9/6/13

I drove The Seven to work today.  I'd been thinking about it and when I was told that the guys renovating my shower would be doing some plumbing from below in the garage, I decided I'd rather the car sat here at the railroad than in the driveway at home.  I'm not sure why, but I feel “safer” with it here.  I didn’t have time for a hoon on the way to work so I'm sure I'll be doing that on the way home.  See, if Juan takes the Lost Wages Road exit off of Loop 820 and turns north, Heron Road is quite a nice twisty bit which loops back to Lost Wages Road.  It takes about ten minutes to do the Heronschlief Ring so some mornings I'll dart off of the freeway and have a relaxing hoon.  On the way home however, I don’t turn back onto Lost Wages but continue on Heron around the lake to Silver Creek Road.  This takes me to the end of Verna Road and thence Paint Pony Trail.  PPT takes me down to Chapel Creek, via a few hundred feet of White Settlement Road by the fire station, and down to Highway 80 west of my house.  I've been taking that hoon in the afternoons to relax after a particularly stressful… psh, I can't even type “stressful day” with a straight face.  Although, some days recently, when middle-management have been particularly middle-managementy, I do get the funk pretty bad.  Those are the days when you wish your bed was already made… wait, what?  Sorry, I was going for something else there and Susannah Hoffs took over my fingers.  Oh man, she could do all kinds of things with my fingers… IF youknowwhatImean!  Anyhoo, eighties pop star innuendo (in HER end-o!) out of the way… now I've totally lost my train of thought.  Well, I'm sure it wasn’t important.  I'll move on.  I went to Mini Mania again this morning to see if the complete D16 engine kit was still on sale for $9,000.00, it is, and decided to look at their rebuilt “power units.”  A 100 horsepower, or so, 1280 engine with transmission is slightly cheaper than the conglomeration of parts and kits I'll need to install the D15Z1 engine.  I didn’t go in and price a rubber-to-spring suspension conversion to see what that did to the bottom line, but I think it would come out to be a wash.  So, I think I'm still going to with the current plan: D15Z1 and coil-over suspension with “big disc brake” conversion up front and the “Cooper style” aluminium drums out back.  The “big disc brake” is in quotes because we’re talking 7.5” rotors… not big by any standard except in the Mini world.  Oh I just had a thought.  I'd still need the “big brake” kit, which would push that build past the Honduh plan in price.  Yeah, we’ll stick with the plan we have now… for now.  And speaking of plans, I as talking to my brother last night and he has volunteered my nephew to come help us wire up the 220v circuits in the new shop.  See, my nephew John was an Electrician’s Mate in the Navy and should be able to get us juiced up in a jiffy… I hope.  We’ll need to make a hardware store run to buy all the gubbins, but that shouldn’t be much of a faff.  Interesting, Tiny and Flaccid’s word processor recognizes “faff” as a word but won't let me add an “apostrophe-S” to the word “flaccid.”  And speaking of hardware, the pressure plate bolts for Lil' Wiggly should arrive today.  I'm not sure if the flywheel bolts will get here in time, but we don’t really need them just yet.  Sure, once we have the hydraulic throwout bearing thingy set up it will be time to bolt the two lumps together, necessitating the flywheel bolts, but we won't need them for setting up said throwout bearing thingy… that’s what I meant.  Sort of thing.  Anyhoo, there’s all of that going on.  Ok, I think it is time for one of my bullshit “this is the order of how I want to finish the cars” lists.  First, of course, is Lil' Wiggly.  I need to fight any and all urges to push it aside to start on something else.  As much as I've been talking about the Mini recently, Juan might think it would be next.  I must also fight that urge.  No, the Chickenhawk needs to be next.  It has set for far too long waiting to be revived.  I really must get on with it.  As of right now, the plan for the Chickenhawk is a VG33 with a carburetor.  The easiest thing would be to source a five-speed from a 300ZX and plop that donk in the front as nature intended it.  Potentially the coolest thing would be to source a five-speed from a Maxima and make it mid-engine.  I really like that idea for a few reasons.  One, it would be cool.  Two, dumping the zorst out the beaver panel would be easier and “make more sense.”  And three, it would be cool.  Yes, I know those are very weak reasons.  The real reason… ok, other than it would be cool, is I'm not sure a VG lump out front in a 1200 is going to handle very well.  In fact, I can see it suffering from the same Cobra-like handling that I worry Lil' Wiggly is going to have.  With a mid-mounted engine, I think we can balance the thing better and have a real handler.  Now, it will take a monumental amount of work to turn a 1200 into a mid-engine monster, but I think it… wait, never mind.  I just remembered I was thinking of going jacked-up faux rally car with this build.  Front engine it is.  After the Chickenhawk we’ll drop an A-series in the Spit… unless we’re running out of time on the fiftieth birthday Mini build.  We have two years, two months and one week to finish the Mini.  That’s over twice as long as it took me to build The Seven so… fingers crossed!  And on that note, I think I'll call it a week.