4/29/14

Ok, so I told y'all all about the foster cat but I didn’t try to get across just how disconsolate I was over the situation Saturday while John and I were at the shop.  Suffices to say, my heart was not in it that day.  I picked John up at the Ford dealer and we went to Pearl Harbor… I mean Harbor Fright where he wanted to get a cylinder hone, a brake hone, and something else.  We finally found all of the stuff for which he was shopping and bought them.  I kicked in for half of it since they were tools to go into the community chest tool box at the shop… not to mention the cylinder hone was intended for the L-16 to go in the Chickenhawk I found out later.  From there we went to the Boys of Pep to look for an radiator hose to cut into two hoses for Lil' Wiggly.  We found one we thought might work along with a throttle cable and mounting bracket.  I bought all of that.  At the shop we looked at the hose for a bit and decided where it needed to be cut… and did so.  Some dude coming to look at something arrived and John went off with him to look at it… whatever it was.  I was a bit out of it… and didn’t really care.  While they were away, I searched the shop for the tub of grease I knew we had brought from the old shop.  I couldn’t find it anywhere.  Then I remembered something falling behind the tool box a few weeks ago.  “I’ll bet that was the grease,” I said to myself.  I moved the box and there it was.  Huzzah!  I put some “Love Lube” in the hose and worked it onto the inlet of the engine.  It eventually stretched on and I found a jubilee clamp to secure it.  Once I had that in place I cut into the packaging for the throttle cable and mount.  I fiddled with that for a bit and got to a point where I needed, at the very least, John's hands to install the cable, and at most, more guidance on the plan for the installation.  I didn’t want to interrupt their discussion so I sat and grokked the thing while they chatted.  Eventually they completed their transaction, or whatever, and he left.  John then tucked into helping me.  We decided on a route for the cable, how we were going to hook up the cable, and then installed the cable.  Oh, I'd already installed the bracket earlier.  We then got to work making sure the pedal would give us WFO at the carburetor.  With some adjustments and stuff we got it as close as possible and then sought a return spring.  With that installed I fingered I'd done enough on Lil' Wiggly for the day.  Of course I hadn’t actually, but I was anxious to get back home to check on the cats.  I apologized to John for being extra reticent and tried to explain the situation but had to stop before I lost it.  We then got cracking on the L-16.  We drained the oil and removed the pan, then undid and removed all four pistons and rods from the block.  The crank spins so buttery smooth we don’t want to undo the main caps though.  We flipped the engine again and got to work with the hone on the #1 cylinder.  We finger the worst we can do is force a re-bore and new pistons.  After several minutes of honing it began to get better, but still had some roughness due to (tee hee, I said "doo doo!") the wee bit of standing water the engine had accumulated over the years.  We moved on to the other cylinders and honed them a bit.  We decided that we’d keep trying the hone next weekend and make a decision then.  I was in no place to do it then.  We discussed the intake situation and I think we’ve decided on the DGV and “cold air” snorkel… with the possibility of a squirt of nitrous, of course!  Eventually we called it a day and went to Wasabi for bait.  There we discussed whether or not I was doing the "light red" as a bit or did I really want that.  He put in a vote for going back to yellow but didn’t want to overly influence my decision.  I thought about it some, but when I dropped him back off at his car we saw a Mitsubishi in a metallic pink/lavender which I liked quite a bit.  I think that color would work but finally sent him a text saying something like, “This is not me caving in to your will…” and said we should go back to yellow.  Of course yesterday I saw a picture on my computer of a pickup in a similar metallic pink/lavender and had a re-rethink.  I'm not sure what we’re going to do now.  If we can find the paint code for that Mitsubishi color… hell, I don’t know.  Well, it’s lunchtime so I'm going to shut up now.