The plan for today was to take care of a few things on the car, pack
it up and head up to Thunderhill. I got email the other day from a
friend asking me to teach with the Miata club this weekend. The
thought of some unexpected track time, combined with the opportunity
to beat up on some unsuspecting Miatas sounded very appealing.
I am very close to having my carburettor dialed in, and one thing I
wanted to do this afternoon was to finish dialing it in. The plan was
to fabricate a carb piston position indicator, mount the camcorder on
the rollcage in such a way that it can video the carb and go out and
find out where on the needle I am under various conditions.
There are times that working in a pissant makeshift garage gets very
iritating. When I run the soldering gun across my forearm because what
I'm trying to do requires three more hands than I have, is one of
those. The long and the short of it is that I spent all day, and a
good chunk of the evening, and the best that I can say is that I think
that I've figured out a couple of the things that I'll need to do.
Finally, sometime after seven, I head out to go to the party my neice
was throowing. I meant to get there when it started it 6:30, with my
car on the trailer, then head on up to the track, but I figure that if
I just drive over there a couple hours late, it'll be running late
anyways. On the drive over, without a bonnet, my windsheild gets
nicely spattered by oil. It seems to be coming from my valve
cover. When I got there at 8:30, things were pretty dead, primarily
because it started at noon. I've really got to get in the habit of
double checking invitations.
Anywyas, I'm either going to miss out on the track this weekend, or
sleeping tonight. The car needs more work than when I started this
morning. I've got a mildly annoying burn on my right forearm. I'm not
quite sure where I'll find the time to do all the things that I want
to on the car before taking it to the track next weekend, and I'm
beginning to despair of ever getting this car right.
The last bit is the funny thing about this whole project. With the
"new" paintjob, and the rollcage finally painted, the car looks better
than it probably has in twenty years. Even without the blower
completely dialed in, it is probably one of the fastest MGBGTs,
running on pump gas on California roads, and may very well have turned
the fastest lap time at Thunderhill of any street registered MGBGT.
It may be that when we finish a few big tasks, rather than seeing the
tremendous progress, it's a lot easier to see the larger number of
medium sized tasks. When those are done, we are confronted with a
myriad of small tasks. So, in the end, all I see is what appears to be
an insurmountable list of things that need to be done rather than the
progress that has been made.
Meanwhile, I skipped doing a lot of other fun things this weekend so
that I could work on, and drive the car. I might as well head back out
to the garage, finish one or two tasks and add another dozen to my
todo list.
--
I've found something worse than oldies station that play the music I used to
listen to. Oldies stations that play the "new" music I used to complain about.
lrc@red4est.com http://www.red4est.com/lrc
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