In reply to KevinGale :
Yeah, this is what stinks. I wish the hill climb guys would just make the rules similar everywhere so we could compete everywhere.
In reply to KevinGale :
Yeah, this is what stinks. I wish the hill climb guys would just make the rules similar everywhere so we could compete everywhere.
In reply to Jerry From LA :
The weight of a big block is the reason I probably wouldn't put one in my car. Luke is running a chevy smallblock like I am. He could add a whole bunch of displacement, torque and power without adding a any weight with just a bigger small block. And Smokey or anyone else would have done that except he was trying to fit in a specific class. So because of a Pikes Peak class (that he wasn't even allowed to compete in) he ended up with an engine that is wrong for the NEHA class he then ran in for years and now Luke is running in. It's a sweet sounding engine and Luke does well with it but it's a good example of how class requirements in one series are less than optimal in another.
Replacing leaking dry sump scavenge line today.
Normally you wouldn't put hose clamps on push on hose but in this case they are armor. The old hose started leaking because the lip of the oil pan cut though the hose. Sitting on the vise is the piece of the old hose with a couple cuts one of which goes all the way through. The hose sometimes hits the sharp lip. I think it is mostly when removing the belt from the pump which requires using a pry bar to move the pump towards the block. Anyway in order to try to prevent this from happening again I added a couple small hose clamps right when pan will hit.
I also tried something new when installing the hose onto the fittings. Getting the push on hose onto the fitting can be a pain. It of course has to be a tight fit since you don't use any hose clamps. I've also never liked the idea of using any lube since that might make the hose more likely to move and leak later. I found a video on youtube where someone recommended holding the end of the hose in very hot (near boiling) water for 30 seconds before installing it onto the fitting. It made sense. The hose should be more pliable when warm and it might even grow in diameter a little bit. The water shouldn't really affect the integrity of the joint in the long run.
Anyway I tried the hot water trick and it worked great. The hose went one without any swearing. :-)
KevinGale said:Luke Moultroup has a car with a class competitive problem that still exists from many years ago. Smokey who originally owned the car built an engine around being competitive for a Pike's Peak class. At the time it seemed to make sense since it put him in a lower class not running against the open/unlimited class. But for some reason he missed something about the class rules so when Smokey got to Pike's Peak they made him run in the unlimited class anyway.
Now many years later Luke really wishes Smokey had just built a larger more normal displacement small block. He is in the P1 class that would allow up to 500 cubic inches but he has a smaller than normal small block at 318 cubic inches.
Luke still manages to win his class all the time so everyone else is probably happy he has the smaller engine. :-)
Thanks for the shout out Kevin, I certainly would like to have more cubic horsepower. The problem is I would end up building a WHOLE new engine, just to be a little bit faster. What I really need is an AWD car.............so I can be ALOT faster ;-)
Challenger392 said:Thanks for the shout out Kevin, I certainly would like to have more cubic horsepower. The problem is I would end up building a WHOLE new engine, just to be a little bit faster. What I really need is an AWD car.............so I can be ALOT faster ;-)
Can't argue with that logic. A whole new engine is right and it would only be bit faster. I have made the same calculation. I love my engine but if I was doing it again I'd sure try to get more cubic inches and probably higher compression. I just can't justify the money for a whole new engine.
Got the new line in and ran engine. Good news and bad news. The good news is I fixed one leak the bad news is there is still a leak. I was able to isolate it. I had to actually crawl under the car while it was running. The fittings going into the pump are leaking. These are an o-ring seal which have given me problems before. I have new fittings and I can try slightly different o-ring sizes. But that means I have to take it all back apart again. Time to start draining gallons of oil.
The oil pump is still being a pain. Put the new fittings in tonight an the pressure infeed fitting is still leaking around the o-ring seal. Something is not right. I'd love to take the pump back out to try to figure out the problem but the race is this weekend. So I pulled it back apart again and it is draining all the oil out again. (This batch of oil is getting confused since this will be the third time it has been put into the car.)
Tomorrow I think I will try cheating. I will clean everything really well and try an o-ring and some of the right stuff RTV. It's not right but that might just make it seal or at least slow it down enough that I can run.
Cheating pays!
