Daeron

get a purple one.

until I can talk to my uncle on that long-shot, heh.. I think the answer is yes.

Big Thanks!! I will take all the inspiration I can get!

i might be able to make a proper response to that tomorrow. Thanks for sending me on a laugh track right before bed, heh. Didn't see THAT coming a mile away!

I am playing with some ideas, here.. and I know that my uncle has lots of roadster parts of various states of quality, from OEM to BRE quality... I haven't had a chance to call him, because I am working nights. I have picked the internet apart every way I knew how, but can't find these specs anywhere. Basically, I'm looking to see what the length is; and if the ends are the same size as L-series rod ends. If anyone has this info handy, I would appreciate it.

Thanks, thats really all I was going for. Words are another one of my "things." (read: I talk too much )

http://search.harborfreight.com/cpisearch/web/search.do?keyword=leak-down $30 for the nice one, with a case, $40 for the "crummy" one. (chinese math, gotta love it!) Tony, how much would a pair of reliably accurate gauges cost, ballpark? I am on the fence for that one.. I like accurate instrumentation, but I can make do, soooo..

bitchin, I knew I would get SOME sort of positive response. As for the convention... I'm poor enough to be rebuilding a junk lawnmower. I think that says enough, heh. I will make it to the conventions when my posts have something to do with my car, deal?

first off, on the paris hilton joke. secondly, I *might* be able to find two panels with good hard backing, but less than Ideal upholstery in my uncles collection O parts. I didnt reply with this earlier, because it is a might.. but I will make an effort in the vague and indeterminable future to see if I can come through on this. You *are* just talking about making a glass knock off of the stiff paperboard underneath the vinyl material, right? Well, I promise nothing but I will see what I can do.

no problem. There are links to making home made leak down checkers if you can get some fittings and a gauge.. and I think a regulator of some sort. Unfortunately, I dont seem to have them bookmarked, but I swear I've seen 'em!

the compression tester has a check valve in it.

i knew i was gonna get my balls busted for that, heh. The lawnmower was fun, believe it or not.. the write up was what I did while I sat in my bedroom and cooled off.

excellent, congratulations on the new baby!

awww, JUST missed it! I will answer both and say fruit, and mow the lawn yourself. waffles or french toast?

My lawnmower sucks. It is an ancient craftsman bagger model, that has had three or four different engines on the frame over the course of its life. My landlord/roomate has had it forever, and has kept that one alive because he had and used the bag for it (the bag is huge) and we compost all of our yard waste and fish remains. The thing is so godawful looking that I will NOT even post a picture of it here. One front wheel is being held on with tie wire. Bad. It runs like a top, but its falling apart! So, somewhere Fletcher (my landlord) picked up this really nice Craftsman self-propelled mulching/bagging mower, I think from the dumpster at work?! I don't know. Its got a 6.75 horsepower Tecumseh engine on it, 22" cut. Just, your standard, MODERN, pretty nice self propelled mower. Nothing special.. but better than "the beast" with the broken recoil (we had to wind the rope back up manually ) We rebuilt the carburetor on it, replaced the spark plug and the air filter, and it ran like a top. Except, it had an oil leak REAL BAD, and was about ten times louder when you stood on the non exhaust side of the engine, than when you stood on the exhaust side. Rod Knock, anyone? So, no go on the new mow. Fast forward about a year to last week. My dad emailed me, saying that he had his "old" mower that he could give me, a five horse techumseh engine, it just needed a carburetor. He had rebuilt the carb on it completely, it looks beautiful.. it should run great... BUT, the carb will not run. He "got around to" rebuilding the carb on another mower he had (identical to my craftsman, actually) and wanted to know if i wanted this engine. Since I knew I had a recently rebuilt carburetor, I jumped on it. My dad also was aware that I had a need for some sort of lawnmower related parts.. we are kinda "buddies" like that, neither of us buys lawnmowers, we find "broken" ones and put them together into working ones. Its a pasttime as much as a money saver. Anyhow, I became the proud owner of a formerly self propelled, non running murray. Of course, as soon as I started taking things apart, I discovered that in the last year my nice, "rebuilt" carburetor had gotten all fouled up with junk and nastiness... wonderful. Re Rebuild time! Eventually got it taken care of, and in the course of this discovered that the bore on the 5 horse murray carb was about 60% of the size of the bore on the craftsman carb.. I am imagining that a large amount of the horsepower increase is from this bore change alone. The craftsman also had a different cylinder head, with the intake port on the bottom, and the craftsman intake manifold, as a result, had a downward slope to it. Other than that, the two engines were identical. The air filter setup, and the carburetors, were somewhat different though. There was some sort of vacuum line? coming out of the rear of the block, and on the murray it went into the air filter housing; whereas on the craftsman it went directly to a second hose barb on the carb. This barb appeared to lead into a red straw that snuck through the bore, and out into the air filter; without the air filter this carb will NOT run. So, step one (after the carb rebuild, heh) was to remove the engine cover, air filter, oil filler and gas tank assembly from the murray and replace it with the pieces from the craftsman. The craftsman recoil had a busted rope, so I just used the murray recoil. Lo!! And Behold.. Yah, the 5 horse has stripped exhaust threads, must JB weld that in the near future. But that is the same motor that was on the red frame.. with the carb and trimmings of the cratsman on it. It started fine, but wouldn't keep running after it started. The air filter was sopping wet, and I chalked it up to that, end afternoon 1. So today I got off from work early, and went out to beat my head against it, and sweat some more. (a lot more, actually..) I began by confirming that it ran good with a dry air filter, and set to removing the engine from the craftsman, examining the drive assembly (this is the first self propelled lawnmower I have had my fingers into) and making sure everything was going to be a direct swap as anticipated. Really, it is amazing how rarely I have seen two lawnmowers whose engines could not theoretically at least be swapped. It takes a serious oddball brand to be different. There were several minor issues that I wont bore you with details on; suffice it to say that I had to get inventive to retain both the blade brake, and find a way to activate the drive mechanism, because the cables that I had and the levers that I had did not all match up. In the end I had to kinda pinch the handle assembly from the murray, and put it on the craftsman, to get it to work right. I also had to use the original craftsman blade brake cable on the drive, and use the murray brake cable on the blade brake. On top of the "accesory witching", the blades had different methods of staying locked to the output shaft, and the blade for the engine we used was shot (and smaller) so there was a minor bit of ingenuity there as well.. but otherwise it went easy as pie. And so here we are. Back to where we started, appearance-wise anyhow. There are two covers still uninstalled in these pictures, because they were taken right after mowing the first trial patch. As soon as I had this thing together, on the very first successful start, I pushed it out for a victory lap around the weeds in the back. Runs great. You can see some fresh gore on her, from her battle out in the yard. Aint life grand? here is a gratuitous shot of my admired and appreciated assistant: and the aftermath: I really want to paint the deck, now. I DEFINITELY plan on removing the Craftsman badging and stencilling DAERON on there somewhere, ad the very least. I am not bragging about my insane skills, or anything.. Just sharing something I thought might be interesting to some of you people walking a less unusual path than I To those who understand what I did, and have done the same, I salute you! This kinda tinkering is fun, and beneficial; I take garbage and turn it into a $300 lawnmower And finally... What I am about to say I mean on so many different levels.... THANKS, DAD!!!

