1990 Troyer Modified Hillclimber

More triangulation is a good thing.....body panels ok?

759NRNG wrote: More triangulation is a good thing.....body panels ok?

Body panels are a bit bent. the side panel plowed up some dirt when the car was sliding sideways over the bank and is bent in. The rear panel got hit by the tire then it moved backwards. I'll do a little jumping on them and hammering. They will go back on. Probably won't be pretty but that is low priority right now.

Good news is that the rear shock is OK. I'm really surprised but I put in in the vise so I could do it's full range of motion by hand. All smooth, no binds. I finally found a use for the el-cheapo ratchet I got somewhere. It makes a nice handle to pull down on the shock.

After looking at things a bit I now thing I might just be able to weld the bolt on bracket (the part the the three bolts in the picture a few posts above) directly to the car. I'll have to add some pieces but I can get rid of one big chunk of steel and three bolts. If it works out it will be lighter and stronger.

Early father's day gift. I've wanted on of these for a while for getting into tight spaces. Drilling out the rivets on the body panels has some places where a normal drill doesn't work well but this one was great. I'm a happy father.

The car looks strange without the side body panels.

That's an awesome gift! I've been looking for a little battery drill similar to that for awhile, but haven't broken down and spent the money yet. Very interested to see how you like it by Okemo!

Update, but no pictures sorry. I finished fabricating the new control arm mount last weekend. Today I reconnected the rear end and because the control arm mount location probably changed slightly I squared the rear end again.

Troyer has a nice setup guide that give instructions for squaring the rear end using measurements to some 1/8" holes they left in the chassis. You put blocks under the rear end tubes and then measure and adjust until the left and right sides match the measurement. For my car the measurement is 17.5". But my car has never had the rear end that far back. It has been 16" since I got it. This hasn't concerned me much but a few years back when I broke a driveshaft I replaced it with one that was slightly too long. (Operator error!) It doesn't quite bottom out the yoke so I've been using it. But is it close to bottoming out and it doesn't have enough movement forward to make removing the driveshaft easy.

So currently any time I have to remove the driveshaft (like dealing with my on going vibration when the clutch in engaged) I have to jack up the rear end to get it to the maximum travel rearward and then fiddle with it forever to get it in or out.

I decided to move the rear end back so I could get the new driveshaft out more easily. My first thought was to go back 1.5" to get to the stock Troyer location. But I quickly realized that wasn't going to happen. The limiting factor is the torque arm. I'm pretty sure this isn't the arm that came with the car from Troyer or even one designed for this year car. There just isn't enough adjustment to move the rear end that far back. I did play with it and gained half an inch. So now I am only an inch off the Troyer setting and I think the half inch will allow me to get the drive shaft out without so much hassle. We'll see the next time I have to do that.

I'm running a bit behind. Okemo is next weekend. I need to spend some nights in the garage this week to finish having the car ready for Friday to leave for the event.

I did have to travel for work last weekend so I'm about a weekend behind. But I really don't have all that much left to get the car back together. And things like the bent body panels and bumper won't keep me from running. I should try to call Rusty Ball tomorrow and see if he has a bumper. I'll lose one night just driving over to get it.

Hey Kevin, not sure where you're located but I just moved back to the South Shore two weeks ago. If I'm close I can help out. I'm not much better than poor motivational support at best but I can provide assistance if needed. If not hopefully I'll catch you there this weekend! I'm going to volunteer again since I'm not ready to actually run yet.

chknhwk wrote: Hey Kevin, not sure where you're located but I just moved back to the South Shore two weeks ago. If I'm close I can help out. I'm not much better than poor motivational support at best but I can provide assistance if needed. If not hopefully I'll catch you there this weekend! I'm going to volunteer again since I'm not ready to actually run yet.

I'm in Concord NH right now, so no where near the south shore.

Back from a trip to see Rusty Ball. I have a new bumper. My only regret is I didn't get to chat with Rusty very long. One of those guys I wish I lived next to instead of more than an hour away.

Also Rusty has a modified roller for sale. I think it was $2500. Just in case someone is looking. It was pretty complete. I think you would need an engine, transmission and a seat to have a ready to race car.

