Work continues on the Catalyst
This week, I kept filing and sanding and polishing the crankshaft journals to fit the newly-poured bearings. I am very thankful that this is almost done.
I also installed the main bearings in the engine. Since we had them machined to be thicker on the sides, they were a little hard to roll in, but we got them in anyway. Once they were in, I used plastigauges (remember Week 45) to measure the clearance. We’re shooting for four to five thousands of an inch clearance on the main bearings.
On the automotive bail-out
This week, Old Tacoma Marine inc. chose not to send the CEO in his jet to beg the United States government for a bail-out, because to do so would completely undermine the survival of the fittest in the free market and promote poor products and inefficient operations. Though such a trip would most likely have gained OTM Inc a few billion dollars (the way they’re giving it away these days), we decided to make it on our own.
The billions from Washington would have been distributed to the shareholders, with a bonus and a luxury California spa retreat for the brave CEO who made the trip to Washington. Instead, though, OTM will proudly say that we beat out Detroit without needing free money, because we are smart and dawgonit, people like us.
