Tuesday, June 21, 2011

Father’s Day Present

I spent a very nice Father’s Day enjoying fine food, marvelous music, and some quality garage time. The latter consisted of Ringo bodywork and engine work. I attempted to empty the welder’s gas bottle by making molten metal attaching the outer pads for mounting the rear foot of the front seats. Since the replacement floor is different than the original, I had to fabricate some spacers to ensure the seats will go back in level. With that done, I still had a few pounds left in the bottle.

Without enough gas to get serious about attacking the patchwork required under rear seat, I moved on to engine work. Months back, I made a few frustrated attempts at removing one of the head studs from the 95 HP engine. It was time to get back at it. Instead of trying to turn out what was left of the stud, I decided to go route of drilling out the remains and re-tapping the hole. After grinding the stud’s broken end down near the surface of the block, I punched a dimple in the center and started drilling with my sharpest smaller drill bit. After going down about a half an inch, the bit broke off flush. Crap! At that point, it was fortunately time to get ready for the picnic dinner I was treated to, so I averted doing any more damage to the block.

Since it’s now impossible to drill out a broken drill bit, I will attempt to drill around the center with the small bit. Hopefully that will free up the broken bit so I can pull it out and proceed with drilling out the broken piece.
By the way, the present this post’s title refers to was the opportunity to spend an afternoon in the garage doing what I love to do.

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