Ah I figured I was safe asking. Anyway, hopefully I'll see you out there this weekend!

Got about 4 hours in the garage tonight.

First I spent a while beating the body panels back into shape. I also washed them in prep for paint tomorrow. It took me 15 minutes just to find my body hammer kit. The joys of still having most of my stuff packed away in boxes. The body panels are getting a little rough but they are body shaped again which is far better than they were. I did ask Rusty yesterday if he would be willing to hang a new body on the car sometime and he said he would if it was a project he could do off season and take his time.

Then I got the shocks connected again and put the right brake caliper back on (you have to take it off to square the rear end). I got the new bumper cleaned and painted and finally I swapped in the 3.94 rear end gears for Okemo. And in my spare time I found the tire groover than my friend Luke is going to need for grooving tires for Mt Washington.

Still a lot to do before Friday and tomorrow night I'll be lucky to get an hour since Kelly and I are meeting our builder to see if we can agree on a price to finally get the new house and garage rolling.

none of the pictures are working.

simon_C wrote: none of the pictures are working.

Thanks for saying something. I think I know what is going on. They work for me but it is a problem with Google Photos. I just switched to using it and I may need to switch back to Photobucket.

I wanted to use google photos because it automatically uploads to cloud from my phone and I thought I could link without the extra step of uploading to photobucket. I also have dropbox but it doesn't give a way to link stuff that I can get to work.

Yup if I start chrome in incognito mode I can't see all the recent pictures. Grrr.

I'll fix it but it might not be until after the race at this point.

In reply to KevinGale:

I think you have to move the pictures to a public album first, and then embed them from the album page.

Otherwise, you can use imgur.com to host your pictures.

The story of FTD or Why texting and driving don't mix.

It's Sunday afternoon at the Mt Okemo hillclimb. Sherman Baumann and I are the last two standing in the race for the overall win and FTD (fastest time of the day). Paul Tingaud is out because the new Super Chicken is having teething problems (this chicken has teeth). Joey Kale has teething problems in his future but right now he has a new born baby. So is he worrying more about getting enough sleep and less about racing.

Earlier we had computer problems at finish and the backup computer has some issue publishing the web page for results. So none of the drivers know what time they just ran. Sherman has an advantage since his wife is working finish. Michele is happy because Sherm just ran a personal best time and is in the lead. So she texts him his time. I get to the top and Sherm tells me he ran a 2:14. I'm desperate to know my time and I beg Michele to text it to me. It comes back as a 2:16. That means I really need about a 2:13 to be sure of beating Sherm. This is a problem. It has been four years since I last ran that fast at Okemo. The road is breaking up and that really affects my being able to put power down to the road. Best I had done recently is a 2:15. I was also hot and tired and I didn't really want to take another run. But I had to take a shot.

So thinking I needed three seconds I left the line on my third run on a mission. Caution was thrown to the winds. Sherm knew what was up and said Don Taylor better warm up the wrecker because Kevin is playing Russian Roulette with his car.

I pushed the car harder than I have in while. I drove deeper into corners, twice briefly locking up a front tire under braking going into corners. I made the car dance over the broken pavement. The throttle was a particular problem. There are so many places now where the pavement isn't good and I can't just put my foot down. So I ended playing the throttle like some sort of musical instrument. There were warnings about badly broken up pavement at turn 29 but I ignored those and trusted my big soft tires would absorb the broken bits and still find traction.

I finished with a 2:12. Mission accomplished. But it turned out the text was wrong. Sherm did run a personal best but it was a 2:15 not a 2:14. That one second would have made a huge difference. I had run 2:15 recently. Had I known Sherm ran a 2:15 I would have just done a normal run and tried to just smooth it out a bit. So my 2:12 was all to do with a mistyped digit in a text message. Texting and driving don't mix.

The muddy car at Okemo

And I assume everyone can see the photos in the post above? I still need to fix the previous posts that no one can see but me.

KevG that BadBoy is Awesome.....I wanna run one on the STREET!!!! blinkers and ALL!!!

Photo works for me, awesome job!

Adam

In reply to chknhwk:

It was nice talking to you at the race. Good luck convincing your wife that buying a modified is a good idea.

Ok I went back and converted all the photos back to photobucket. They should work now.