In reply to KevinGale :
Try it with a load on it an check amps, not volts. Your local Autozone or equivilent has a test rig.
In reply to KevinGale :
Try it with a load on it an check amps, not volts. Your local Autozone or equivilent has a test rig.
I very seldom post any pictures of me because I'm no model and no one is coming here to see pictures of me but here is one that also includes the car. This is from Philo where I was working to fix the fried alternator wire. Appropriately I'm wearing my "still plays with cars" t-shirt.
You can also see that like anyone who turns wrench's even part time my most developed muscles are in my forearms. Even with my fairly high body fat percentage you can see them. :-) I have lost 20 lbs recently and hope to lose more. It will make the car faster.
Ascutney update.
Back from the spring Mt Ascutney event. I finished 3rd overall, just behind Sherman and well behind Paul. We ran a new shortened course this year which ended just below check 6 on the traditional course. That avoided all the major bumps at the top. Personally I like the bumps better than the crown problems with the bottom of the hill but they are trying things to get people to show up at Ascutney that will not race over bumps that might damage their car. It worked a bit. Sherman came this time even though he often doesn't run Ascutney.
The Troyer ran great all weekend. The motor felt strong and the new battery seems to have fixed the starting issue. It didn't fail to start at any time during the weekend. My only problem was leaking oil. A big chunk of the oil leak was tracked down to a valve cover.
I tightened the valve cover trying to stop the leak. It was already pretty tight but I tried to tighten it some more and immediately pulled the stud out of the head. This was Sunday late morning and I thought I might be done for the day. Sherman suggested that there might still be some threads left if the stud hadn't been bottomed out. The type of stud I was using didn't allow it to be bottomed out so I just needed a 1/4-20 bolt. The problem was because of the tall valve covers I needed a 2.5" long bolt. The longest I had with me was a 2". Sherman didn't have anything longer and Art Heath dug through his trailer but didn't come up with a bolt. I was thinking about borrowing a vehicle to run out and find a longer bolt when Amanda Tingaud shows up on a pit bike. She heard I was looking for a longish 1/4-20 and brought over seemingly every 1/4-20 bolt she and Paul had for the Super Chicken 2. It is so nice to have my competitors be the first people to go out of their way to help fix my car. Amanda did have the right bolt and I was able to make another run.
I also have a second leak I discovered which looks like the transmission is leaking gear oil of the its rear tail shaft seal. I wrapped this in a baby diaper to contain it and I will have to replace that seal. Tech tip a baby diaper will hold about a quart of oil without leaking a drop of it. I've used this in the past. The technology diapers have for absorbing liquid and not leaking it back out is amazing.
Picture of the car going by a check point (I think this is check 3 but it might be two.) The white part of the road in front of the car is a bump that was big enough that someone painted it white so it was easier to avoid,
That's check 3. Check 2 had the pot hole right where you want to track out of the corner.
DaveEstey said:That's check 3. Check 2 had the pot hole right where you want to track out of the corner.
I do recall avoiding that pot hole of broken pavement.
Surprised you would even feel it with those big bias ply tires haha
In reply to DaveEstey :
The hole part didn't bother me but all the loose pavement made me nervous. I could see the left front sliding when it hit it.
Okemo prep in progress. This time I remembered to swap gears. I ran the Philo gears at Ascutney because I forgot to swap them but it turns out the Philo 5.55 gears actually work pretty well at Ascutney. But with a top speed of about 100 mph they are not going to work for Okemo. Trying 4.25 gears for the first time. I think they will be faster but require two more shifts. I think I can handle shifting 5 times instead of 3. :-)
Helicoil time! I put a Helicoil in the head where I pulled the valve cover stud out. Now to replace all other studs with the new studs in the picture. These have a longer thread (since the whole stud is 1/4-20) so I'm hoping that will avoid pulling out any more in the future.
All the studs replaced in the right side head. Just need to do the left now but if I don't get to it before the race it can wait.
In the grosh celebrating the 4th?????
759NRNG said:In the grosh celebrating the 4th?????
Not so much. Been on a two week vacation camping and visiting relatives. Haven't touched the car. The only thing I did in the garage was change the oil on the daily driver. We had a bit of a gap in the hillclimb schedule as well so got a break there as well. I have some prep I need to do for Burke but mostly just swapping gears.
Another boring picture of quick change gears. Time to take out the 4.25 Okemo gears and put in the 4.69 Burke gears.
The race season this year ended up with a long break in July. So I haven't touched the car while but Burke is coming up and since it has been 96+ degrees outside both days this weekend it is a nice time to work on the car in the garage. I have the heat pump set to cooling and the temperature set to 75. Nice! I'm also working on adjusting ride height and scaling the car.
Finished setting ride height, weighing and corner balancing the car.
For my records:
The right height is now set at 3.75" which is up slightly (it was closer to 3.5" before). I keep having to raise it as our courses get rougher.
Car weight without driver and 10 gallons of fuel is 2337.0 lbs.
Car weight with driver/gear (200 lbs added) and fuel is 2537.0. Rear weight percentage is 55.2% Left weight percentage is 53.5%, Cross weight is of course 50.0%
Lots of people get all hung up about the offset chassis but it is 3.6% left heavy with the driver. It is only 2.0% without the driver. I'm certain lots of cars without any offset are worse that that.
My strip and rebuild of the chassis this spring resulted in about 6 lbs of lost weight in the car. Nice!
