6/6/15

Well, I’ve done three weeks at the new job now.  I don’t have… well, I can’t honestly say “any” regrets, because I do miss the people, air conditioning, and goofing off, but I don’t have many regrets.  The first week was spent getting ready for Nismo Fiesta in Austin.  The first day of that first week was trying to get Patrick’s 620 ready for paint so we could have it ready for the fiesta.  When that didn’t work out, we shifted to prepping a 260Z for the same event.  By Thursday it was ready for paint… which was a disaster!  No matter how good your Douglas DC-3 turned out using house paint and an airless sprayer, the same cannot be said for a 260Z!  I came back to work Friday to find the car half stripped of the failed paintjob and a huge mess… well, everywhere else.  We spent Friday finishing up stripping the car and putting on decals and such.  The test drive for the car was when we went to load it on the trailer.  Once I located the missing wire on the anti-dieseling solenoid and made that work, we fingered it was good to go.  Yeah, not so much as it turns out.  Saturday morning John and I rolled to Austin and met up with Patrick and the car at the track.  We unloaded it and Patrick went out for his session… and made about thirty yards of the track before the ignition system crapped out.  We hot-wired it to get it on the trailer and parked for the day.  John and I went to see “Ex Machina” in town after lunch.  It was a pretty good flick, slow but it was more of a thinker.  Back at the hotel we met up with more of the Datsun/Nissan folks and did stuff… I think.  Sunday we headed back to the track for the car show.  We had the staff drag the Z to its spot in the show behind a four-wheeler and proceeded to hang out.  Around 1400h we decided we’d had enough and drug the car back to the trailer behind Patrick’s truck.  We loaded it up and headed home.  Monday was Mammorial Day, and we’d all worked way over forty hours the week before, so we took the day off.  Tuesday I got stuck in to finishing the welding of motor mounts on one of Patrick’s other Zs.   We then dropped the engine back in and I spent the next few days getting that bolted up and stuff.  Thursday we shuffled cars around and got the Bronco I have been assigned into “my” spot so I could redo the wiring harness.  Patrick had to go out of town this last week so he had John running the tow truck.  They were out all day Friday training.  I spent Friday and Monday stripping the old harnesses out.  When the new harness arrived, I got to work sorting it out while John was out in the truck.  In fact, I spent all week by myself rewiring the Bronco while John did tow truck stuff.  All in all, as I said, I’m not too regretful for quitting the big time corporate world job.  We’ll see how it goes in the next few months when the weather gets really hot!