With winter here in Oklahoma, things with Ethyl have been on the back burner for a while. As I have said before, I don't have a shop to work out of, so I am at the will of the weather and available daylight. Sure, I could run an extension cord and drop light, but when the sun goes down, the temperature drops like a rock. For me, it is really hard to get motivated to work on anything in the winter months when I get home from work, knowing I have 90 minutes or so of daylight left. If the weather is decent, I can do a little on my days off, but the past three weeks, the nice weather has been on the weekends, and the winter storms, (cold, drizzly, rain-soaked days), just have naturally aligned with my days off.
I had been targeting getting Ethyl out on this year's Hot Rod Power Tour, but it doesn't seem like that plan is going to fall in place. Kim won't be up to traveling like that unless something happens for her in the next few weeks and there are no consultations on the horizon for her, so I need to be looking ahead to 2021 I guess.
Still, in the effort of making the 2020 tour happen, we picked up a rebuilt 1996 46RE automatic transmission that is compatible with the OBD-II wire harness Ethyl is running. I also scored a 1996 PCM to match up with the transmission, so all the parts will be the same vintage before long. Once the new trans is in, I am going to get another rear driveshaft built to the correct length, as the current one is a bit too short for my liking. I'll also have a new front shaft built, 3" longer than stock to accommodate moving the engine and transmission back in the chassis 3".
Yesterday, we received about 5" of snow at the house, more than we have seen locally in the past few years. As a result, I took Ethyl out into the pasture for some "snownuts". I overlooked the new mud terrain tires Ethyl now wears, and dug down through the snow to damp earth in no time at all. Given we have had 5" of rain in the last 10 days of January, the new tires were actually quite useful.
https://youtu.be/aZPvwn0ddYs
I need to take a look at the throttle linkage. There is some sort of binding that causes the throttle to stop about 1/2 way. For the pasture, this was fine, albeit a tad annoying. On the few occasions I was able to push past the bind, that engine jumped to life with Ethyl's new non-stock cam. I just didn't push it, as I was afraid the throttle might stick open...and nobody wants to see that happen.
-Joe