It sure has been busy the last few months. Of course right now we’re still in the midst of the Covid-19 Pandemic. Hopefully that will be dying down sometime this year and we can get back to business as usual. Who knows though, as of this point parts of the country are beginning to open up despite most experts saying it’s a very bad idea.
Luckily for me I still have a job and I have a job where I can work from home, so that’s nice. Other than going out to get groceries and the occasional ordering of food, our exposure level is pretty low. That said… Still working from home, I am so jealous of all the people that say they have so much free time. If anything I have less free time, because I’m cooking a lot more and just being around the house, I end up spending breaks helping my wife with the kiddo etc.
I’ve still had some time to get project work done though, and I’ve been really happy about digging back into the 818C. I think over the last month or so I’ve gone through 20-30 pages!
First off, like most projects where ‘someone’ (me) rushed to attach stuff to the car before loading it into a POD for a cross country trip, I had some stuff to undo. First on the block was completely unbolting the accessories. Turns out the AC compressor has to have the mount bolted to it, before it can be bolted to the motor. Really annoying mount set up, but on the plus side my accessory belts are installed!
Of course after that I had to discover some annoying news. In my haste to install the fuel filter, I’d installed it in a location that meant I could not install the oil fill tube… So that had to be moved… then I realized I installed the filter reversed… and with heater tube instead of fuel injection tube… so I stripped all of that out and redid the whole thing… great! Always nice to backtrack. That said, I’m really happy with it now. I installed the drain line at the same time and after ordering a replacement harness piece the fuel system is operational!
With all that backtracking out of the way, I could get on with actually moving forward on the project. With the harness draped all the way across the frame, I took… what felt like months, but really was maybe a weekend or two identifying connectors and really trying to figure out where things go. I did manage to splice up my brake, clutch, etc pedal connectors. Connected the motor harness bits, fuel harness, etc. and roughly position the fuse boxes.
I think as of last night I’ve figured out how to put together the headlight connectors, so they’ll be next. In the meantime some cooling system work was in order! I added on passenger side cooling tube (while the baby slept!). I also installed the frame piece for the radiator and started lining up my hose connections for that.
Lastly I closed up the transmission! I removed the rear differential in Oregon, but hadn’t had the time to install the lockout component. I got that out and then decided to start doing some dress up on the back plate… which has now led me to wire brushing the whole transmission. It makes a world of difference to remove that 17 years worth of dirt and debris. Looks so much nicer!
In games news. I’ve been really enjoying some Solo games once my wife and infant go to bed. It’s been especially nice with this pandemic and not really being able to get out to play games at stores, etc. Playing some Gloomhaven, Solo Star Wars LCG, Fallout. I’ve been painting a bit here and there, but I also dug into my massive archive of 3D models and started printing some dungeon tiles and some sci fi tiles. The Dungeon stuff looks amazing, but it is (ironically) so hard to make futuristic stuff look good. The layers are just too obvious on something that looks like it should be made of metal. Oh well. All good hobby fun.
In sad news, one of our pups passed on. Cu the grumbly beagle hound started having some issues controlling his back legs. After visiting some vets and specialists, the options were fairly limited, and we just didn’t feel right putting our 13 year old beagle through surgery, etc. We’ll miss you grumbles. You were a wonderful pup.
In happier news we adopted a new pup. She’s also a Beagle by the name of Curium (Cm). She’s a sweet little dog that still seems like a bit of a puppy. She is a bit of a look alike. I guess my wife and I have a type for dogs.
It Rhymes with Hockey 