Greetings, Earthlings! I come in peace... Or is that "in pieces"?
So, I got the engine block and cylinder heads back from the machine shop last week. They all got a clean bill of health as well as a good cleaning. But, before we start that chapter, let me digress a bit. (MEEE? Digress? I know y'all are shocked, but try to contain yourselves...)
Some time ago, one of our storms/hurricanes/big winds tore the rooftop vent cover off my trailer. I climbed up onto the top of the trailer as soon as it stopped raining and rigged a bent-up piece of aluminum to cover the hole. Some time later, like Father's Day, TWWTFM gave me a whole new vent to replace the old one. Some time much later still, like last week, I started in on replacing the vent. It didn't go as I'd envisioned it.
I took the inside pieces/parts off, no problem. Then I climbed up on the roof of the trailer (in July, in Florida, not bright am I?) and started in on removing the flange that sat on the roof and held the whole business together. It seems that the good folks that built that trailer put a good coat of some kind of epoxy waterproofing, or seam sealer, or gray-goo-that-turned-into-cement-only-stretchy or something allll around the vent. I tried cutting, sanding, chiseling, nothing made much of a dent in the stuff. After and hour or so, and only ONE of the 27 screws holding the damn thing in visible, I gave up.
Plan B was that I could take both the new vent and the old one apart and just transplant the new bits onto the old flange right where it was sitting on the rooftop. Seemed like a good idea at the time. New vent came apart pretty easy on the work bench. I just drilled out all the spot welds and grabbed the cover, the hinge pieces and the crank mechanism. Then I climbed on the roof and repeated the process with the old one.
The idea was that I could rivet the new pieces onto the old frame/flange thing right where it sat on the roof. Seemed easy enough. And then reality set in. First, the new hinge pieces had been spot welded in different places than the old one. (Different 9-year-old Chinese girl on the assembly line that day...) So the holes didn't line up. I climbed down from the roof and got the old hinge piece and took the new hinge apart so I could use the new cover with the old hinge.
Then I climbed down again to get the box of rivets I'd forgotten and climbed back up. That's when I discovered that the bit I'd used to drill out the spot welds was jussssssst that much too small for the rivets. Yep, climbed down again. Got the drill and the right sized bit and climbed back up. As it turns out, that wasn't a good plan...
Ya know how in those totally dumba$$ MSHA and OSHA safety training things they make you sit through every damned year, they always tell you NOT to hold the part you're working on in your hand? You know the part I'm talking about... Put it in a vice, clamp it to the bench, tie it to the tailgate, yadda, yadda, yadda...
Attachment:
OWW My Thumb July 2018.jpg
If you cover up the upper half of the hole in my thumb as shown in the picture, that other half is pretty close to round and is 3/16 inch diameter. The bit then hit the bone or, as my buddy Prescott said, it got tangled up in the fat and veered off to the outside, taking a bit more of my precious cellular construction with it.
I wrapped a paper towel around it and managed to finish drilling out the holes and riveting things together. Next day, I got inside and attached the new innards. It works just dandy now. My thumb, not so much.
OK, so maybe those dumba$$ OSHA training classes weren't quite so dumb after all...
This mass of scribbling has gone on much longer than I'd intended, just to talk about drilling a hole in my thumb... I'll let this one sink in a bit and come back after while and talk about the descent into madness... Uhhh, I mean... The beginnings of the motor rebuild.
Thanks for listening, tune in next time...
Peace, Love and More Band-Aids!
JDK
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JD, father of
Quinn, Son of a...
Build LogQuinn the Slotus:Ford 302 Powered, Mallock-Inspired, Tube Frame, Hillclimb Special "Gonzo and friends: Last night must have been quite a night. Camelot moments, mechanical marvels, Rustoleum launches, flying squirrels, fru-fru tea cuppers, V8 envy, Ensure catch cans -- and it wasn't even a full moon." -- SeattleTom