looking for a Kei car, exotic, or something.”  I'll circle back to that in a bit.  Sometime before Sunday morning, which I guess would narrow things down to Saturday night, I decided to rewire Lil' Wiggly with the Hot Rod Wires 12 circuit kit I'd bought for Nadine.  Sunday morning I went to the shop.  I ripped out the stock wiring harness and had a look at the HRW kit.  My “whelm” level rose just a bit.  I decided to do the battery box instead.  I mounted the master kill switch to the passenger seat stanchion and wired the cable to the seatbelt anchor.  Then I drilled the holes for the battery tie-downs through the floor of the car.  I zooked the rods to the top-clamp thingy and installed the battery.  As I was hunkering down on the bolts, I realized how dumb my design was… and then left it in the car.  If I ever have to change that battery… well, I'll be pissed at myself fo-shizzle!  With the battery in place, I moved on to the fuse box.  I found a couple bolts and zooked them to a piece of steel to make a one-man bolt-in affair.  I drilled holes and stuck this thing in from the engine bay, then mounted the fuse box to it.  After that it was time to poop or get out of the Ganges on the wiring.  I separated out the engine bay and front clip wiring harni and routed them into the engine bay.  I wrapped them in “snake skin” and taped it off, nice and purty.  I dug out the stock harness and began undoing all of the tape I'd just put on it a few weeks ago.  Once I had the turn signal harness separate from the rest, I ran out of time and had to go home to get ready for the JNC car show in Southlake.  So, now that I have filled my arbitrary “One Page of Rant,” I guess I'll call it a day and tell y'all about that tomorrow.  And perhaps actually circle back as promised earlier.