Domestics and funstuff, and bad news

First up, decided to ease my ass through my day, the last of a 96, and its back to the trenches tomorrow.  Usual stuff, plus asked the Da to drive me to a parts place so I could get the plugs I needed,,,    usedta be a time when a guy could do a tune up for nickles. Now it eats deep into a paycheck,,, *sigh*  

But, did the plugs, just the plugs, and went about the rest of the day: more on this after I get to the funstuff,,,

More work on ergometer.  First up, fix that ellipse, smaller and tighter and make sure front and rear wobbles are identical.  Done!  Mucho better!!!  Carry-on,,,

I kept up after all that and I have pulleys ready to go in,  just need to get rope, and that will have to wait a spell since Buffalo swallowed a portion of my ready capital today.   Still need to set up a footrest (whats there works well for me but I’d rather some adjustments too) and I need to fit the front extension to hold the front pulleys for the ropes to the ‘paddle’.   And I’ll need to purchase those pulleys since what I have on hand is way too small for this project.  So far though, other than the purchase of the Nordtrac, everything I have done was with wood I had on hand, parts of the Nordtrac modified/repurposed, and screws left over from building this house

Now the bad news.   Buffalo is feeling REALLY bad.  After I changed the plugs out, she ran great,  for about a mile, then back to that ‘dead miss’, only much worse this time.  More like 2 dead misses.  Instead of pulling plugs again, I pulled to the side of the road, and started pulling plug leads off the distributor.  #1: even worse, plug it back in.   #2, same as #1.  #3: no change.  #4: worse. #5 no change.  #6 worse.  

Head gasket gave out between 3 and 5,,,    pull the plug on 5 and you can hear the charge from 3 hissing in.  Too damned hard to pull 3 without serious creative use of force, so compression testing is moot.  But I’ve been down this road before: its not an uncommon failure.   Especially in a beasty with 293000 on the block. The good news is no oil in coolant, no coolant in cylnders, just a leak between the two; simple age failure

Good news, I have the entire upper gasket set already.  What I don’t have is oodles of daylight nor Vaca time to play with.  Must do the J.O.B. thing or bills will not get paid (pay with what? My immaculate good looks that I left back in the 80s?  Lol)

So, no kayaky love for me for a spell, gonna figure some way to do the JOB thing without dragging a gimped out truck into the mess, (I live 1/2mile away, can walk it if need be, but Buff carries my tools, so hopefully I wont need more than my hood and grinder for the remaining week(s), and, if need be, borrow Da’s 4wheeler and bundle my narrow ass up in the mornings (so I can run home and get tools if needed)

Gotta take the good with the bad,,,,