Tuesday August 28, 2007

Gas: 2.89.

Didn't get the motors swapped but got lots of other stuff done. Next weekend is Mass Exodus, and still have some cleanup work to do, including the engine swap and re-arranging the cars.

I have determined that I will need to make some mods to the engine bay of DaVench before I can put the 455 in, the new HEI distributor won't clear the firewall, and I don't like the idea of just dinging the firewall with a BFH to allow the distributor to fit.

Wednesday August 22, 2007

Gas: 2.87, going back up now.

I'm renting an engine hoist over the weekend, going to yank a few motors and get rid of a few cars. Hopefully.

Later!!!

Monday August 13, 2007

Gas: 2.64 this morning when I filled up. Saturday in Bemidji it was at 2.79 when GR was at 2.65. Hmmm.

It was a blast. I will try to upload more photos. Unfortunately, I filled up my memory card so several photos I thought I had I actually didn't and I couldn't re-take them. Such is life.

Now for the Itasca County Fair.

NCMFAAA 2007

August 10, 11, 12, 2007.

The Club's Avery Steam Traction Engine, I believe there may be one other like it still in existence.

This Waterloo Boy restoration was just completed in time for the show by the owner, a club member.

Allis Chalmers Road Patrol, a light road grader.  Owned by a club member.

This member converted an Allis Chalmers RC into a forklift that he uses around his own shop as well as on the club grounds.

A custom Ford with a flathead V8 engine.

This is one better, a custom Ford with a Lincoln Flathead V12.

This Ford retired from a Golf Course.

International Titan.  I think the first time I saw it was after it had been fully restored, that was 15+ years ago.

This is a little home-built job that I think is a couple of years old.  As I recall, it has a Briggs Lawn tractor engine and tranny.

Matt driving a friends Allis Chalmers "B".

A toy custom made by the owner for his grandkids.  If my memory is correct, it started out as a John Deere 318 Garden Tractor.  It now has a diesel engine and narrow front.

The draft horse club joins us for an exhibition of their own.

The contraption next to the hay wagon is a "Sno-Loader"  When it works, it scoops up a bale and throws it on the trailer by spring action.  I have seen it work three or four times in a row, but usually, it misses or drops or breaks the bales.

Wish I could have captured the whole thing, but this team has just finished demonstrating cutting a square corner.

Some of the many miniature engines shown.

Thursday August 9, 2007

Here is a photo of the 71 Ventura II as I got it home

Thursday August 9, 2007

Gas: 2.67. It has been dropping slowly, a penny every few days, for the last week. What I think is bad is that diesel is at 3.04.

Went "dumpster diving" for cars this last weekend, picked up a few vehicles that were free for the hauling. Place really looks like an "illegal junk yard" now. Picked up an 86 Buick Park Avenue, it "ran good when we parked it 3 years ago", it was "an extra car and we don't need it". Turns out it has a blown tranny. Salvaged a few parts off of it and hauled it to the crusher. Also picked up an 89 and a 91 Plymouth Acclaim. Both have been robbed of many drivetrain parts, but I think that between the two plus a few more parts that I already have I may be able to get the 91 running again. Neither has been licensed for the last 6-8 years. Also picked up a 77 Pontiac Catalina that hasn't been licensed since 1988. It is also missing a few parts, but the body is surprisingly sound except for the hood which is really bad, there is surface rust on the entire vehicle but the hood actually has some serious rust-thru on it. And, when we opened the hood the hinges were very stiff, and then when we tried to close it the hood bent, which I seem to recall was a problem on those anyways. I think we can build it into a decent vehicle with parts that we have, my only concern is the hood. It would be good to find a solid hood for it. I have been shopping for a new one but cannot find one, so I may need to repair this one which may be difficult.