The fitting going into the pump is coated with an ugly coating of Permatex Right Stuff. But it did the job, leaking from that spot seems to be stopped. The fittings still leak a drop here and there in other places but I'm not worried as long as I'm not leaving a trail of oil.
Next time the pump is out I am going to have to figure out what is going on but for now I can start getting the car back together to leave for Burke Mountain tomorrow.
I should have taken the picture before I spent 15 mins cleaning up all the oil, shop towels and seemingly every tool I own off the floor.
Back from a great weekend at Burke.
The car ran great all weekend and didn't give me a single problem. The new battery worked great and never had a problem starting the car. I put it on the charger when I got back and it still read a 90% charge. And that is after starting it few times getting it on an off the trailer and none of those times did it get a chance to charge. I'm happy with the battery.
Not quite as happy with the driver. The road was slower than usual this weekend. Saturday the road was wet until the afternoon and never really had much grip. Sunday the road started out wet from overnight rain but it kept getting better. I however kept making mistakes. Most of the time it was nothing major. I would lift out too early, brake too late, I was on the wrong place in the road. Every run had a list of mistakes like this. I just couldn't keep my head in the game.
On my third run on Sunday I had the car too far to the left just before check 3. There are major bumps there and a slight corner on a part of the road that has such problems drying out that moss grows on it near the edges. I never should have been there. But I was and the car didn't like it at all. The back end kicked out. There is no good place to go off in this location. Just lots and lots of bad places. I impressed myself with a perfect counter steer that exactly got the car back in line without chasing it. But after that mistake I decided to call it a day.
I was happy with my ability to catch the car when things went wrong but unhappy with the mistakes that make it necessary in the first place. There are only a few weeks until the next Burke and the way I was driving I was likely going to need more time than that to fix the car after I went off the road. :-) It was also an easy choice to stop because Sherman Baumann and Paul Tingaud were both ahead of me and I wasn't likely to catch them without caution to the winds and doing a banzai run. With the way I was driving I gave myself a 50% chance to finish with a really good time and a 50% chance to crash. Not good odds.
Anyway sometimes I just know it's not my day. It was still a great event and I had fun and I went fast.
No in car video this time but here is a start. Lots of wheelspin since there was no traction to be found. Everyone was spinning so much that it started a burnout contest. In spite of my spinning tires all the way to the first corner I wasn't a contender since my tires don't give off much smoke.
The media embed isn't working so just a link. The video embed seems like a constant problem for me now. I wish Grassroots hadn't "fixed it"
Some highlights of the burnout contest. :-)
A glimpse at the variety of cars we get at NEHA events. First in line is the Super Chicken version 2. Next is a Dune Buggy style off road racer. Third in line is a 1964 Mercedes. Behind the Mercedes is a diesel Golf.
Found this bit of prose posted for the next Burke event. This was written by Carolyn Haley back in 1999 but it is timeless.
Hillclimbing: An autosport in which individual drivers race against the clock on a twisty mountain road.
To get the idea, take your favorite back road—the narrower the better; add bumpy pavement if it doesn’t have some already; then give it a steep tilt and drive up it as fast as you can. Suddenly 45 miles an hour becomes hair-raising. Your tires howl in protest as they claw for grip, propelling you between trees and rocks that once meant scenery. Drainage channels become the Grand Canyon. You learn almost instantly what they never taught you in driver’s ed: that motor vehicle operation and performance driving are dramatically different skills
You'll be back .....Schiken2 looks awfully excoaudishcet.....AWD??? where can i find results again???
In reply to 759NRNG :
I just realized I forgot to create the results so they can be posted. Need to get to that.
In reply to 759NRNG :
In general the results can be found on http://hillclimb.org
Burke II is tomorrow. Didn't have to do much to the car this time. Only a few weeks between events and everything was working fine at Burke I except for an exhaust leak or two that I am just going to ignore for the rest of the season. :-)
I did try something new:
I don't care about the undetectable part since we don't have any rules against this.
