Update
Ok, guys...here's the update. I have been working crazy hours stressed out. I made it through the holidays. I was up in Pittsburg OH on business, drove to Toledo...had dinner with some clients. Came out to my rental car and found out that I had been robbed. The asshats stole all my luggage, my laptop, keys, tax returns (I had just done 2010 and amended 2009 to try to get some money back for the damage from the floods that we had. My birthday was Feb 25, when it hit midnight.....I was looking in dumpsters around toledo looking for my luggage. I didnt get any of it back. I got snowed in....spent 2 days with nothing but my wallet flipping my underwear over. I didnt even have a phone charger. I got home on the 26th. My wife met me at the airport in long term parking to bring me another set of keys to my dually. (I couldnt even get my truck out of the parking lot because the azzholes stole all my keys. I stayed up most of the night getting all my credit cards turned off and changing passwords to online banking and what not. I fell asleep at 2am and I woke up at 4am with the bed shaking. I looked over at my wife and she was having Grand Siezures. She has never had one before and I have never seen one in person. It was like something out of a horror movie. I rushed her to the hospital...she was still have siezures one right after the other with her eyes rolled back in her head. I almost wrecked running north of a 100mph down our curvy road we live on. Thank god it was 4 in the am and there was no traffic. I got to the ER and they couldnt stop it. She siezed for 9 hours. They finally had to put her to sleep to get it to stop. She was in the hospital for a week. We have been in the hospital / ER countless times since then. She lost her drivers license (mandatory 6 mths if you have a siezure in TN). She lost her job. She has been bedridden since then. We found out that she has a heart disease called pumary hypertension. It is fairly advanced and they think it is being caused by the lupus. She is in horrible pain 24 hours a day as the lupus is also attacking her nerve endings. So now, I do all the grocery shopping, cleaning, dishes, laundry...etc..etc. You have no idea how much your spouse does until it stops. Our lives turned upside down at the end of Feb and has not gotten much better since. We are going to the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville Florida the week of June the 13th for them to try to figure out what else is wrong with her. They tolds us that we would be there a week for sure and possibly two. Work has been relentless and I have been juggling work, with my sisters schedule and all my friends wives that dont work to help me look after her and take her to Specialist appts when I dont need to take off. Needless to say, the burb stopped for a while. My dually needed brakes so I tore it aparts and put all new brakes on it and made some upgrades while I had it torn down. This has been the first weekend that I have been sort of caught up with my household chores and I spent some time in the shop this weekend. I haven't even started the boat this summer and we live on the lake. It is killing me listening to everyone blast up and down the lake but I am worried sick about my wife.
I worked on the burb all day yesterday and a half day today. I got the headers and multi layer stainless gaskets installed for the final time. I did multiple mock ups and a ton of bending to get them to fit. I also put the spark plugs in for good and ran all the plug wires and put the distrubutor together. (I had to take all of it apart to get the engine in. (it wouldnt clear the firewall. When I put the coil cover and wire hold down on the MSD Billet HEI, there are 3 phillips head screws that hold it on. To get the top on in (again due to a lack of firewall clearance) I had to get a phillips bit and put a 1/4" boxed end wrench and turn it a 1/3rd of a turn for 30 minutes to get it tight. But I got it.
I had also been putting off building the bracket that will hold the TPS sensor on the carb so that the ECM that runs the 4L80E will know hoe much throttle is being applied. When I finally got it all mocked up, modifed and installed, my regulator and carb plumbing that I had mad would clear the TPS sensor. I had to redo all of that and put the regulator at the back. I had to take the carb, put it on the bench, tape it completely up and trim some of the components so that it would not hit the regulator when you would go from idle to full throttle. I finally got it all like I wanted it but crap like this is extremely tedious and takes tons of time. Once that was complete, I finally got the carb installed for good. (I will connect the tps wires when I install the tranny ECM.) I got the power steering hooked up and I got the throttle connected where when the pedal is on the floor, I have 100% wide open throttle and it on the idle stop when you let off the accelerator. I did alot of tedious stuff this weekend. Hopefully, if I can work on it next weekend, I can get the rest of the fuel system plumbed and the tank installed with the new #10 pickup. If it wasnt for what is going on with my wife, this would have been done along time ago. It will get finished if it hairlips the Pope.......I just don't ask anymore "What the Fuk else can happen"! Anywhere here are some pics. Hopefully I will get some time to work on it soon to finish it up. I have NEVER not finished a project that I started. I will get it finished.....you guys may all loose interst in it...but it will get fineshed.
Thanks,
John
