petegossett wrote: In reply to KevinGale: Looks like a nice fall day for a peaceful drive in the forest.
It was! Often fall weather at Philo is cold and wet but this event the weather was pretty nice. Only one bit of rain and that went away before the road even got wet.
Ian Cook (who took this photo) said:
I have to say, it's quite surreal seeing Kevin go down the hill watching from check 6, since you can't see the entire road. It just looks like a forest with a strange machine effortlessly navigating it's way through the trees.
That is a sexy beast. I still browse my local CL for modifieds, I think it would be a great summer DD 
Spring has arrived. Time to get the car ready for Ascutney the first event of the year. I have done nothing to the car since Oct except starting it once a month of so.
First step is to sweep the garage. I must have left the garage open last fall on a really windy day because there are leaves everywhere. I almost needed to rake for the floor under the car. You can even see some of them on top of the car here.
You would expect the toolbox stack here is mine but actually is belongs to my sister in-law Karen. Sad when the sister in-law has nicer toolboxes than the guy with the race car. Karen isn't afraid of mechanical stuff. She appears earlier in this thread since she owned the old modified we both drove.
The first order of business is to pull out the transmission. Remember when the old throwout bearing starting making noise and I replaced it? Well the new bearing is also making noise. Right now I think the problem there is that I'm an idiot and didn't pack it with grease before I put it in. So I need to pull the transmission so I can get the throwout bearing out and pack it with grease.
Actually the first order of business was to play with a new toy. My trailer has a winch, which of course has a battery. I haven't wanted to wire the truck and motorhome to have a high amp charging line so the battery can be topped off while driving to and from an event. I've just put it on the charger in the spring and and few times during the season. But I've recently had good luck with a small solar charger for my truck to keep the battery from draining while it is parked for weeks or months at a time. That made me think I could solve the battery charge problem for the trailer the same way.
So I bought a weather sealed 2.5 watt charger and mounted it on top of the winch. It is just a very small trickle charge but the trailer sits for a month or so between events so it has plenty of time to charge.
The trailer is covered with gravel the snowblower kicked up. Going to have to clean that too.
The unit is this one
NOCO Battery Life BLSOLAR2 2.5 Watt Solar Battery Charger and Maintainer
I also bought the option pigtail with eyelets for a deep cycle battery and leds that indicate the battery's charge level. So I've be able to see it is keeping the battery at full change.
Got the transmission out and figured it was a good time to change the fluid and look it over. It all looks good. I love this transmission mostly because I can just forget about the clutch once I leave the starting line.
I love that solar tender idea. Is the winch happy to be left out in the elements? I've been looking at getting a winch for my trailer, but haven't quite decided what to buy yet.
Just found this !?!?!?!!!!! What a freekin rush saw this mess when I was working in Ct. early 90's Stafford Springs, Thompson Motor Spdwy. Love these, next best thing to WOO. I'm going to the beginning as we post 
In reply to 759NRNG:
I have fun with it. Nice part about our hillclimb series is you can race almost anything.
Transmission back in place still have to reinstall the shifter and linkage. Last year I bought the remote bleed kit for the Quartermaster slave cylinder. Should have done that years ago. It is just a hose that replaces the bleeder and moves to the end of the short hose but it allows me to bleed the clutch by myself instead of having to have someone else climb in the car to pump the clutch. Just open the bleeder at the end of the hose and drop it into some small container. A few pumps of the clutch and it is under the fluid. I can reach in and pump the clutch by hand until air bubbles stop coming out.
Mounting new tires time of year again. The old tires still have a layer of leaves from Philo embedded in them. :-) I picked up four new tires and some fuel from the secret tire dealer last week.
Also filled up the coolant system with water again. I had to drain it this year because the garage I'm using right now isn't heated. I don't run any antifreeze. Our series recommends against it. We run in a lot of land that is state forest and the less toxic chemicals we leave in the forest the better. A little bars leak and a water wetter cools better anyway. Normally use Red Line water wetter but this year I'm trying Hy-Per Lube Super Coolant.
Good day today. Got the two spare tires dismounted then mounted with take offs from last year. Also got the new harness installed that is always a pain to get just right and getting at the bolts behind the seat for the lap belts is always fun. Sort of like standing on your head while wrenching. :-)
Cleaned the air cleaner and it is drying so I can oil it again. Put 5 gallons of fuel in the cell. I'll add 5 gallons of 93 unleaded on the way to the event which will bring the cell to about 17 gallons. More than enough!
Getting pretty close to ready for the first event.
Buttoned up and ready for the first hillclimb of the season. Mt Ascutney is next weekend.
I also had fun unmounting the two spares I had mounted last weekend. My friend Luke needed a set of tires to shake down his car at Ascutney before doing Washington later in the year. I have the four tires I took off from last season but I had mounted two as spares. Luke runs 5 on 5 instead of wide 5 hubs so he can't use my wheels. Since he is already going to be mounting them at the race I saved him one step and dismounted the two I had mounted. I have one wheel that still has a tire mounted from 2014 when I ran Washington and that will be my spare this event. I almost never need one so it shouldn't be a problem.
drivendaily wrote: I love that solar tender idea. Is the winch happy to be left out in the elements? I've been looking at getting a winch for my trailer, but haven't quite decided what to buy yet.
