1990 Troyer Modified Hillclimber

It has been fairly quiet on the race car side.  Been busy getting the new house and garage going.   Primer going up in the garage and the epoxy floor is down.

Which floor expoxy? I need to do this in my new garage.

Note I don't make any claims that this the "best stuff"  

I looked at the Rustoleum Rock Solid product and the professional grade of the Epoxy Shield (Summit Racing sells that for one).  I didn't use the Rock Solid for a couple reasons.  1) It is much more expensive. Give the coverage differences (everyone agrees Rock Solid covers much less that the advertised amount) and the price difference per package it would have been $800-$1000 to do the floor with Rock Solid in just one coat.  The Epoxy Shield product was about $200 for one coat and only $400 for the two coats I did.  2) The marketing for  Rock Solid goes on and on about how nice and glossy and pretty it is.  So do most of the people using it.  So in addition to being expensive it felt more like a showroom product that a working garage product.  Plenty of people said the nice pretty finish is scratched as soon as you drag a floor jack across it anyway.  I'm not really looking for a glossy mirror like finish. I want protection and sealing of the floor. It just isn't clear to me that the Rock Solid is enough of a step up in the quality of protection to justify being at least 4X more expensive.

I would have used the professional grade Epoxy Shield but it isn't water based and the fumes would have been a problem. In the summer I would have just opened all the doors. But this time of year I needed the garage enclosed and heated to keep within the temps needed to apply the floor. So I didn't use the professional grade.

My old under the house garage used the same water based Epoxy Shield I'm using in this garage. The old garage had just one coat. That lasted for 10 years of use and even where it was failing it really just needed spot fixes, 95% of the floor was still fine.  So I'm hoping with two coats I should get a decade or more of use before I have to touch it up again.

Many people say it is just a waste of time and money to coat the floor in the first place. It's not permanent fix they say and you can use the floor fine without it.  For me coating the floor is worth it.  I like being able to clean up an oil spill without having a permanent stain on the floor.  I also have dust allergies and the bare concrete gives off lots of dust.  Aesthetically it's also a win. The garage just looks nicer and that makes working in it for long periods of time nicer as well.

Doing the floor in my garage was a six day process.  First day was patching uneven spots and sealing around the floor and wall joint.  (I want to be able to hose down the floor without water getting in the walls so I sealed around the whole wall to floor joint.) Second day was washing and scrubbing the entire floor.  Third day was etching and rinsing.  The forth day I noticed the floor still was not dust free and rinsed and squeegeed it again.   Fifth day it was finally dry and completely clean and we applied the first coat of Epoxy.  Sixth day was the second coat with the paint chips on top.   It was a long project.  The washing and etching can be done together it just didn't work out for me. And the extra day caused by rinsing again could have been avoided if I had done a good job rinsing the first time.  But it still takes days.  My wife is getting rather tired of working on the new garage. :-)

One tip is if you have to use multiple kits you may want to mix them.  I have a definite seam where we switched from one kit to another. The color quality control between batches is apparently lacking.   But you have to be careful because you only have a limited time work with the epoxy. I could have mixed mine together and done the whole garage within the time frame allowed at the temperature I was using it in, but if you need three kits to cover a floor then you probably just can't do it one one shot and you might end of with a seam when the colors change.

My then 2 year old dumpd 10 quarts of oil on my floor. Always wished I'd had it coated BEFORE that.

Now I dread that epoxy will NEVER come off of it.

I do wonder if you get less dust in general witha  coated floor. Mine is uncoated and I feel like I'm getting 10x as much dust as my dad's garage.  

Mad_Ratel said:

My then 2 year old dumpd 10 quarts of oil on my floor. Always wished I'd had it coated BEFORE that.

Now I dread that epoxy will NEVER come off of it.

I do wonder if you get less dust in general witha  coated floor. Mine is uncoated and I feel like I'm getting 10x as much dust as my dad's garage.  

The dust is a real thing.  It depends on various factors but in industrial cases they even talk about heath hazards to employees who breath in the dust on a daily basis in warehouses that have bare concrete floors.

Of course if you spill enough oil it probably won't be a problem. Your 2 year old was just looking out for your health.  :-)

There was a time when I bought most of my home improvement supplies from the local Lowes instead of Home Depot just because Home Depot hadn't sealed all their floors and my allergies would go crazy after spending just a few minutes in Home Depot.  But at some point they sealed the floors and it isn't a problem for me anymore.

