earnest follow-up

["Brian Shorey" <bshorey@xxxxxxxxx>]

well, if my luck with earnest so far is any indication, it's going to be a
rewarding relationship, with some effort required.

after poaching the water pump 2,000 miles away from home, and finding one in
the trunk, i was heading over to paul glynns shop the other day to drop off
the trunkload of parts i brought back for them from ape, when less than 5
miles from the shop i started getting front wheel bearing noise.  keep in
mind that after the 3,000+ mile ride home this was the first time i had
earnest out.

the noise was coming from the right front hub, i pulled it to find the inner
wheel bearing pretty much disintegrated.  didn't have the part in the trunk,
but we were able to scrounge up enough at pauls shop to get me going again.
the hub is trashed, however, so i'm either going to try to locate a used one
or take the opportunity to upgrade to the five lug gtv6 hubs (and loose
those 225/60 tires in the process!).

and as if that couldn't be topped, the slow piddling turned out to be the
radiator (that the p.o. had recored a month before i got the car).  while
scrounging around in my attic, trying to find a gtv6 or milano radiator to
compare it to, what did i stumble across but an actual alfetta sedan
radiator.  there's a reason why i never throw anything away..

lastly, for anybody who cares, the milano interior bolts right into an
alfetta sedan.  rear seat is pretty much exact, fronts work fine too except
i had to switch the left and right sides to allow clearance around the
milano seat motor appendages.  now all i need to do is wire them up so i can
adjust the seats.

oh, and one more thing - earnest has euro headers, with the thing bolted on
to them that the hose that goes across the top of the engine connects to
(some usa emissions appendage).  there's also the other emissions thing that
bolts into the top of the headers and heads off towards the air pump.
neither of these seemed correct to me, although it does seem like the
headers came equipped for both.  the first appendage was rattling something
fierce, and i couldn't get the nuts off the bolts, so i sawed off the bolts
with a sawzall.  turns out that the bolts were welded to the headers, the
whole thing was a facade to fool the california emissions police.  i'll
probably remove the air pump to find it's hollow.

bs

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