Billie's Blues

Oh, Hell no! No blues yesterday. I had to head north for a test in the morning. That's test in the singular. As I recall from my teaching days in the Harbor, the plural of test according to a couple of my students was testes - that one was always good for a chuckle. Test results came back in the afternoon and everything was Jake. That's always good.

And then, lookie, lookie what showed up - tires! Only took about four months but here they are. 

The one tire had a "LAST TIRE" sticker on it. I'm not sure of the significance of that but that brings to mind another Billy Holiday song:

Yeah man. I've got my own and they'll be heading to the tire shop right quick like. The tires are 30" tall versus 26-1/2" on the fronts. If I can get the car set up level while on the horses, the larger rears should give me a little nose down rake, especially with the extra weight from the engine up front. Even though I don't have a differential yet, I can do some head scratching and number crunching to get an idea where it will go.

I didn't get much done in the shop - mostly because I was worn out from doing the happy dance when the tires showed up. I did bolt the cab sheets together and throw them up on the frame rails to eyeball them. I'm real happy how it's coming together. I still have to weld the rod splice where the two sheets come together. I used fender washers on both sides of the sheets when bolting them together. That drew the sheets together nicely, which should make the riveting go smoothly.

I also annealed the dash hood. I'm going to planish the seam and then draw the layout lines for the bead to continue the wired edge all around the cab. Rather than forming an upsweep over the dash, I'm going to leave it like it is in the photo and then make a windshield in a frame maybe 8"-10" wide that will tilt rearward. I haven't got the design worked out yet but I'm a ways off from needing that. I'll probably need to stiffen up the sheet on top of the dash hood to support the frame, so I need to decide how I'm going to do that. 

I'm taking the Missus back to the dentist today, so that'll blow another hole in the schedule but I'm seeing some real progress of late. And that's always good.