Rereading and editing some of my recent posts reminds me of one warning.  Don't forget to cover up the outlets and switches with tape even after you take the face plates off and trim around them.  I found out the hard way that after you roll the epoxy over the outlet it takes forever to get all the epoxy out.  At least I noticed. If it had dried I'd have had to replace the outlet.

After we took off the faceplates and trimmed around the outlets with a brush I didn't think they needed any tape. But I was moving fast covering stuff with the power roller and it turned out to be all to easy to roll right over the outlet if I got distracted for a moment.

First race is coming up fast time to get the car ready.    Started on that tonight.  Mostly just jacking the car up and pulling off some panels.  The car badly needs a bath.  

I also thought I had a shock leaking so I pulled off all the shocks to test them. They all seem fine. The one I thought was leaking had just been sprayed with some oil.  I actually think it was power steering fluid back when I had a leak.  Somehow moving the car must have caused a drop to come off the shock and hit the new clear floor. 

KG this grosh rocks.....finally got a wf connection that allows me to pester everyone 

Still going through boxes as part of the move.  Today I found the DVD of the Ascutney 2013 full course run. I won that event and I posted the video a long time ago but that video was low resolution.  I was able to pull a higher resolution version from the DVD and here it is.   (My friend Vanessa at Cloudview Motorsports made this)

GRM changed the forums again. I like that they are updating things but now it seems the only way I can get a video to embed is where it is tiny.   Older videos are larger but I've even tried cut and paste from those and it doesn't work anymore.    I think this is the third time I've had to learn a new way to embed videos.   I wish the embed code that you can cut and paste from YouTube just worked.  GRM why can't you support that!

Anyway does anyone have a way to post videos that are large enough to view?

Need to leave for the first race on Friday and the car doesn't have a oil pan, oil pump or any shocks on it.  :-)

RTV I used on the oil pan has been disintegrating for a while.  Wrong stuff.  That has been causing oil leaks. I also had some of the fittings on the pump leaking.  Time to take it all apart, Clean everything and replace rtv and o-rings on the pump.

This is the pump with a nice layer of oil and dirt.

Taking off all the oil lines meant that I might as well check the oil filter as well. The filter is pretty clean.  No metal and just some lines of stuff. You get some of that from new oil. My friend John Reed says it is cotton lint that is used to filter the oil when it is manufactured.

I spent last night on my back cleaning the old rtv off the block. Tonight I will clean the pan and maybe get it back on.

Taking off all the pump fittings reminded me what a pain it is. The huge  1 1/4" wrench I have doesn't help.  For mother's day Kelly and I went to a big yard sale/flea market.  One guy had an old craftsman double ended wrench for a few dollars.  One end was 1 1/16" and the other 1 1/8"  For a few bucks I decided to take a risk.  I figured I could take the 1 1/16" end and enlarge it to 1 1/4" to fit the AN fittings on the pump (and the rest of the main oil system). 

So a little work on the bench grinder and here it is.

The end with the notch was 1 1/16" and now fits 1 1/4"  overall it is shorter than the long wrench I was using and the head is smaller to fit better in the tight space between fittings on the pump.   Can't wait to try it out.  

Oil pan is clean and ready to go back on. This dry sump pan has been around a while.  It was on the old modified.  I didn't even buy this one it was bought by my then brother in-law Ray when just he was driving the old modified back in the early 90's.  Amazing it has survived all this time. 

The shiny area in the lower left part of the pan rail is where I modified it back in 2009 or so.   That was when I (very very briefly) had the aluminum block. That block had four bolt front and rear caps which is unsual. The oil pan wouldn't fit over the rear main.  I had to cut the pan and weld in a little kick out.  I think I closed up the dipstick kickout at the same time. That aluminum block didn't had a dipstick provision and there was probably a gap.  Needless to say covering it wasn't a problem since you can't really use a dipstick with a dry sump setup. The pan doesn't ever have much oil in it.

Last night I got the oil pump and lines back in place.

Here is the usual snakes nest of lines. Getting these all back in place is never fun!

