[ratpack] An exhausting day

This is an email I sent to the El Camino list I run.  I told Mike I'd sent something here to fill in on what's going on with my race car.  If you want, you can read up on it here: 
http://www.chevyasylum.com/85monte/85monte28.html 

The people I mention in the writeup (Jim and Chris) are respectively, my friend and racing partner and an Elky list member and sponsor of the car and my racing.  Great folks.  So here it is:

It really was an exhausting day.  I started at 2 ayem with a case of pre-cognitive insomnia.  When I awoke in the middle of the night, I went to the computer to find out that I needed to do the Target 550 update earlier than I thought I'd normally have to.  So I got that outta the way.  Took a while, cuz I had some editing to do but it turned out ok.
http://www.target550.com/gallery/184_steering_system_1/index.html

By then it was late enough to fire up the Monte Carlo.  Funny thing.  It started up and got to where it would idle on its own real quick.  Unusual.  It's usually real cold-blooded.  Anyway, I got out to check on the pulleys and belts that I'd installed the night before.  The crank pulley was wobbling like crazy.  It was about then that Jim showed up and he looked at it and said that the harmonic balancer was wobbling.  Shit, thought I.  I was ready for suicide or homicide...I wasn't quite sure which.  But we decided that we could put the car on the trailer and get the exhaust done.  I called the place and they said they were pretty open for the day, so we went about re-learning how to put the car on the trailer.

Before I go any further, I'll mention that I discovered why the darned thing idled so much more easily when not fully warmed up.  It had a choke on it.  I'd put the blue plastic cap that Chris had sent to me over the carb and forgotten to remove it before I fired up the motor.  All four hundred and six cubic inches were breathing thru a quarter inch hole in the center of the cap.  Rich?  Just a little.  But it sure idled nice.  :)

I'll skip the parts about having to re-drill some positioning holes in the ramps and breaking drill bits and stuff like that and just say that we fumbled our way thru getting the car on the trailer without too many flesh wounds nor harm to any animals used in the filming, etc.  Then we got it to the muffler shop and they did a great job for us.  But first, Jim suggested that I insert this graphic:



because when we got the car up on the lift at the muffler shop, we got a chance to look at the wobbling balancer and it wasn't that.  It was the new underdrive crankshaft pulley that hadn't seated properly when I installed it.  Yeah, it was my fault for screwing up the install, but I'm MUCH happier to find out that's what it was and not the crank itself.  I can fix the pulley.  And as I said, they did a great job of not only making and installing the exhaust, but trimmed the lower control arms where there was a little interference with the headers and all in all, tidying things up so that all the stuff played nicely with the other parts.  I really appreciate their help.  The shop owner's a drag boat racer, so he knows the "thrill of victory and the agony...etc"

So here's a shot from underneath the car showing the new exhaust and the partially removed rear driveshaft loop...I asked 'em to take that off to minimize any chance of interference with the trailer when loading the car.



All in all, we did a lot better than the Charlie Foxtrot we had last year.  I swear...a coupla goofy old farts with a race car and a trailer...well, the worst thing that happened is that as I was driving the car onto the trailer, it yanked the ramps out of their pinned-in locations.  It's done that virtually every time we've put the damned thing on the trailer....so we're gonna make some changes in that area.  Fortunately, when it happened this time, the car kept going and ended up in the right place on the trailer.  Sorta like a "Hail Mary" pass with a fingertip catch.

And since my 5-Hour Energy Drink ran out about 6 hours ago, I've had it for the day.

Later,

r


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