Yay ... 2nd baby step to Carlisle Gold with this project!
Got off work early yesterday and swung by the shop for some quality time with Calvin. I was hoping to get the engine stand together and get the engine on it. A secondary objective was to get the blast cabinet "out of storage" and OpCheck it. Getting the cabinet "out of storage" pretty much meant getting all the cobwebs removed, plugging the vacuum/light power cord it, airing up the compressor and checking function on everything.
The shop has pretty much just been a storage facility for the last 4 years -- Just a place to park the '49 and the '73 Binder. Since then, the '49 has come over here to HQ, along with the Binder to make room for the '27 project and Joe's '69 1/2-ton project.
I think the last person to actually use the blast cabinet was Hambone for the '66 K-10 project .... and that's been a few years now.
So there were a LOT of cobwebs to clear out and dust from the viewing window. So that all went fine.
Until I went to switch the compressor on .... This is a compressor (5 hp, 2-stage with a 60 gallon vertical tank) I got more than 20 years ago. It hadn't actually been used much, either. well, prechecking it, I noticed it didn't have any oil on the case. Oh well, so much for the cabinet opcheck.
So I returned to the engine stand.
I got the stand put together and was ready to mate it to the engine ... I didn't have the right bolts ...
Done for the day??? Well, methinks, I could always run next door to my former neighbor (and who we actually sold the farm to), the Stihl Dealership, and see if they had compressor oil and the right bolts (4 - inch 3/8-14 shoulder bolts) to go into the 174's bell housing. So I did. And They did. Cool, I was back in work!
Now with the right bolts, I started to mate things up. Only .... the bolts wouldn't go very far in ... crud, corrosion, whatEVUR.
I needed to chase the threads or else risk damaging the only bell housing available on the East Coast for this engine ... (Not actually true -- there's another one on the parts engine, but you get the point...) and my tap and die set were back at HQ.
Soooooooooo ..... back to the compressor. I put the oil in and fired things up. All great until things stalled at 20 psi ....
About the time I was about to say a naughty word, I remembered to shut the drain valve at the bottom of the tank. Things went pretty smoothly after that. My bag of Black Diamond medium abrasive was even dry enough to use!
I managed to get a part of the radiator support blasted.
It was about time to go home anyway, so I declared victory, awarded myself several decorations on the spot, turned off the lights and went home a hero.
... trying not to think about how long this project is going to take at this rate ...
John
