CLANK XIII: Oil'er up!
A few nights ago, I had a strange dream. I dreamt that I had put my TR2
together, and went for a ride, stopping at the local convenience store. There
I realized that I had forgotten to put oil in the motor, and went inside to buy
some. I woke up in a sweat, realizing that I had blown my new engine. It took
an unpleasant few seconds to convince myself that it had been a dream :-).
Just to make sure that this was one dream that would never come true, I went
out last night and put oil in the engine. Well, actually, I put oil in it
after installing the rocker arm shaft, valve cover, and oil filter.
It had been just enough trouble to time the distributor, that I decided to
build up oil pressure by cranking the engine with the sparkplugs out. After
connecting the battery, I pressed the starter button.
UNK.....UNK.....UNK.... Apparently, the battery had lost its charge in storage.
Out came the little 10A charger, out came the spare battery, out came the
jumper cables. There. Pressed the button again:
Unka-unka-unka-unka-unka ( more like it! ).
Unka-unka-unka-unka ( still no pressure )
Unka-unka-unka-unka ( come on, baby! )
Unka-unka-unka-unka ( Counting under my
breath:one-two-three-four-five.....)
Unka-unka-unka-unka-unka ( how long do I do this before giving up? )
unka-unka-unka-unka ( one-two-three-four-five-six-seven-eight....)
unka-unka-unk-unk-unk-unk ( it's coming up! five psi...)
unk-unk-unk-unk ( 10psi - 15psi - 20...)
unk-unk-unk-unk-unk-unk. ( .........50 PSI! Not bad for cranking it with
the starter! )
- Jerry
p.s. My gawd, is it tempting to take a day of vacation to put this baby
together, or WHAT?
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