10/1/13

Ok, so I've just re-read what I wrote last Wednesday, which is below this entry so you probably otter start there.  Now I'm ready to report on the weekend.  It was a long weekend… like four days long!  If Juan will remember, I was going to go to California with John for the JCCS (Japanese Classic Car Show I believe) so I took Friday and Monday off.  Unfortunately, he was invited to go out early and I didn’t want to travel by myself… but I took the vacation days anyway.  Friday was BNSF Family Day so I came up with The Seven and entered it in the car show.  That was fairly uneventful, except I had to jump start the thing in the driveway.  It started fine at the railroad so I'm sure the cheap-assed battery I bought is just giving up after a few years of minimal usage.  Anyhoo, there’s that.  Saturday I loaded up all the stuff I'd bought during the week and headed to the new shop.  When I got the doors open and enough light in so I could see, I noticed that the crank pulley was sitting on the cross member whereas it had a quarter inch of clearance last week.  I think the intermediary gubbins we made to go between the mounts and the frame bent and sagged.  I have an idea of how to fix it though so I'm not too upset.  Moving on, I test fit the carburetor top hat and it looks really good.  I test fit the manifolds and they look… well, the passenger side looks really good but the driver’s side has a few issues.  I test fit the radiator and… we might be able to make it work, I'm not sure.  To do a more Thoreau test, I'd need either the Saw-saw or the angle grinder.  Both of those items were at Beenbroke.  I decided I needed exhaust manifold bolts as well so I packed up and headed across town.  I picked up the Saw-saw and grinder, along with some other things, and headed to Lowe’s for the bolts.  Back at the new shop, I “installed” the manifolds to make sure they would work.  The passenger side, as I said, is quite nice.  The driver’s side, however, exits straight into the oil pressure sender.  No worries, I’ll just cut the extension thingy shorter and we’ll be fine.  This I did.  I then thought I'd zook the parts back together… and remembered a) the welder was across town, and 2) the pig-tail I'd made to hook it to the wall plug was in my brother’s pickup.  Oh, there’s a 220 v story happening simultaneously, I just thought I'd forego the skipping around.  So, now I'm sitting there looking at Lil' Wiggly trying to think of stuff I can do.  Well, one of the things I brought from Beenbroke was a remote oil filter setup.  I decided to give that a go.  I found a spot I liked for the filter and began playing with the hoses.  In order to thread them onto the adapter at the engine, I'd need to go through the fender wall.  “Psh, what the hell?” I thought, and got out the hole saw.  I drilled two holes in the fender liner thingy and began messing with hose routing.  I think I could have gotten one routing situation to work but screwed up a fitting trying to loosen it up… now it won’t thread onto the other fitting as it is bent just a bit.  I set all of that aside and tried to think of a way to justify the holes in the fender… this I have not been able to do.  Eventually I gave up and went home.  So, since I have a little more space before passing my arbitrary page break cutoff, I'll go into the 220v story.  During the time I was messing with Lil' Wiggly, I also had a look at the 220v situation.  I tested my anti-getting-killed-o-meter and saw that it does show voltage when one probe is used, it shows how much voltage when both are used, and it shows continuity through the buildings various circuits, but no voltage, when the main breaker is turned off.  Since I was alone and there was a dude working in the other shop, I didn’t want to attempt the wiring just then.  I had a look around at the stuff for the job and discovered that my extension cord/adapter thingy for the welder wasn’t anywhere to be found.  I'm sure it is in Bruce’s truck.  When I went to Lowe’s I wound up buying eight feet of big-assed wire to jump between the boxes and another breaker… or two, I don’t really remember.  Anyhoo, as I said above, I didn’t feel confident doing the wiring by myself so I left it for this coming weekend with John… and perhaps John and Bruce.  We’ll see.  So, there you have it.  I'll tell y'all about Sunday’s trip to the gun show tomorrow.  Suffices to say, I'm dumb.