9/25/13

Anyhoo, I'm sitting here at work trying to run out the clock on Wednesday 9/25/13 by making an entry even though I don’t plan to send it.  Oops, gotta pee.  Be right back.  Ok, so I spent the other day shopping for radiators, header building materials, and carburetor top hats, right?  Well, I bought a radiator and top hat but held off on the header stuff.  Yesterday I spent shopping for oval tubing to make the cross-under pipes for the cross member.  I had a shopping cart full of bits to make the thing then remembered I was going to try and squash a pipe myself first.  John suggested we make a mandrel to stuff inside the thing and squash it in the press.  I think setting the pipe between two bricks and running it over with Fifi will get the job done.  The way I see this working is the bricks would support Fifi's weight and prevent the tube from crushing too much.  It makes sense in my head, but I can't quite ‘splain it.  As for the manifolds, I was going to wait for John to get back to see if we could find some, but decided to shop for them myself today.  Upon closer inspection… these are loafers!  Wait, that’s not right.  Upon closer inspection, I think I prefer the looks of the cast iron Explorer/Mountaineer manifolds to the tubular steel ones.  The tubular ones are just so friggin’ ugly!  Yes, they would be lighter, yes, they might flow better since they were made for the GT40 heads, yes, we could cut the collector off of the one we’re putting on the driver’s side to make it point down instead of forward… but the cast ones just look so much better!  Believe it or not, I'm going form over function in this case.  So, having made that decision, behind John's back, I went shopping for cast iron E/M zorst manifolds.  I found them several places individually, but there was an auction for a pair on e-Bay which caught my eye.  I was just about to click the “Buy It Now” button when I noticed they were in Fort Worth.  I called the number and found out where they are, exactly.  Yeah, I drive past this place twice a day, every day.  They are on Azle Avenue just inside Loop 820.  I'm planning to leave work a bit early and go buy a pair of manifolds.  Could I get them cheaper somewhere else?  Probably, but that would really cut into my instant gratification.  I'm going to try for the ones without the EGR port so they will be smooth and look even better.  I may have to hang them on the “Premature Purchase Wall of Shame” with the Oliver grille, the zorst rain caps, and the serpentine belt, but that’s the way I roll.  Am I going to have them ceramic coated?  If I knew of a place locally to do it, I might.  Most likely though, I won't.  So, for Saturday I should have in my hot little hands a radiator, a carburetor top hat, and a pair of manifolds to play with.  Of course there is still the issue with wiring up the 220 volt outlets.  I asked an electrician here at the railroad about the wiring situation and he said that it is perfectly legal to “back feed” a box through a circuit breaker like they have done.  I guess I need to stop calling the place a scary assed deathtrap.  I’m going to show the guy my anti-getting-killed-o-meter and ask if I understand the instructions properly.  I think it says I can touch one of the probes to the source and it will tell me if there is voltage.  If I touch both probes to stuff, it will tell me how much voltage… I think.  The thing is rated to 600 volts so I'm hoping our piddly little 220 won’t be an issue.  We’ll see.  I'm actually getting excited about having the capacity to weld again.  There have been times in the last four months when I've thought, “I can go weld those toge… wait, no I can’t.  The welder is in the Beenbroke shop.”  Hmm, I apparently walked away from this rant and forgot about it.  I'm at home now, after stopping by and buying those manifolds.  So, when the radiator and top hat arrive, I'll be set for stuff to do at the shop this weekend.  I guess I'll call this a rant and go look at them intergooglewebs for a while.  Toodles.