Another Milestone

I forget what I said I was going to do this past week, but here's a rundown of the events as they happened.

Just to recap, last week I started working on the brake pedal.  Well now it's finished.  Here's before and after shots.

Besides being shiny in a couple spots, the important change was that, in effect, I moved the arm in the middle by about 2" and that changed the leverage the pedal applies to compensate for having manual brakes.  I had to put a bend in both the brake pedal and the clutch pedal to improve the spacing between them.  I got so excited that I was able to bend this 1/4" steel that I forgot to take a picture (but I will go back and take some later).  I really wanted to see how they were going to look in the car and here they are!

I'm very happy with how they turned out.

In other news, I did install the gas tank.

And best of all, I brought the engine block to a machine shop to start the prep work.  This is a big milestone for this chunk of metal has been sitting in our garage for nearly a year, being worshiped like an iron tiki idol.

Arrival May 2010

I did some final prep work at home.  Here I am taking out the bearings for the camshaft.

Before I dropped it off, I wanted to be ready.  These guys are the big leagues and they know their stuff.  I wanted to be able to talk their language and impress them with my plans.  I had my parts all listed, and the calculations I had done on compression ratios, octane requirements, spark advance, valve overlap, expected torque and horsepower.  It took me days to do all this, but it would be worth it.  Yep, they're going to ask me hundreds of questions about the car and the engine, and of course, they'll want to see the pictures.  I'm ready for anything they throw at me.

You can probably imagine that the shop is located under an elevated section of the Garden State Parkway surrounded by vacant lots and used tire dealers.  I let them know I'm here and back in to the driveway.  Maybe this is a good time to explain the ordeal getting the block into the car in the first place.  It weights about 175 lbs. and even I couldn't ask Laurie to help me load it.  But I had an idea and it goes like this:

The block has been sitting on a stand as you can see in the photo above.  I originally expected to take the block off the stand, put it on the floor and then pick it up and put it in the car.  But since the block is already 2 feet off the floor, maybe I can just raise it another 6" to get it in the back of the car.  So I used my jack to raise the whole stand and set it on the supports I have for the car.

Now the stand won't be able to roll, but the car can.  One of two things will happen, either the car will knock over the engine and ruin it, or it will neatly slip into the car.  With some careful driving by Laurie and a couple wooden blocks to raise the car a little, in the engine went.

Well, almost all the way.  I disconnected it from the stand and pulled it in the rest of the way.

Now back to the machine shop.  I back into the driveway and open the hatch, I guy comes out and grabs the block with one hand and pulls it out of the car.  I'm thinking, "Don't scratch my car and be careful with my block!", but what comes out is "how's it goin'".  I tell them what I want done and they say "okay, we'll call you when it's done".  That's it.  No questions, no pictures, no comments.  And I see my block on on a pile with 30 others waiting their turn at the boring machine.  I felt like I was abandoning a helpless puppy.  I hope they're taking good care of my tiki idol.