75° in July ......check
one Troyer on the lift......check
livin' is easy......check
Burke Report
The first Burke hillclimb went well. The weather was great with dry roads both days. Saturday first run I had shifter problems that would continue all weekend. On this run the shifter got caught in second gear and wouldn't allow me to select any other gear. I made a fairly slow run in second gear the whole way then spend a bunch of time crawling under the car trying to figure out what was wrong. I adjusted a few things but really didn't find anything. I made one more run in which I mostly avoided using second gear. Then because I wasn't feeling very well I decided to call it a day and take a nap hoping whatever bug I had caught would go away. I also went to bed early Saturday night.
Sunday I was feeling a bit better in the morning (and much better by afternoon) but my shifter problems were not better. This time the car would not go into second gear. So I just gave up on using second at all and launched the car in 3rd and used 3rd and 4th on the hill. With the gear set I had 3rd wasn't ideal to launch the car and generated lots of wheelspin. 3rd was also a bit too high for the turn 13 and 14 back to back hairpin turns. But I made it work. My second run got down to a 2:06 which was good enough for second place. It helped that Paul Tinguad had two DNF's. One he spun the car off the road and got stuck, The second he pulled off with some problem but I never heard what it was.
My last run on Sunday I was going for it. Sherman was 3 seconds ahead of me and I thought I could at least close the gap a bit. If they hadn't missed my start I might have. I had a great run going. As evidence of that I recorded the fastest speed of the day through the check 2 speed trap at 99 mph. But since they missed my start they red flagged me at check 4. On the rerun I got a good start but was only doing 91 mph though the speed trap and I made a mistake at check 5 and had to basically stop in the road before I recovered. So the rerun was a write off and I just cruised to the top for a 2:07. I really think the run I got red flagged on would have been something close to or faster than Sherm's time but it wasn't to be.
As punishment my shifter now looks like this:
We also had a drone at the top of the hill which got this neat shot.
This is awesome
KevinGale said:As punishment my shifter now looks like this:
I’d also pop the side cover off and check the shift forks
After looking at rebuild kits for the shifter I had an epiphany. What I needed was a three speed shifter!
While tearing the shifter apart for rebuilding I once again was thinking about how to prevent accidently getting the reverse gate that isn't used.
The reverse selector in the shifter above is the one cut off without the nut and bolt like the other two. It instead has a small hole drilled into it that connects to an external spring which mostly pulls it out of the way and prevents the unused reverse from engaging. The problem is it only works about 95% of the time. 5% of the time you can get the shifter to go into this reverse gate which just hangs things up for a bit when you are actually trying to get into 1st or 2nd. It's not a big problem since I so seldom have to use 2nd on the hill and I never use 1st except from a stop.
Since I had the shifter apart anyway I was looking at how to weld the reverse selector in place to prevent it from ever engaging. That was when I had the epiphany. I was thinking that what I wanted was a shifter without the reverse arm at all, and then I realized that it exists. All I needed to do was buy the three speed shifter from Hurst to replace the four speed I have. The three speed shifter uses an H pattern. Usually reverse is upper left of the H. I would just use the H as 1st through 4th which would be perfect. I would get rid of the reverse gate. I'd also get a new shifter so I didn't have to rebuild this one and the whole assembly would be a littler bit lighter since the reverse parts would be removed. (Lighter always makes me happy!)
So I ordered a new 3 speed shifter and and installed it the other night. I had some minor issues. I had to disassemble the new shifter and reassemble it with the arms flipped to get more clearance for the Heim joints on my custom shift linkage. And of course the linkage had to be adjusted but it's in and working now. Can't wait to try in at a hill.
Great idea. Takes reverse out of the equation and as a bonus, a new buttery smooth shifter. You're going to be hard to beat now!
My chart to live by. The 4.69 gears I have been using are too low for Burke. I've only tried this combination at Burke a few times. Previously when I was running the 27" tall rear tires it was sort of OK. I would hit the rev limiter sometimes but just very briefly. Nowwith the 26" rears it is too short. In two places on the hill I run out of 3rd gear and have to shift to fourth for a few seconds. Time to consult the chart. Long term I might need to buy another set of B & J gears probably set 6. But for now I think I will go with set 7K run as 4.25. Time to install gears for Burke.
In reply to KevinGale :
Seinz makes a quick change transmission that works like your quick change rear end. It only takes a few minutes more to change all 5 gears than it does to change the one gear in your rear end.
Using that in combination with your quick change rear end you can set your car up to pull right on the sweet spot from every corner.
Yes it’s a Dog Ring gear box so shifts are really fast compared to Syncro’s Yes all shifts are clutchless. Plus they have an optional shifter. Pull back to down shift, shove forward to shift up. Works like a motorcycle. No Gate to go through.
It’s a 5 speed non-overdrive so ratio’s can be very close, allowing you to use 4th gear for one corner and 3rd for a slightly different corner
What that does is allow you to make more power over a narrower band. ( higher lift, more duration camshaft, bigger carburetor )
frenchyd said:In reply to KevinGale :
Seinz makes a quick change transmission that works like your quick change rear end. It only takes a few minutes more to change all 5 gears than it does to change the one gear in your rear end.
Using that in combination with your quick change rear end you can set your car up to pull right on the sweet spot from every corner.
Yes it’s a Dog Ring gear box so shifts are really fast compared to Syncro’s Yes all shifts are clutchless. Plus they have an optional shifter. Pull back to down shift, shove forward to shift up. Works like a motorcycle. No Gate to go through.
It’s a 5 speed non-overdrive so ratio’s can be very close, allowing you to use 4th gear for one corner and 3rd for a slightly different corner
What that does is allow you to make more power over a narrower band. ( higher lift, more duration camshaft, bigger carburetor )
That does look interesting. I can't find any info on the price.
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