It seems happy enough to me. It is designed to be outside. The electronics are all in a weatherproof box. Things rust of course but I expect it to last several years at least.
Loaded up and ready to go to Mt Ascutney. The 2017 season begins today. Lots of tires on the rack since I'm also bringing the take offs from last season for Luke.
One nice thing this season is a change in vacation policy for my company. They went to a system of "unlimited" vacation. Of course it isn't truly unlimited. Basically you can take as much vacation as your boss will approve. I immediately saw an opportunity. Since I know all the event dates early in the spring I put in for vacation for the Friday before and the Monday after each race. Since it was so far in advance there were not any work related conflicts and since I hadn't even asked for anything else off there was no reason to refuse me. The net result is I have a relaxed day getting ready for the event and another relaxed day after the event for unloading the car and publishing results for the event (I am the NEHA points keeper.)
Back from the first hillclimb of the season. It was a fantastic weekend weather wise. The road was warm and dry with lots of grip. My second run on Saturday was a 2:42 which is a personal best and it was the overall fastest time up the hill for weekend. But on my last run on Saturday the front mount for the right rear lower control arm snapped off. That instantly resulted in the car spinning off the road, down a bank and into a tree. Luckily the bumper took most of the impact and the damage to the car looks pretty minimal. I'll have it fixed before the next event.
I was also lucky enough to crash at the corner my wife was working. She was the worker who responded to my crash. My wife Kelly is just the person you want around in an emergency. Having her husband spin off the road, down a bank and into a tree didn't phase her. She was calm working with race control to figure out what to do with me and my car.
She has always been like this. My very first event driving was at Mt Philo in 1995. On Sunday I got bit by a slippery braking zone going into the rock turn (as did several others). I spun, went off the road, down over a bank and flipped car landing on it's roof. Kelly was working at finish. When she heard I was OK she said "This is going to take a while to clean up. I'm taking a bathroom break." That got a few laughs. When Kelly heard that later she said "What? They said he was OK and we don't usually get time for a bathroom break and I had to go!"
Here is a slow motion start thanks to Jay Duchin (https://vimeo.com/duchin). The really nice part is you can clearly see I did a good job anticipating the light. The car is moving before the light turns green but not eough to trigger a false start. The back end of the car also rises slightly during the launch. I guess I have enough anti-squat https://www.youtube.com/embed/ntIhedJOJDM
KevinGale wrote: ... One nice thing this season is a change in vacation policy for my company...
I haven't been a fan of unlimited PTO policies. People tend to stop taking PTO altogether out of guilt or dedication or company culture problems, and end up burning themselves out. I'm interested to see what your thoughts are a year from now.
drivendaily wrote:KevinGale wrote: ... One nice thing this season is a change in vacation policy for my company...I haven't been a fan of unlimited PTO policies. People tend to stop taking PTO altogether out of guilt or dedication or company culture problems, and end up burning themselves out. I'm interested to see what your thoughts are a year from now.
I'll have to try to remember to check back on this in a year. We've probably had it six months now and I don't have any complaints. I'm certainly taking time and I like not having to count every day and worry about saving days in case I don't have enough. The company used to have mandatory days off near Christmas so I always had to make sure to save some days for that.
From what I've read people take about the same amount of time after the policy as before. The company did it for purely selfish reasons. Under the old system the unpaid vacation is a debit on the books. Lots of people never take all their time and the debit just keeps growing. This change allows them to get rid of that.
I can see your point however in that now instead of taking the days I was given I am in effect begging for time off that isn't guaranteed. People could feel guilty or a manager could abuse his authority and deny days for no good reason. Hasn't been a problem for me and I love taking all the racing weekends off without worry about how many days I am burning.
Stumbled across this old photo. This is some of the remains of an engine blow up. I'm not exactly sure what engine it was or when. I'm sure it was from the old modified I think it was from the early to mid 2000 range. I recall Karen and I blew up a motor about then and I remember driving up to near Burlington VT to buy a new motor of a guy who was selling one cheap because it was no longer legal after his racing series made a rule change.
The photo is a bit blurry but you can see bits of a broken cam shaft, lots of piston parts and I think some block parts. There is a lifter missing a chunk of out it at the top. In the lower center the roundish thing is the head of a valve and there is a part of a piston ring below that. It must have been pretty catastrophic when it happened.
It is kind of funny that I don't even recall this one. There were a few like this in the early days when we kind of threw motors together and then abused them.
Ouch, that could have been my motor had I not crashed 
Back to the present. Today I pulled off the right side body panels to get a better look at the damage. The dirt and rocks on the floor were caught behind the body panel.
The heim joint is bent of course. The rusty area makes me assume this was a crack that has been getting larger for a while.
I think I can use the same bracket with a bit more welding and some triangulation from the end of the bracket back to the tube that is going up diagonally. If I can support the end that will reduce the load on the part that failed.
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