Okay, I finally dug up Mario's thread about his exhaust, complete with videos to hear how it sounds. http://forums.hybridz.org/showthread.php?t=113984&highlight=pipes Summary: mario has a full twin pipe system, meaning that as I said above, his type is "lacking scavenge effect" and, while it is the MSA system he has apparently deleted the two Y-pipes that first joined the header into one pipe and then split the collector into two pipes again. The MSA system, as purchased, is designed to hook up to a single pipe. He didnt list the diameter of the collector (obviously) but he quoted the size of the two pipes at just under 1.75" each. Prox, when you ran this system was it with fully divorced pipes, or did you have a collector?

excellent post

You know what struck me the most about this video? I REALLY like the way you get in the car and start your engine. every single time, (or as near as possible, for cold starts at the very least) you should crank, and let idle for a few moments, AT LEAST. I like to blip just like you did, let it idle a bit more, blip a couple times, and then pull out into the road. basically, any OHC engine needs to get oil pressure built up before you make it rev.. cold cranking a car and immediately revving it up is bad, and I think it is easy to see why. I also think that the opposite, letting the engine oil itself well before stressing it with higher RPMs, can only be good for the life of a motor.

other than the rust in the tailgate sill area, it looks to be in fantastic shape. Take a screwdriver and tap along the qarter panel window area rust pretty hard; anything you "tap" through is rusted badly enough that losing is isnt really a loss, it needs to be replaced anyhow.. but judging from the photos, it looks like it should prove to be pretty solid. Hardly a guess to put any weight on since i am thousands of miles away, but hey, take what you get. Try the screwdriver to know for sure; if you cant tap through it then it IS good and strong, right? Looks like the neighbors unloaded "that damn rusty old datsun" finally, lucky you! good find! You ought to buy a steering wheel first.. that would be inspiring, and it needs doing anyhow.

monzter: that was exactly what I had in mind; my uncle has several different racing oil pans for the roadster engine, from nissan comp to original BRE pieces, so I have seen lots to give me ideas.

what is that mesmerizing engine bay a part of????

Gettin' a little trigger happy, there, BRAAP??? Watch out.. Tiberius started off the saaaame way.....

Thanks for pointing that out, but I sorta knew that already, heh. Not the specifics, (thanks for the tip on the high sidewalls, that gave me a great visual concept) but I am fully aware of the ideas of baffling your sump to keep it full. I just hadn't thought of using an old oilpan as the actual sump, and that makes things wonderfully simple.

I don't wanna sound.. funny, er nuthin...... ..but it always gives me chills when you do that. Don't tell anyone, I think you and I like the same sounds coming from the exhaust

I see what you mean, and am now intrigued much more by these photographs.. any chance of a link to where we could get higher resolution versions? it IS a very nice little spread.