9/3/14

So, here comes this week’s rant.  Of course they haven’t been rants per se for some time, have they?  They’re more like… boring-assed recounting of what I did over the weekend with some inane planning for upcoming events.  But I guess I don’t need to tell y’all that.  Anyhoo, here we go.  Saturday I grabbed all of the leftover cash from the gun show the previous weekend and went to the shop.  I fingered I was going to be buying a starter either from John or the parts store so I went in “Nigga Rich.”  I avoided looking at, much less working on, Lil' Wiggly as long as I could by helping John with whatever he was working on… and generally avoiding Lil' Wiggly.  Eventually John looked up a starter on O’Reilley’s website and found that the Forrest Hill store had one for $79.99 plus a $10.00 core.  He sent me on my way to buy it… by myself.  Big mistake.  I got there and said, “We just called about a starter, part number 0205-08x.”  I should have called John immediately when she said, “What car is it going on?”  I sighed and said, “Mustang.”  We went through the usual song and dance of “Part counter idiot totally ignoring the fact that I had the fucking part number I want but we have to look the mother fucker up AGAIN by year, make, and model.”  She found the number I wanted in the computer and went to the back.  She came back with almost the part number I wanted… minus the “x” at the end.  Yeah, that “x” was worth $20.00 to on my end.  When she rang it up and it was $117.00 I said, “Whoa!  It was supposed to be $79.99 plus a $10.00 core!  What happened?”  She showed me the screen and it was $89.99 with a $20.00 core!  I sighed again and bought it.  Back at the shop, I was determined to NOT take it out on John by getting snippy with a crack like, “That eighty dollar starter somehow cost me a hundred twenty.”  I needed it and there was no point in beating the horse.  Somehow he drug it out of me and said they were supposed to be holding the right one in my name.  “Well,” I said, slightly snippily, “THAT would have been a good piece of information.”  Knowing that that twenty bucks meant the difference between lunches all week and going hungry Thursday and maybe Wednesday, I went back to make the trade.  Back at the shop again, we swapped the pigtail for the starter solenoid wire and installed the starter.  I hooked up the battery.  “Any magic smoke?” I asked.  “Nope.”  I turned on the master kill.  “Any magic smoke now?”  “Nope.”  I put the key in the ignition and gave it a turn… nothing.  I was in the process of disconnecting everything when John said, “Hang on!  It did nothing because you didn’t hook up the starter solenoid wire.  Try it now.”  I turned the key again… nothing.  Well, it clicked like a weak battery so we hooked up the jump box.  I bean disconnecting everything thinking this to be the death knell of this project.  We sat and looked at it for a bit then John said… wait, before I tell y’all what he said, I want to give an excuse or three.  All of the formula cars I worked on at AUTOCOMP had solid motor mounts.  The Chickenhawk had solid motor mounts.  The Seven has solid motor mounts.  And finally, all of the other cars I have built have had the battery in their stock location using stock ground straps.  I NEVER think to run a ground from the engine to the chassis.  So, John looks at the thing and asks, “Do we have a ground from the engine to the chassis?”  We look it over and decide that the thing must be grounding through the water in the cooling system as that is the only path for the electrons to flow.  We make a ground strap and install it.  I go through the “connect and turn on all electrics while asking if we’re leaking magic smoke” dance and hit the key… nothing.  Just kidding, it spun up nicely.  So, now all I have to do is finish re-rewiring the thing, dump some fuel in, and we otter be able to make firing!  We can’t run it or long because we don’t have a driveshaft and therefore no oil in the transmission, but we should be able to make big noise soon… like maybe this weekend.  No, I’m not going to jinx anything by making that claim.  I still need to do the wiring, so it will be next weekend at the very soonest.  But we’re getting there.  Oh, in case you didn’t finger it out, this means the V8 is staying in Lil' Wiggly and we’re forging ahead with this retarded-ass plan.