31 August 2006 - Late night

Yup, figured I'd work on the car while the wife and kid sleep. This will help me get onto China time...I hope. As the last trip I had difficulty sleeping on the plane. Although that was probably due to flying in coach while my then previous boss was in business!! This time it is looking good as I'm on a stand-by list for business and there are currently 8 open seats...keeping my fingers crossed.

So, I took out the half shafts, the main drive shaft will require a bit more work. However, I'm taking 1 half of the pair in to Autozone tomorrow to order the u-joints and any other items needed to rebuild these. I know I need atleast 6 u-joints.

I also learned via the Corvette Forum that vinegar is a strong enough acid to remove rust! So I'll also be buying the largest container, or many of them, to soak my rusty parts in from now on. So far I've been cleaning the parts with brake cleaner before and after scrubbing the rust away with wire brushes and steel wool. What a knuckle buster! This process is to just melt the rust away, I'll just need to rinse it off then lightly go over it with some steel wool and rinse it again and dry it.

I'll be posting pics soon...also I'm looking into how to get the video links to work!

Mom and dad are coming to visit tomorrow (tonight, as i see it is after midnight). They will spend the holiday weekend here with Julie and Thane while I'm out of town. They all plan to go to the C&O canal rail trail for a ride if the weather is nice. As of now there is a chance of rain all weekend.

29 August 2006 - It's ALIVE!!!

Not a single backfire! This thing is all but dialed-in. Not having mufflers on would make it hard to fine-tune the rockers. But try as I might, I could not hear much knocking of the rockers. Although they should be darn close as we went through the rockers a couple of times prior to starting it up. The distributor will ground out and stall the engine if we connect the tach, so I'll need to trace back the wire to see if it is grounded somewhere.

THANKS FOR THE HELP, MATT, SCOTT, and the crew on the Corvette Forums!

Enjoy this video clip! (If I can get the link to work.)

Engine's 1st start

28 August 2006 - A hint of ...

smoke rolled out of the engine bay as the engine tried to fire! Yup, it seems I have a weak ground, but it fired 2 cylinders!! Tomorrow I'll mount new grounds for the block and the battery then fire it up! It seems the so-called new distributor I bought was faulty. A co-worker, Scott from our model shop, lent me an old HEI distributor and it produced the spark that I've been longing for. So I placed the plugs on and turned it over. After bumping it a few times to prime the fuel pump I turned the key and heard the sweet sound of it trying to fire. WOW, so close! Tomorrow may be the day! Stay tuned!