Oh well my racing weekend ended early.   Part of the problem with moving and thus not getting to work on the car until the last minute is you run out of time when things don't go as planned.   After running the car for about 10 seconds I have two large oil leaks.   The rear one is the  pan.  I was trying to not overdue it on the rtv since extra ends on in the scavenge line screens but I obviously didn't get enough and the pan will have to come off again. The front leak is mostly from the pump.  I was out of the o-ring size for the pump but I had some that were close. Apparently close isn't close enough.   O-rings are on order but I won't be racing at Ascutney.   Of course I will still be going to Ascutney just now I will be working instead of driving.

Oh man, what a bummer!  At least nothing broke :)

In reply to jfryjfry :

Out of curiosity since  hill climbing isn’t a contact sport why are  you still using the front and side bumpers used for protection in circle track where impact is an issue and tires running over competitors tires is a really serious event?  Couldn’t you lose some weight by eliminating them? 

I used that same Weaver oil pump except with bigger sections and 4 stage non both my V12 and the early Iron block 3.8 liter six. I put it on in the early 1980’s and its still on and working.  

I used in line filters on the pick up side to prevent exactly the sort of problems you had. To work on lines in crowded areas I used crows foot sockets. Both Open end and line wrench type. 

frenchyd said:

In reply to jfryjfry :

Out of curiosity since  hill climbing isn’t a contact sport why are  you still using the front and side bumpers used for protection in circle track where impact is an issue and tires running over competitors tires is a really serious event?  Couldn’t you lose some weight by eliminating them? 

I used that same Weaver oil pump except with bigger sections and 4 stage non both my V12 and the early Iron block 3.8 liter six. I put it on in the early 1980’s and its still on and working.  

I used in line filters on the pick up side to prevent exactly the sort of problems you had. To work on lines in crowded areas I used crows foot sockets. Both Open end and line wrench type. 

 

Hillclimbing is a contact sport.  The contact is with trees, rocks, stumps etc.    In this thread you can see pictures where the bumper has given its all so I can live.   Extra protection is welcome.  

The crows foot is good idea. Now that I look I see some that are modeled after the box end of a wrench and thus able to fit in really tight areas. Hmmm I have to try that..

I pulled the oil pan back off yesterday.  I came to the conclusion that if you use Permatex "The Right Stuff" then you don't need bolts on the oil pan.  I took off all the bolts then struggled for about an hour to get the pan off. It was stuck so well I was really worried about bending the pan trying to pry it loose.  I'm pretty sure I could take out every bolt and run it for the next 10 years without a problem.

I finally got it off and spend the usual hours cleaning everything.  While I was waiting for everything to dry I hung up the retractible light and extension cords to the outlet the the ceiling I left for them.

I know it looks in the picture like they are hanging 8 or more feet up but it's just a perspective thing. I'm only 5'7" and I can reach them just fine. 

Today I just got the pan back in and the starter back in.  I still have the oil pump and all the lines.  

Garage looks great and the car is coming along nicely!

I was able to test the pan last night.  Leaks fixed. Or at least the major leaks.  It seems like some of the fittings in the dry sump system are always leaking.  Part of the problem is the fittings and the lines are old.  I know the many of the lines are not very flexible anymore probably from UV hardening. Maybe heat cycles also have an effect?  Probably time to replace them all this off season. 

Tonight I am doing some prep on the car for Okemo  which is this weekend.  Not much time between events this time.

KevinGale said:

I was able to test the pan last night.  Leaks fixed. Or at least the major leaks.  It seems like some of the fittings in the dry sump system are always leaking.  Part of the problem is the fittings and the lines are old.  I know the many of the lines are not very flexible anymore probably from UV hardening. Maybe heat cycles also have an effect?  Probably time to replace them all this off season. 

Tonight I am doing some prep on the car for Okemo  which is this weekend.  Not much time between events this time.

Buy some hose in bulk and save the old fittings.  Hose is actually cheap but you will get bloody fingertips replacing them. 

In reply to frenchyd :

This is all the push on hose so no bloody fingers. I need to buy a bunch of hose and some fittings. I know some of the fittings are bad because I ruined them by over tightening them.  These are all at least several years and many assembly cycles old and some of them are 20 years old. When they no longer want to spin after you take them off it's not a good sign.

Good luck this weekend........is 'super chicken' still a force to be reckoned with????