Pushed my limits a bit today

I was out in the heat again today paying bills and I really cut it close this time. I had to pay the phone bill after getting to the office just after they closed yesterday, so I was out during the day in the sun and the heat. Well I didn’t get any water or hydrate before I left and I started getting nauseous walking around. I didn’t check what the temperature was, but it was over 90 and it felt muggy when I opened the door.

I think I might have saved enough money from various gigs to get that brake hone and install those spindles this week. I have 2 trips to the lab rat keeper and another trip to take movies of my heart beating. This time I’m getting driven to the echocardiogram so I don’t have to spend more than 7 hours on the roads to get a 20 minute procedure done. I have to wear that infernal Automatic Blood Pressure Monitor and carry a jug of my urine around again, but maybe by the end of the week I’ll have a mockup installation of the spindles on the axle.

And I was just taking a “think break” to let my mind put more words together and putting the kingpins in the axle bosses where they are supposed to go, and as the instructions warned they don’t fit. First installation in a new tubular axle and both bosses are out of round by a few thousandths, just enough to keep the pins from dropping in unhindered. Enough that I had to get a hammer and drift to get them back out. And the instructions also say that the only way to fix this is with the brake hone… Before anyone says anything, yes I had the grub screws all the way out before trying to install the pins.

I’m trying a different strategy on sleeping, going to bed early before I’m tired and just letting the brain do its thing until I fall asleep. I was up by 0800 today waking up all on my own. It really looks like the longer I wait to hit the bed the longer it takes to turn off my brain. I was asleep in under an hour last night and the night before and woke up before my alarm yesterday and this morning. It’s weird being up that early. My usual M.O. is to wait until I feel sleepy, then get in bed, and have the brain go crazy trying to solve all the problems I didn’t get to during the day. Then several hours later I finally fall asleep only to get awakened from REM sleep by my alarm. If I turn the alarm off and get back to sleep I drop immediately back into REM and either continue the dream I woke up from or move into another one. One recurring theme I have been having lately in my dreams is mountain freeways replaced by multilane fiberglass slides that go for miles. Everyone gets out of their cars and slides down the mountain to meet their car at the bottom of the slide. This says something, but I’m not sure what it is yet. It is loads of fun sliding down the mountain, especially at night. But anyway that doesn’t happen when I go to bed before I get sleepy.

And I was writing a paragraph about sleeping and guess what happened? Yep, faceplanted right into the keyboard. Can’t sleep when I want to but when I’m doing something and need to stay awake? ZONK!

And now I really need to leave and fill out my bag limit of check-ins on my mobile game so I can get what I can out of it before it goes belly up.

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Following my car from CA with Amazon tracking on a Wreck-Free Sunday

Well my Mini Sprint-T has made it all the way to the Anaheim sorting facility. Since it isn’t due earlier than Wednesday and likely on Friday, Saturday, or Monday I’m not worried about it.

What I have been doing in the meantime is deciding how I’m going to use the kit parts to make the parts I use to make the Mini Sprint-T AKA as pattern-making. I have figured out how to make the mold for the vacuformed bucket from silicon casting compound and duct tape, and the fender/tea-tray unit from vacuforming over a carved pattern (possibly carved from a 3-D CAD file), it’s the other parts I’m having difficulty with.

I have come to the realization that it won’t matter what I do about the transmission mounts and the torque arm mounts or the transmission end of the drive shaft. Nobody will be able to see them unless I leave off parts of the model because the belly pan is a welded in stressed member with the transmission hatch held on by bunches of little tiny screws on the Sprint-T, which will just be dots on the bottom of the model. Hundreds of dots, but still just dots. So, I’ll just cast a centersection for the QC with a lump that looks vaguely U-joint-ish at the front and a short section of driveshaft and the section of torque arm that mounts to the QC that will disappear inside the transmission tunnel, then fab up some side covers that will mount the scale 3″ axle tubes (0.120″) to which I will mount the Wide 5 hubs. I might even be able to get the rears to roll.

The front axle has proven to be a tougher nut to crack. Basically I have had to choose two alternatives: turn or roll. I can make the front wheels turn left and right, or I can make them roll, but I can’t do both with the parts and tools I have at hand. Now if I could make the end of the hub removable and machine the inside I could do both, but the resin castings I can get won’t support that kind of wear and tear. Maybe if I did aluminum or white metal castings they would work, but I don’t know if I want to do that much work. I’m thinking rolling wheels with the metal axle hidden inside the scale axle and spindles would do the job. All of the Wide 5 hub kits will roll with a metal axle hidden inside the scale axles.

On another note that mobile game I have been playing that paid for the model kit will still work as long as I can find WiFi, and I’m almost up to another $1 gift card from Amazon in points, and more than halfway to a $1 card on the side quest that gets me 1/20th of the card each day that I participate in the quest. Doing both at the same time gets me more cards and possible other prizes.

Now I have to get ready for a church board meeting tonight so this will be the end of this Wreck-Free Sunday post.

PSA, Opus