Saturday, September 4, 2010

345 on Board

Bill D and I took a ride up to Sweet-T's place this morning to check out Dirt Devil's engine. It was safely ensconced inside a collapsed shed, tucked behind a dolly with two transmissions on. We disgorged the shed and hooked a chain to the dolly that the engine was on and dragged it out far enough to get the crane behind it. It was all going smoothly until the crane decided it wanted to sit a little deeper in the soil on one side and take some paint off the left end cap. After some creative use of tie downs, we got it straightened out and on board Heavy D for the ride home. I must say that with the engine and crane positioned slightly behind the axle, it does make a difference in how Heavy D rides, even though it didn't squat the springs much. Decidedly lighter in the front, but still solid as a rock driving down the road.



Took a little tour of Dan's place while we were there. Pale Rider still sits almost complete in the garage. The yellow 800 sits up front without a top. What's left of Ugly Whitey still sits next to an old foundation and out back is the rest of the herd: nearly 20 IH and cars of various vintages. Several of 'em are mostly grown over with honeysuckle. All of them are eventually going to rot away sitting out in the open.

In the afternoon, I decided to drop the transfer case, since everything else was out. I think that I'll change all the u-joints too, since well, I can.

Tomorrow, I think I'll start cleaning up the frame and firewall to prep for the engine going in. Need to do some more slicing and dicing on the rust in the driver's foot well too.

2 comments:

Bill Dugan said...

Glad we could help! I hope Finn didn't leave too many raisins hidden in the front seat of Heavy D.

cromulent said...

Thanks to Brian's help last night Hanky's old 304 and top are on the trailer, ready to be scrapped tomorrow. Little by little the old is going out and the new is going in, I guess. :)