Tunachuckers Can-O'-Blog

Lots of new, likely interesting, possibly exciting, and definitely intriguing developments in the Land of Tuna...

As you can see from the above three-twenty by two-forty, the garage I have wanted to build since moving to Carolina South has finally lept out of my head and is taking root in the soil around my house.  A foundation!  Concrete!  Rebar!  Everyone knows only good things can come from the use of rebar.  While my original plans involved digging the footings, pouring the concrete, and laying the block for the foundation of the garage myself, good sense prevailed and I hired a contractor to perform these steps.  As my good friend Matt likes to say, for every household project there is an appropriate tool to use, and sometimes, that tool is a checkbook.  34 yards of concrete and 210 cinder blocks will comprise the basis for the soon-to-be erected 48 by 28 Testament to Manliness. 

Hopefully all this brick and mortar work will be completed this week, so the actual framing can commence.  Armed with a Bostich and a Porter Cable, I'll be doing this bit of the project myself, though I'll probably have to convince some of the 'Chuckers, and perhaps some other folks to assist with the raising of the walls and roof. 

Ah, so _that's_ what this post has to do with the Tunachuckers!  Am I planning on bribing able-bodied friends and neighbors to help build my barn?  Yes.  Do I plan on compensating them in the common Confederate currency of beer and red meat?  Absolutely.  Are there other reasons, apart from gastronomical, that any of them might also want to help with the erection?  You betcha!  For you see, the long-awaited garage will also become the new headquarters of Tunachucker Racing!  No more squatting in the dirt in my old barn, or stealing space in Rob's place from his wife's BMW.  We'll have a shop, replete with all the necessary elements of a proper racing shop:  Compressed air, welder, beer fridge, bench grinder, big honkin' stereo, auto lift, and a Chestnut tree out back to relieve one's self underneath.  It will be a Nirvana of Testosterone.  Christy and Clint have even volunteered to donate their old window air conditioners to the cause. 

Now as it turns out, this weekend is not only July 10th, the 33rd anniversary of my birth, but it is also the week before the deadline for the September LeMons race at CMP.  By the 17th we have to be registered up- which means nothing more than gathering at least four of us together, uploading some hilarious and/or incriminating pictures of ourselves, and coming up with some inspired prose to convince the fine LeMons judges to allows us to enter the venerable Volvo in said race. 

I would like to propose Sunday, July 11th to throw a LeMons Registration Pre-Barn Concrete Slab Party.  We will gather at my place, consume malty, hoppy beverages, create our LeMons entry, and then stand around and admire the freshly poured Portland.  All Tunachuckers and Tunachucker groupies are invited to attend.  RSVP in the comment section below, or email me, so we can figure out how much food to make and alcohol to procure.  If you forget the address, email me for it.  I'm thinking an early-dinner sort of shin-dig, being that it'll be a school night, so figure around 2 o'clock, and we'll eat around 5 or so.  Be there or be a Rhombus!

*UPDATE* The slab is poured!  And its the most beautiful piece of concrete I've ever seen.  These guys do excellent work. 

Here I am, again, in the Greater Chicagoland Area, as the local disc jockeys call it.  Here I am!

What does this have to do with Los Tunachuckers?  I haven't the foggiest, except that a past trip to Chicago nearly thrashed our plans for the February race.  We're still planning on racing in September, and I really hope it isn't a stretch to say that my periodic forays into this sausage-loving city will be wrapped up by then. 

Who will be there in SEPTEMBER?  (Note, I had originally written "February", as I was obviously not yet awake when I first wrote this) Well, myself, Matt S., and Anthony fer sure.  We will need a fourth driver, and the hope is that the wavering Rob will land in the "sure, why not?" camp by July, when the application is due.  And we'd like to have 1 or 2 other drivers, and maybe a few crew members would be nice.  I think a certain Waterwolf may be retired and may be hankering for some Kershaw action by then, but who knows?  He can't turn a wrench, but he sure does make some mean speedies. 

Anybody need a 1964 Cadillac Sedan DeVille?  I'm selling mine:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=190404592672&viewitem=&sspagename=STRK%3AMESELX%3AIT

429 V8, power _everything_, black with light blue interior.  Who doesn't need one?

Been busy.  Much happening, very little of it LeMons related.  For instance, I got this shiney new internet service.  Its called Sprint, though whenever I try to type "Sprint", it ends up coming out as "Spring" and I have to back up and correct it.  At any rate, I had been stumbling along here in the boonies with a satellite internet called Wildblue, which is speedier than dialup, but very weather sensistive.  Since I tend to do most of my internets at home when the skies precipitate, having an ISP that succumbed to the cumulus was not a tenable proposition.  Enter Mobile Broadband, 3G, and at least  half-dozen other terms and acronyms and psuedonymns which mean as much to me as "SU jetting" means to the other 99.122% of the population.  All I know is, its twice as fast as Wildblue, has one quarter the ping time, costs 5 bucks more per month, and works all across the country.  Deal.  I even got two months free for signing up. 

