7/16/14

I am a bit irked with Lil’ Wiggly.  Ok, I’m a bit irked with myself regarding Lil’ Wiggly.  Saturday John and I met at the shop where I got to work installing the radiator.  The bottom hose was, to paraphrase So Damn Insane (Saddam Hussain), “The Fucker of all Mothers!”  I finally got the hose to go onto the radiator but could not get it on far enough to place the radiator where it needed to go.  We wound up removing the lower bracket and trimming it to fit.  Everything bolted up fine after that.  The top hose was a bitch too but only because of limited clearance between it and the bypass.  I got it on and done up as well.  Oh, I also installed the silly cone coupler to finish out the cold air intake as that part had arrived during the previous week.  With the radiator hoses all attached, John asked if I was ready for water.  I had a glance around and said, “Yes.”  He poured a gallon of 50% antifreeze in and topped it off with another gallon, or more, of fresh water.  When the thing stopped burping, we declared it full and moved on to oil.  John had bought for me an oil filter and some Mobil1 10/30 so’s I could afford to pay shop rent this paycheck.  He filled the filter and installed it then dumped oil into the sump.  After five and a half quarts, we checked the dipstick and declared it full as well.  Then we fingered out the timing situation.  By unbolting the radiator again, I could get a socket on the front pulley.  John turned the engine while I stuck my finger in the #1 sparkplug hole.  We found top dead center and marked it on the distributor.  We fingered out advance and retard then re-stabbed the dizzy to make #1 align on the cap and rotor.  John went off to work on his car while I installed the sparkplug wires… backwards it turns out.  I vividly remember him saying, “It turns counter-clockwise.”  I then proceeded to install them clockwise.  Why?  Hell, I don’t know.  Even he didn’t notice until later when looking at the pictures on the interwebs.  But I’m getting ahead of the story.  We had a look at everything… except the correctness of the sparkplug wires of course, and decided to hook up the battery to see if it would turn over.  I wish we hadn’t.  While hearing the fuel pump come on, and John assuring me that the electric fan was working, were good things, the hazard flasher causing the oil pressure gauge to alternate between 0 and 100 psi was quite annoying.  Turning off the hazard switch stopped the gauge fluctuation, I think, but there wasn’t enough oomph in the battery to turn the engine over.  I was pissed.  Ok, so no “Magic Smoke” was released from the wiring harness, I guess we could call that a “Win,” but I’m still pissed that there is something up-fucked in the harness.  It does not bolster my confidence in the job I did on John’s harness.  If I fucked his harness up... well, fuck.  We broke for lunch soon after the failure with Lil’ Wiggly.  Since this is an “Off Weekend” at the shop, I will probably avoid the place just so nothing untoward happens to the car.  “That’s odd.  It seems the car aired up its own tires, rolled itself outside, and lit itself on fire.  Kooky.”  I told John he might want to change the lock on the shop door for the next week.  Anyhoo, I think that since the car will have antique plates, and a different name on the title soon, I will just disconnect the hazard switch and see if the rest of the systems work.  If they don’t… hmm, I guess I just won’t make as much money selling it as a “90% finished” project.  Of course if by not having hazards and turn signals the car does “work,” I hope the next schmuck isn’t reading this blog!  Feh, we’ll see.  So, what else is there to report?  Well, there is something but I’m not going to go into it because a) it ain’t none of your business and 2) it shows what a fiscally irresponsible idiot I am.  Since I’m sure he’s the only one who actually reads this, other than the NSA and they probably knew before I did, I will let John in on the “secret” when he calls in about, three… two… one…