12/17/13

At some point last week, probably Saturday or Sunday when I was socked in with the ice storm, I went online to Summit and ordered two flanges to attach down pipes to the manifolds on Lil' Wiggly, two mandrel bends to make those down pipes, and a thermostat housing/upper radiator hose thingy to attach to the intake manifold.  The mandrel bends were the only bits to arrive before the weekend… the rest came yesterday but is not relevant to this story.  So, Saturday morning I head to the shop and arrive around at 0800 h.  I get to work on the down pipe for the driver’s side.  Now, you may remember that the manifolds we’re using are plain Jane aftermarket stock replacement manifolds but that we’re flipping them side to side.  The passenger side manifold is on the driver’s side and vice versa.  The one we’re using on the passenger side points straight down and won't pose any problems for us… the driver’s side, not so much.  It points straight forward and will need to make a sharp bend downward and then to the rear.  This was what I began to work on.  I took one of the mandrel bends and cut off one of the legs.  I tried to test fit it but the other leg prevented me.  About this time John arrived and we discussed what we were going to work on.  He had plenty to do with his engine but I was just piddling until the flanges arrived.  We decided that bolting down the vice would be job one so we went to the hardware store and bought nuts for that project.  We bolted the vice down and I began fidgeting because I really couldn’t do anything I'd wanted to do without the parts I'd ordered.  John suggested I crawl under and look at making a transmission cross member.  We did.  We bolted the factory rubber mount to the tranny and had a look at how to connect that to the floor.  We grabbed the remnants of the metal we’d used for his motor mounts last week and had a look at how we could use them.  It was decided that we’d take a bit of that metal and bolt it to the tranny mount and span the floor with ¾” square tubing.  I filed the holes in the flat metal so that they’d fit the mount and zooked two long square tubes to it.  Back under the car, we marked where they needed to be cut off and decided that two similar pieces of metal between the ends would make nice bolting flanges to attach to the frame rails.  I cut out and zooked those in place as well.  We could have bolted the thing in place if we’d had some more nuts and washers, but we didn’t.  John painted the part and I made a list of bolts and stuff I'd order from McMaster Carr when I got home.  John had his engine torn down and cleaned by this time so we decided it was a good quitting point.  I informed him that I was headed to Winchester Gallery to get my SKS after lunch so he suggested we go to Mexican Inn.  This we did.  Oh, we both had a sit-down in the Spitfire and decided I needed to keep it after all.  Did I mention I had an ad posted on a local Triumph Club website and had one interested party ask about it?  Well, I did.  I tried to convince myself it needed to go away but failed miserably… obviously.  After we ate, I went to Winchester and picked up the newly circumcised SKS.  It looks really cool.  I like it a lot.  I took it home and mounted the 3x scope on the cantilever mount and tried the stripper clips.  I needed to move it forward a couple spots on the rail.  Once I had it in a position where the stripper clips would charge the magazine, I had a look through the scope.  If I “lean in” I can get a good sight picture.  I'm happy with it.  I rearranged the gun cabinet once again to get all but the Tavor inside.  The Tavor and SKS… and 7.62x39 Saiga for that matter, are all too tall for the depth of the gun cabinet.  They need to sit sideways.  I made hanging brackets for the Boomstick and Snake Charmer to get them up off the floor and rearranged the order so that the SKS sits sideways behind the Auto5, the Coach Gun, and Thumper.  Thumper actually has to nest inside the scope of the SKS sort of… but it works.  I made another hanging bracket and some “stops” to mount the Sub 2000 on top of the divider thingy supporting the barrels of the Coach gun.  I don’t think any of the guns are touching each other too badly and they all fit now… well, except for the Tavor.  I'm thinking of taking the Tavor, and all of its accoutrements, to the gun show this weekend.  It is superfluous and does not fit in the gun cabinet… but damn, it is so cool.   I think if someone were willing to pay $3,000.00 for the gun, optics, magazines, and ammo I have, I can eat the $350.00 balance.  No one will pay that, but it isn’t like I NEED to sell it.  I'm just WILLING to sell it.  Yeah, I'll probably take it with me to test the water.  So, that gets y'all caught up.  Still no word on the job.  I'll keep y'all informed.  Toodles.