What this means is that I now feel a bit more empowered to make posts!  Hey now.  So, you remember about that pair of 122s I bought a while back?  Well, the red one of the duo became roadworthy, and went on its maiden 70 mile journey without a trouble.  However, when I went to crank it up the next morning to drive to work, the engine fired and sounded...off.  So I keyed off the spark and drove my sparkless wonder (a '78 Mercedes 300D) to work that day.  That night, poking around under the valve cover showed the problem:  the #1 intake valve stuck open.  Either the valve stem had bent, or the stem had seized in the guide; either way, a full valve job was in order.

To simplify matters, I had an assortment of B18 cylinder heads laying about, so I picked the best looking (ie least rusty) of the lot to rebuild and swap onto the Little Red Devil's motor.  New valve seals and an upper end gasket kit were procured from IPD, and after delving into the project, I discovered the lifters and pushrods were looking tired (that is, dished and bent, respectively), too- might as well replace them while I'm at it. 

Now a DIY valve job isn't terribly expensive- even with lifters and pushrods and all the gaskets and seals and whatnot I think I was into it for about $300- but the labor can be all that you want it to be.  In short, you can throw new seals on, tidy things up, and bolt it back on, or you can meticulously clean everything and polish/ swirl the ports to try to eek out every last iota of performance.  Since this car is supposed to be a daily driver, I tried to focus on work that would enhance smooth, efficient running.  I cleaned off all the carbon deposits, the gasket surfaces, and surface rust.  I did a single angle "drill and paste" valve job on the seats, cleaned and oiled and assembly lubed everything, and screwed the whole thing back together. 

Crazily, it ran immediately.  Pretty well, too.  I checked the valve lash and it was off- by a lot.  Lashing the valves and doing some timing and carb sets got the 44 year old 1.8 liter pushrod beast absolutely mewing.  I even fixed the cold start problem- turns out it was simply a disconnected choke plate spring!  (And the rear brake cylinders, which leaked, now -happily- don't, thanks to an $8 seal kit from Rock Auto)

So, will the Little Red Devil reward my patience and hard work?  We shall see...

To: 'Anthony', 'Brian', 'McCall', 'Robert', 'Jamie', 'Matthew'

cc: 'Gary', 'Matt', 'Katie', 'Clint'

If you find yourself in the "To:" heading of this email, it is because you have once piloted a 1966 Volvo Amazon around the short course at Carolina Motorsports Park.

If you find yourself in the "Cc:" heading of this email, it is because you have once turned a socket, wrench, screwdriver, or (more likely) hammer on a 1966 Volvo Amazon, allowing the aforementioned 6 (well, 7, including yours truly) to pilot said car around said track.

And if you're any of these 11 poor folk, you recall how a combination of bad luck and ham-fistedness and carelessness cost us the last race. No, we weren't likely to win. But it was the first race that we've gone out for that we didn't even finish.

This is a precedent that I will not allow to stand.

I, for one, am going to miss the second CMP race of 2010 with reluctance. I wish we could be there. But, the green flag drops on that 100-odd car field a week from Saturday, and our car still sits with a spun main bearing. I think we all pretty much figured on sitting this dance out. But it still stings, a little.

Race #3 is slated for September 21-22, about 4 months from now. The ever-looming entry deadline is July 17th, about half as far. We've talked about everything from Ford Exploder swaps to T5 row-your-owns to Marine engines and all sort of other crazy stuff. And don't get me wrong: LeMons is made of the crazy stuff. I await the day with great anticipation that we can show up in the Mother of all clunkers, armed and loaded for bear and gator with 200+ horsepower, brakes to grab the Earth and halt it on its rotation, and driving skills to boot. But we aren’t there....yet.

Since we put all of about 3 miles on the car since its last round of modifications and repairs, and since we then (calculators out!) spent approximately $893 per lap for the last race, I think it will be good for the pocketbook as well as for the morale if we approach this fall's race with a bit of modesty. My proposal: tidy up the paintwork, check all systems, drop in the B20 I have sitting in my shop (which ostensibly does run) and try to minimize our losses and maximize our time on track.

Let's look at it this way: I provide the engine (B20) and a spare B18 in case we have to swap during the race. Swapping engines, I think we'll all agree, is easier than trying to clusterfuckedly fix one if it goes up in smoke (or down on oil). Mr. Meyers supplies a spare gearbox (he still has one I gave him to rebuild) and we drag along the old spare front and rear suspension components for good measure. 4 or 5 brave other drivers each pony up the entry fee, and -bang- we're racing, gents. Simple. Back to basics. Cheap.

If all goes well, we'll party like animals again Friday night, all get a chance to drive Saturday, avoid the penalty box, brew up some most excellent chili for the cookoff, finish the race on Sunday, win some bizarre award Jay Lamm concocts specifically for us, and head home with that same feeling we had after the first race.

Not Victory. But Pretty Damn Close. Who's in?