The last car we picked up is a 1971 Pontiac Ventura II. The body is severely rusted, both rear fenders and most of the trunk is missing, the rear spring mounts are just floating in air under the trunk lid. The bottom of the drivers door is gone, and there is rust-thru on the rocker just behind the right front wheel. The rest of the body is pretty sound. It has a broken engine (307) and a tranny that need to go back to the previous owner. I hope that it will be the future home of my 455 HO. I'm playing with various ideas for it, first thing I need to do is yank the engine and tranny and return them, then start tearing it down. I intend to strip it to pieces and then slowly rebuild it my way, so it will probably take a year or three. The Ventura is part of what is known as the NOVA family; the Chevy Nova, Olds Omega, Pontiac Ventura, and Buick Apollo were (I think) the first GM Corporate Car. The four cars share many many parts, and from a quick look around it appears that almost every part I need is available aftermarket at a reasonable price.

From what little I know about the Ventura it appears that it was never built with a real Pontiac engine except maybe in the 74 GTO, although there are hints that it almost got the 455 as an option in 72. Quite a few Ventura's (and Nova's) have had Big Engines installed over the years, and I understand that there are a few with 455's installed, but it will still be a very unique car compared to the Camaro's and Mustang's that show up at shows. I just hope that I can do it justice.

I've added some photos.

The 92 Voyager has turned out pretty good. It still has what appears to be a few bad electrical connections, but on the whole it is becoming more reliable. Here's what we had to do: New fuel pump ($180), Front springs (salvage), light bulbs ($4), oil change ($20), alignment and flat repair ($100). It still has the oil light coming on at idle. I bought a new pressure switch ($12), but haven't installed it yet because I do not have the proper tool. I also do not think it will help, because after talking to the engine rebuilder I think that it is either an oil pump problem or a bearing tolerance problem. At this point I'm not going to worry about it a lot; the engine was rebuilt almost 8 years and 80,000 miles ago and has had the light on at idle ever since day one. The person who rebuilt the engine doesn't recall replacing the oil pump at that time and does recall that not every bearing in the engine was replaced. So, I suspect that I will wait until the engine dies before that problem gets fixed.

This weekend is the "tractor show", technically the "23rd Annual Threshing & Antique Show" put on by the Northern Minnesota Farm and Antique Association (somehow, I think that I don't have the name quite correct). That will keep us busy this weekend. Then, starting next Wednesday (actually, a day earlier for entries) is the 115th Itasca County Fair, so we will be very busy for the next week or so.

I'm finally going to give in to peer pressure and convert my work network over to all Cisco. We have a pair of 6509's, a pair of 4510's, and a slew of 3750's ordered and on the way. This will give me a fully redundant network, no single point of failure, 10gig backbone, with gig and POE to the desktop. This should put us in good position for the coming EHR, and should finally give me some backup if I get sick again. I think the final straw was my illness in April; although nothing happened, if something had then I would not have been able to help, and the nearest Extreme support is in the Twin Cities. Once we are duplicated we should be much more fault tolerant, and if anything does happen there are several Cisco gurus here in GR plus many more scattered all over the Northland. I really like the Extreme switches, I think they are probably the best bang for the buck, they have been extremely reliable, no bottlenecks, but I need the backup. If we had a bigger IS department and could afford to have 2 people dedicated to the network it would be different, but as it is I have to rely on the user network for my backup, and the Cisco user network is probably its greatest asset.

Now, I just need to fix my server problems. Looks like we may move away from the many individual small servers that we currently use (some of which are 8+ years old!) to a pair of small but scalable SAN's, one in each building, a server cluster attached to each SAN and using virtual servers. This should provide us with some fault tolerance, disaster recovery, and the ability to maintain and upgrade the systems with little or no end-user downtime.

Time to get busy now!!

Wednesday August 1, 2007

Gas: Everyone is at 2.71 since last Saturday. Was in Bemidji Sat PM and gas there was at 2.99. Very unusual to see that big of a difference in favor of GR.

Got the 92 Voyager running like a top. Oil lite comes on at idle when warm, need to figure out whether to install a HV oil pump or rebuild the freshly rebuilt engine. Tranny was shifting erratically for a while but it seems to have fixed itself. May need to find new linkage bushings.

Had a blast at the Car Shows and swap meet over last weekend. Some pretty nice cars. Got some steel Chevy wheels and some carb parts for the F100. I think I have decided to get the Ventura and let the Catalina go, still need to find a place to tear down the engine and body to rebuild both.

Still don't know what the problem with VGer is, have decided to put it on the back burner for a while, maybe inspiration will strike while working on other projects.