I've had a container of this forever. John Reed used to swear by it for getting a bit extra out of a set of tires. I've been running new tires each season forever and never felt the need to try it. But last year I bought a set of tires 3/4 of the way through the season so this spring I didn't feel the need to buy a new set. I figured I'd see how the season went and if I really needed to go that fast for a run at the King of the Hill. So far I haven't been going that well this year. I missed Ascutney and have been beat at Okemo and Burke I. I'm still having fun but I was having a hard time justifying $600 on new tires and figured I'd just run this set out even if they are starting to stick a bit less well. Then I saw the can of Hot Lap II. I said "Why Not!" I don't really have anything to lose. So I followed the instructions and gave all the tires 6 coats of the stuff. We will see how it works.
Snake oil! I like it, scientific breakdown for the math frxz here.
Burke Report - The issue is tires!
I found this missing trailer tire Monday morning when I went to unload the car. It must have happened fairly late in the trip home since no one passing me told me there was a problem. I never felt or saw anything. The motor home means I'm a long way from the trailer tires and the motor home is so heavy compared to the trailer that it probably damps any vibrations.
The trailer tires are old (except one that was replaced a a year or two ago) and I should probably replace them. But I haven't decided on that yet. I'd also like to replace the axles since they are also old. A fellow hillclimber had an axle break on the way home. Axles would be a good job for over the winter break.
Tires were also the issue on the race car! In the last post I said I was trying the Hot Lap II tire treatment. I tried it and it was a total failure. I felt like I was running on a wet road. Saturday the road was wet, it rained pretty much all day. Sheman, Paul and I (often the three fastest cars) elected not to run at all. Sunday the road was fine for most. But not for me.
I got to the top after the first run where I slid around and couldn't hook up and asked Sherm what he thought about the available traction. I was expecting him to say it was slippery but instead he said it great and he was really hooking up. That was to be the story all day. The road was great for everyone else but did three runs where I slipped and slid my way up the hill. The times on the three runs were very consistent. Two were identical and the other was 2 hundredths of a second different! It didn't seem to matter what I did I was just too traction limited to go any faster. After the third fairly slow run I gave up. It wasn't fun and sooner or later I was going to slide all the way off the road. (Previous runs had the back end off in the grass trying to hook up exiting corners.)
The tires seemed too gooey. The back tires wouldn't hook up and the fronts picked up every rock on the road and the pits and wouldn't let them all go even at speed. So in addition to goo I had some embedded rocks which didn't help.
I know other people have had good luck with this stuff. Paul Tinguad said he uses the same stuff and had used it before some of his hill records but I'm left not trusting it and not likely to use it ever again. I followed the instructions exactly so it's not that.
So it looks like I will be getting a set of new race tires for my birthday that is coming up before the next event (Ascutney). And of course at least one trailer tire.
Do all the trailer tires.... IMO no reason to use ST tires, they are the cheapest poop made. A LT or passenger tire in the same size will have a very similar load rating I have found.
In reply to java230 :
I can't really argue with the advice of replacing them all except cost.
It was brought up on facebook when I posted this picture that trailer tires tend to be really cheaply made. I really would rather not have more trailer tire problems and as I said at least two of the remaining tires are very old. Not sure exactly how old but has to be at least 10 years.
Interesting idea about LT tires instead.
Looked up the DOT code on the tires. Two of the remaining tires are 15 years old as was the one that died. Yeah I'm replacing them all so I have a new matched set. The one tire I have left that is newer will become the spare tire.
In reply to KevinGale :
Yep definitely at the end of life....
I had the same experience with Hot LapII on a set of 200tw tires. I was planning to try it again on my slicks for this weekend, but now maybe not....
gumby said:I had the same experience with Hot LapII on a set of 200tw tires. I was planning to try it again on my slicks for this weekend, but now maybe not....
I know some people who swear it is great. Some other people said you have to get the tires hot for a long period of time after the initial treatment before the slipperiness wears off. But in hillclimbs you start on cold tires and run for only a few minutes.
At this point I won't try it again. I don't want to risk throwing away an event or sliding off the road because I'm trying to push on slippery tires. The need to buy new tires if it fails is a turn off. I also hated the huge mess the process made. (My wife pretty much asked me to strip at the door so the black stuff didn't get on anything in the house.)
Well I put three coats on this morning. If they need a long heat cycle to burn off the goo I am hosed. Even less time with hot tires in autoX vs. hillclimb.
These tires are under 2/32nds and showing shadow seams already so not much loss if it doesn't work.
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