Firebird of DOOM

Ah, the latest in the farcical Corvette saga. A mysterious noise has appeared!

Initial diagnostics suggest it's coming from the valvetrain on the passenger's side, but a cursory inspection didn't turn up anything obvious. Based on careful listening with a rubber hose stuck to my ear, I'm guessing it's the exhaust rocker, pushrod, or lifter on the #4 cylinder. I'll dig into it this weekend.

No automotive rebuild would be complete without at least one minor disaster. On fireup and driving around there was a clicking noise in the bellhousing with the clutch fully depressed, and an occasional bang, which I mistakenly assumed was an exhaust backfire, as it didn't really have a metallic tone to it.

Earl and I worked on the Corvette all day today, and got the new radiator installed and the engine, transmission, etc.. back in. All that remains is the exhaust system, fluids, and some electrical connections. Assuming nothing goes wrong it should be running again tomorrow!

I've been slowly working on the Corvette's engine, bolting one or two items onto it here and there. It had to happen eventually--I've pretty much run out of parts. I guess it's time to get off my ass and get it back in the car.

The cylinder heads for my Corvette finally came home. My friend Ken did a really nice port job on them, including a lot of work on the chambers to unshroud the valves and some work on the oil drainback holes. He even did it for free!

Simon (my Golden Retriever) and I camped out at Ocotillo Wells this weekend. Since I suspected that the #162 main jet I had settled on last time out was a little rich, I bought some new plugs and proceeded to do a plug chop with a #160 main. When they say plug chop, the emphasis is on the chop. What you do is cut the body of the plug away so that you can see the color band deposited at the base of the porcelain after a WOT blast. What you're looking for is an approximately 2mm wide band of light brown color.

I did a bunch of work on the 250R today. First, I bought yet another AC Racing product: a new bumper! There's not really any way I can justify this purchase other than pure asthetics, but I do think it looks pretty neat.

We've had an ongoing problem with the exhaust on Dorothy's Banshee. The rubber exhaust collars that came with the Toomey pipes didn't fit very securely, and were a constant source of exhaust leaks, as they allowed the slip joint between the pipe and the stinger to slide apart. We also had one of the silencer bolts fall out due to vibrations.

I drove over to the Ocotillo Wells SVRA today for a few hours of riding, to test out my new AC pro pegs, grips, and to dial in my sea level jetting.

There were a couple things I really didn't like about my quad when I bought it. It had a cheesy cooler rack and an even cheesier set of nerf bars. I don't really have any use for a cooler rack (I have one of those water backpacks), and it was long enough that it hung over the tailgate of my pickup truck when the quad was in the bed. As for the nerf bars, well, I've never particularly liked the look of nerfs in the first place, and the ones that came on my quad were held on by u-straps and a single bolt on each peg. Yes, they wobbled.