"Two wrongs don't make a right, but they make a good excuse." - Thomas Szasz

I got early (not unusual) and decided after an hour or so to make better use of my time than I could sitting in my chair. So by 4 a.m. I took my coffee out to the garage and got to work on the remaining few tasks on the engine. I spliced the old fashioned glass fuel filter into the fuel line and installed that between the pump and the carb. I put in the new starter and monkeyed around with the carb linkage (without success).

I've got the block-to-oil filter lines on backorder. I'll have to fabricate a carb linkage to work around the dual exhaust headers I installed, and a custom made clutch disk and pilot bushing will show up the middle of next week from a cool guy named Archie who runs what seems to be a one-man shop in Waco, TX. He's an expert on all things transmission related and patient with newbies trying to get this right.

Those things aside, as of 9:00 a.m. I've declared the engine part of this project DONE. It will now get covered in plastic and sit against the wall while I go back to work on the body. My plan was to put the cab on the frame after it's painted and then install the engine. That allows the cab to go onto the frame from the front - a shorter distance to carry it - without having to go up over the engine. But I'm rethinking that. Putting the engine in first removes the possibility that I'll bang it against a freshly painted cab (aaargh!). And if we do this right it shouldn't be too tricky to carry the cab over the frame from the back. Plus, putting the engine on the frame saves limited storage space. I dunno.

I spent the second half of the morning down at Noel's. Thursday they got back from summer at their place in Minnesota, which is good news. As his ALS progresses we wonder aloud each year if he'll be able to make the trip back next time. In the four months they've been gone he now finds it almost impossible to stand for more than a minute or so at a time. So I hosed off the driveway and back patio (Noel is a neat freak) and moved the patio furniture from the garage to the back. We also got caught up on all the family happenings since they left.

I'm shaking my head about tomorrow's sermon. I thought last week went well, but got almost no feedback despite giving them a specific (and simple) assignment. I may be completely missing the mark with this series. I dunno.

It's Saturday night. Pam's got a cold and I'm ... out of sorts. This is either dinner out or BACON.
Maybe both.