Sorry for my rather slim postings of late but I have been quite distracted by a bad trot in the back department, a problem with my sports car and well just feeling a bit down over all.
To deal with the last first there are times when chronic pain just gets you down and no mater how well you have intellectualised that you have the right stoic attitude so that you can endure and still find purpose and meaning in your life it does not take much to tip you onto the unwelcome slippery slide. this time it was being told that I had to get a pain specialist to give me the tick of approval for the continuing prescription for Norspan patches, so like a good patient I duly contacted the pain clinic and after some weeks I got a letter back telling me that they did not want me to be a patient there. The upside is that I have discovered that all I need is the approval of a second GP to continue to get the medication. I know very well that there has to be adequate controls on S8 drugs however its not as if I am asking for self injectable morphine here. Worse still though is the feeling of vulnerability you have when it looks like the medication that you need may suddenly become unavailable to you. Simply put its a worry I could well do without. It will probably surprise no one that as a consequence it feel even more disgust and disdain for recreational users of opiates because its their propensity to lie cheat and steal that have made such control measures a necessary impedimenta to those who have a real medical need to use this class of drugs.
My sports car has been running like a total dog lately and it to has been doing my head in. There is a problem with the fuel injection system that means it just refuses to run smoothly and it just keeps cutting out and refusing to run at all well above idle. I have tried mucking ar0und with the the throttle position sensor as broken wires (since fixed) caused similar symptoms but that has not solved the problem. It could be a wiring fault elsewhere but the complexity of the wiring from the donor car is mind bogglingly horrible. After much thought I have decided to seek a rather radical solution by going totally retro in the fuel delivery department which will mean that I can have an amazingly simple wiring loom in the car . to make this happen I have just bought a Nissan N15 engine (the whole car for $100!) that will mate up to my transmission the same as my N16 motor does but instead of a computer triggered ignition system it has a camshaft driven distributor to provide the sparks. on the intake side I am going to completely remove the EFI manifold and replace it with the twin Carbs off a 91 Honda civic this will necessitate me having to make or modify an inlet manifold. My plan is to make a new manifold in steel because I can weld steel and fabricate the whole thing myself without having to shell out hard earned cash to have it made in aluminium. This should not be that hard to do I will just have to cut two flange plates from 4mm sheet and then cut and shape the four tubes from each port to meet with the two carb throats . Living in Queensland there will be no real need to provide an coolant supply to the manifold and as my braking system is not boosted I won’t even need to have a vacuum take off for that either will need a vacuum supply to the Trimatic though and it seems that the wisdom is that there should be a connection between the two pairs of inlet runners to equalise them . Though there is a weight penalty for using steel the manifold and carbs air cleaner et al will undoubtedly weigh less than intake runners and plenum that they will replace and as ditching the EFI for simple carbs will mean that my electrical system can likewise be minimised I am thinking that I ought to be up to 10kg better off overall.
As for tuning the carbs to the Nissan engine well I know that they were working fine in my brother’s Honda until it did its timing belt and went bang so I won’t fiddle with them any more than I have to and as the Honda engine is only 1oocc smaller than my Nissan lump I doubt that they will be that far off in terms of the jetting.either. The result I am looking for is a car that is much more amenable to user maintenance, that has some weight loss and better usability over all. Now that is not too much to ask now is it?
If all of this works then I will be a some what happier camper but at the moment I am feeling rather, to put it politely hacked off about life in general there is not much joy when you have everything around you seems to be competing for my attention and requiring me to do so many things at the same time. Oh I will get over this temporary ennui as soon as I have something that is going my way for a while…. speaking of which my better half has just come to me telling me that the damn washing machine is not doing the right thing either! Its not my day today …
Wish I could find something to cheer about Comrades
Iain Hall's SANDPIT 