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Well just like that we hit sunny and 80 degrees, time for some testing after all the mods over winter.
Now, not one to announce my dirty underwear in public I got around it by not wearing any.
No wait, that was when I was younger, now I am old, I tell all.
So with that, I started the car and backed in and out of the garage about a dozen times...seems to stop ok.
Fenders vibrated a bit on fast idle but smoothed out once I kicked it down to 900.
Since I already had a measured 2 miles for the speedo from last time I might as well run the same route, set the speedo to the new gears and tailstock.
Park out in front of the house and push the speedo button, umm, nothing, supposed to go to full swing then half gauge, didn't do anything.
Push the button a couple more time more forcefully, uh, now what, my odometer just cleared off all of last years miles.
Thought it wasn't supposed to be able to do that, well must have screwed something up.
Worry about it later.
Go for the drive instead and test the brakes.
I get about a block away from home and hit the brakes moderately, seems to stop better than it used to, looking good.
Drive another block put on the brakes and now I hear a grinding noise, bummer, what's that.
I do a few swerves back and forth nothing, touch the brakes lightly and 'el grindo'.
That ain't good, so I do a U turn and decide to head home instead, whoa lots of grinding on the U turn.
I creep home grind grind grind, whoop dee doo, now everyone notices my car.
I get home and back in and out of the driveway applying the brakes, seems to get worse, but at least I know it is the drivers side.
I get out, get a light and take a look.
Interesting there is a gouge on the very outside edge of the rotor.
Since I ground my own Wilwood adapters I am thinking what did I screw up.
Screw up I did.
Al, bozo the great, I had one of the pads in backwards.
The irritating thing is they fit easily backwards and I checked it, double checked it and triple checked it.
Still screwed it up, so rather than blame myself all night long, I blamed it on my torn retina that I had to get surgery for during the winter.
Ahh, felt much better.
So I took the caliper off and switched the pad around, luckily the pad sits just below the gouge, which was made by the pin on the back of the pad.
And a bonus, my wheel just comes off without removing the fender, awesome.
So time for another drive, but before I go for some reason I get an urge to look at my Autometer speedo instructions, so after 10 minutes digging around I find them.
Well that is interesting they say to hold the button then start the car, not start the car and hold the button, my memory is starting to suck.
So I give it a try and darned if it doesn't work; two thumbs up for the bozo.
So I drive and set the speedo up, it all works good, shifter works fine, brakes work real well and I haven't even adjusted the bias bar or the proportioning valve.
The rear end has a bit more back lash than my old 3.73's, not overly so, but enough I notice it.
I am running 2300 rpm at 50 mph in 4th with the new gears, at 50 5th gear seems to lug a bit, but good at 60mph.
Car doesn't quite have the immediate snap it had before with the 3.73's but on the other hand the tach isn't at 4000 rpm all the time, so all is good.
The 3.08's are quieter so I hear more car noises than before, not so good.
The car definitely has less wind buffeting, now I can see the wind wings certainly do help in this regard.
Now I wonder what if any the effect also might be switching from clamshells to cycle fenders.
Still windy but not near as bad, before my ears would ring for a week at 60 miles an hour, now they are fine.
I won't question it too much as I don't want to screw up my good luck.
Speaking of cycle fenders I had a BB sized rock whiz by and hit my spat, so a new awareness I didn't notice before with clams.
Also had a perk common to all of our cars, my hat blew off on the highway, I didn't snug it down tight enough.
A break in highway traffic so I whipped around a U turn and slowed down to 10 miles an hour, reached out and snatched it up off the road, hit the gas and took off.
Lets see ya do that in your sport puke, I mean ute..
The other interesting thing is I had to loosen my fenders stays so I could rotate the fender slightly to remove the caliper bolt.
I had used red lock-tite instead of my usual blue.
Well this stuff just undid easily with my tork wrench, what is with that, I thought RED was the end all to end all, got torch it free and use a million foot pounds to remove the bolt.
Now there is a real bright side to all this, when I was doing the husbandly moaning the blues and my wife was feigning concern a friend of mine came by.
During the conversation he remarked that maybe I should switch to the Wilwood dynalite system, then I wouldn't have any adapter crap in the mix.
My honey pie of 47 years asks him what would that do, he replies give the safety of a pro setup and all for only 600 bucks.
She says to me maybe you should look at that for next winter??
Uh, the wife is worried about her safety, and my buddy is sneakily trying to work his way into a free bottle of hooch, from yours truly using man talk on my wife.
All I can say he got his commission and I will have one more winter project, when I find the money, no one volunteered a donation.
So everything has worked out ok......so far.
If anything bad happens passed this post I ain't telling anyone.
Al
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Super Seven 3.4
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