It's almost like it's a skill or something.

The day spent with nothing learned is the only day truly wasted.  I'm pretty sure someone smarter than me said something to that effect and it sounded a lot better, but they're probably dead and I'm probably not.  Now who's bad?

That's right- me.  I learned today that I'm bad. Bad at brazing aluminum.  If you need anything to brighten your day, feast your eyes on the results of my vain and pathetic attempt to direct the form of select elements to my will.

Good god, I suck at this!

It may be due to having the setup pictured below in my work space at the School of Night-time Auto Repair's lab and lecture hall (the sidewalk across the street from a numerically-themed convenience store).

It could have been that I was constantly distracted by the animated two-way conversation that a local (presumably schizophrenic) street dude was having with himself.  It even could've been because it was 03:30 and I was overdue to visit the cat and go to bed, but I'll tell you what I think it actually was:

I've never made an actual, earnest attempt to braze aluminum before in my entire life.  

I mean, I experimented with harbor freight brazing rods like we all do when we're young and finding ourselves, but it was just a short phase that I grew out of.  Turns out I completely failed to account for this lack of actual experience to the degree I likely should have, and ended up screwing around like a monkey jamming a stick into an anthill, but without the snacks or success.

So now it looks like I'll be chipping this mess off and going the JB Weld route, where I have more than enough experience.  If I'm lucky, none of this probably stuck worth a damn.  Hell, I'll be glad if I didn't ruin the carb plate.  The good news, though, is that I can just plug those MPI ports solid with JB while I'm at it, soooooo. . . Net gain!

Oh well; live and learn.