It’s Official — I’m An Idiot.….….

Well we really did not do bet­ter this week.… I’m really pressed for time and have to fin­ish the rental unit so the ten­ant can move in for the New Year.  With that, the Hol­i­days and every­thing else com­ing together at once I really don’t have the time to prop­erly work my way through the start-up problem.

We have spark, fuel and com­pres­sion but still no go.  I stopped by Spring­field Auto Machine to pick their brain as I was stumped.  The guys there are really great and after some dis­cus­sion the con­sen­sus seems to be that the engine is prob­a­bly 180 degrees out of time.  All the while I’m think­ing, how the hell can it be out of time, I fol­lowed the man­ual explic­itly.  Brought the motor to TDC and installed the dis­trib­u­tor every­thing was per­fect until Dick asked me what the valve posi­tion was, it was about this time that the “light bulb” went on in my head and I’m think­ing “Holy Crap” I installed the dis­trib­u­tor on the exhaust stroke, not the com­pres­sion stroke.….. Dick and Brian were very patient and in fact did not even roll their eyes… they even offered to come to the shop and get it started for me.  I stopped to see them on my way out of town and for the rest of the trip sit­ting in the car I was rolling this stu­pid sit­u­a­tion around in my head.  Once back in town I could not stand it any longer, cleared my sched­ule, went over to the shop and once again checked every­thing.  Sure enough, when I brought it up to TDC on the com­pres­sion stroke and checked the dis­trib­u­tor it was point­ing 180 degrees in the wrong direction.….……

I could have put the plugs back in and attempted to start, but with all of the screw­ing around and the major flood­ing of the engine in our many pre­vi­ous attempts the oil smells like gas, not to men­tion the fact that we prob­a­bly pushed a ton of fuel into the exhaust.  So we are going to change the oil and let it sit for a while to dry out before try­ing to start, prob­a­bly this weekend…

I promised my wife I’d take a break from every­thing so we are off to the Mohe­gan Sun Casino for an overnight trip to see the Boston Pops and prob­a­bly have a dozen cock­tails while I stew about how dumb I really am.  I’m not sure this trip is a great idea with the way my luck is run­ning…  I have had that dis­trib­u­tor in and out of the car at least six times and I can­not believe that in all those attempts “blind luck” would not have allowed me to get it in the right way just once!!!  Geez…That would be like flip­ping a coin six times and com­ing up heads every time, with luck like that maybe I should’nt be gam­bling at all.

We’ll be back at it and try again this weekend.

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