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,,,,
Dio's Workshop 