Jitney Stuff

 

Spent a little time in the shop yesterday after going to the boxing gym. Bazooka Joe had called me earlier in the day about my going to his fight Saturday night. I don't think I'm going to make the trip, much as I'd like to. He'll be fighting about 6-1/2 hours away, the hotels that are close by are already full-up, and I'm still trying to avoid crowds. I did go to the gym to watch Joe spar but only because it was just him and his sparring partner. His weight is good, he's always in good shape, the guy he's fighting is shorter than him, so he should be set. If he gets a clean shot at the guy, he'll go down. Joe hits hard.

After coming home I took the gas tank off the motorbike chopper, took a link out of the pedal chain and polished the chrome. I'm going to take it over to my storage space for the winter. 

I also did a little work on the jitney. The bracket in the above photo bolts on the side of the block and to the bellhousing of the transmission. I don't have one with my original engine, so this one will get sandblasted and painted. I'll probably do that today. If I wait much longer it'll be too cold for painting unless I run the heat and I'm not quite ready for that yet.

I managed to loosen up all the nuts on the studs holding the manifolds on. I've been spraying them with Blaster off and on. Seems to have done the trick. I want to separate the intake from the exhaust so I can start toying with how I'm going to make the exhaust header. It's going to be a little tricky dropping the tubes down under the intake runners but there's nothing else in the way after that. I'm planning a 6 into 1 with all the tubes dumping into a single long tube that runs almost the length of the car just below the "door". Not the most efficient as far as gas flow goes but it's the look I want.

The dash wood should be here today - looking forward to seeing what it looks like. I also made a couple of temporary cross pieces to set the seat on to get an idea where I should place it. I moved the cab sheet metal back to give myself some more leg room but I need to be able to sit down and check the fit.

Kind of all over the map yesterday but moved forward a bit just the same.