1995 Howe Mod Hillclimb Special.

Starting a build (really repair) thread for my Howe Chassis modified hill climb thing. The car is raced in the New England Hill climb series (as frequently as building a house and working weekends permits). The car is powered by and SBC bored .030 over but De-stroked to 3.12", resulting in a 318ci rev happy engine. Strange I know. I recently put the car in the ditch at the Ascutney Hill climb. So its a little worse for wear. broke a trailing arm, tore the steering rack in two pieces, bent the radiator support, busted off a brake line, tore the upper A-arm tabs off of the frame rail. Just a flesh wound. I will post pictures of the carnage later, with repair photos to follow. For now check out the pictures on my profile to see what the car looks like (its ugly BTW). This car needs to be back in action by July for the Mt. Washington Hillclimb, so I will hopefully be updating fairly frequently.

Looking forward to it! I am guessing you and Kevin are acquaintances? How did you source the car? What did it take it to make it turn both ways vs roundy round?

You could say that kevin and I know eachother. I ran a pair of his takeoffs as tires for the last event. He has been my main source for tech tips, and we regularly compete whenever i am able to show up at an event (he is at EVERY event).

The car was bought (by the previous owner) with the lowest offset possible specifically for hillclimb use. So the setup is as simple as making sure everything is symmetrical. Weight distribution is actually better than most would think. Handling is a little different since the entire 15" front slicks ride outside of where the kingpin line hits pavement. It feels best at speed.

Having just moved out east to where

A) stock car parts are much more available and

B) hill climbs are actually much closer and common

this piques my interest

Pictures of how the car looked last weekend can be found here

And hereis what it looks like currently, post crash.

Steering rack got torn in half and I had to shove it back together to get it on the trailer.

New England Hillclimb Schedule.

Ouch! Hope you are ok

Yikes...Were trees involved?

Just barely hit a tree, just enough to take a little bark off. I crashed on the "good" side of the road, the ditch, a small bolder and a stump are what did the damage. The other side of the road would have been much worse, there is a pretty steep bank on that side.

New steering rack arrived today

This is I think the most impressive part of the crash, it literally pulled the 1" thick steel rack in two pieces. I'm glad I let go of the wheel just before impact. It also sheared something in the power servo at the same time. The wheel just freewheels right now.

Its been a while since I have updated. The car is currently at the cage guru shop (Kales Customs) to replace 1 bar that was flattened by a tire when I crashed and to add the extra bar that I need to comply with the rules for Mt. Washington. The car should be done soon and I am hoping to have it back early this week so that I can start work on the front suspension setup. Hopefully the frame rails haven't moved too far from where they were before . Mt. Washington is in three weeks so time is ticking. I also procured a new set of rear rotors and pads as the ones on the car are getting pretty thin. The pad compound I have been using goes through disks at an alarming rate.

Are there classes for modified and above for the New England Hillclimbs?

The rules and classifications on their web site are for unprepared and street prepared but I couldn't find the information for anything above those two.

Any idea?

This is taken from the first page of the first page of the "Technical Regulations"

"FORMULA LIBRE – Any car legal for any NEHA class may bump to Formula Libre at the entrant’s request. Cars in Formula Libre must be legal for some other NEHA class with the exception that cars not legal for Prepared because of engine displacement or tech rules 2.BB.1 and 5.FF.1 are legal in Formula Libre. Prepared

PREPARED 1 – Cars with a displacement of 4501cc to 8000cc.

PREPARED 2 – Cars with a displacement of 2201cc to 4500cc.

PREPARED 3 – Cars with a displacement of 1601cc to 2200cc.

PREPARED 4 – Cars with a displacement of 1600cc and less."

Formula Libre is essentially an "Unlimited" class. and P1-P4 are any fully prepped non street legal race car divided by displacement. If you red further in the document you will see that there are also displacement adjustments for Tubro/Supercharger/nitrous/rotary etc.

I got the car back from the fabricator the other day. He does awesome work!!!! Ill post pictures at some point. The bad news is that when I decided to remove the radiator to straighten the radiator support, I found there to be quite a bit of oil in the coolant

I disassembled the top end and there is nothing wrong. After giving it some thought I realized that oil in the water isnt going to be a head gasket issue anyways, as there is no pressurized oil going through the head. The valve train is lubed through the lifters/pushrods. There are really only two options. Cracked block, or I somehow contaminated the system when I had the water pump off for the bottom end refresh this winter.

Pull the pan off and pressure test.?

Time is definitely getting tight, Here is the list of things that need to happen before July 6. (Assuming the oily water is just a contamination issue).

1. reassemble engine with new head gaskets and flush engine to remove any residual oil.
2. Possibly a dyno run to make sure the problem cannot be repeated.
3. Verify suspension geometry is suitable post crash
4. move engine back to its original position in the chassis. (shifted forward in the crash)
5. repair right front caliper fitting that broke off.
6. install new rotors and pads on rear and bleed brakes
7. straighten radiator support.
8. Install new Belts (old ones expired in May)
9. Get trailer tires changed over (old ones are too square to drive 4 hours)
10. straighten sheet metal from the crash.
11. Pick up a new set of tires/takeoffs (possibly on the way to Mt. Washington).

Ya..........

bentwrench wrote: Pull the pan off and pressure test.?

That is a possibility, but Im trying to avoid having to pull the motor out of the car

After flushing about 25 gallons of water through the car I have confirmed (as much as I can) that the engine is good!!!!! The oil I had must have been contamination from the rebuild this spring. I have been busy sorting out the rest of the car and I am almost ready. Only things left to do are change out the rear disks and pads, change belts, and install the fitting and new brake line on the right front caliper. I WILL be at the 2017 Climb to the Clouds!!!!!

edit: Trying out the new rims that I got for size. I think the car is wide enough now. The rims are 15" by 15" and the car measures 7'4" wide at the sidewall.

Yea Luke! See you there! "I love it when a plan comes together."

The 2017 Climb to the Clouds was the event of a lifetime. Its hard to describe the sense of accomplishment there is to conquering a mountain of that magnitude. 7.6 Miles 100+ corners and a 4500 ft climb. Despite having some power steering issues on both practice days (Power cylinder kept puking out o-rings), race day went off without a hitch (Thanks to some JB Weld). My first run I set a time of 7:30.25 and my second and final run was a 7:08.00. I completely shattered my goal of averaging 60 MPH. I placed 15th overall out of 75ish cars, and 6th in my class. The next event will be held in 2020 and I will be there. It's definitely a bucket list item for anyone in the racing community. I will try to post a video of my run in the not too distant future. Link to all the photos of the car that I have from the event. Half of the fun is just how impressive the views from the mountain are. It also makes for great photos.

#travispastrana wasn't the only one to go wheels up on the 6 Mile jump at @climbtotheclouds. Here's @lukemoultroup getting a bit of air off the jump as well. #cttc17 #CTTC2017 #mtwashington #mtwashingtonautoroad A post shared by Steven Harrell (@dvmsteve) on Jul 10, 2017 at 5:30am PDT

In reply to Challenger392:

We have lift off! Just found this thread Luke didn't know you had one. I'll have to mention your thread in my thread because it's about the same target audience. :-)

I'm still working on relinking all my photos. I'm now hosting them on my own domain account to hopefully avoid having to do this ever again.