Bill Gents Tips - Getting High in a Hurry

As it's not much fun to be crawling up a hill in low gear when other folks are zipping up in high, I thought folks might be interested in what we did to old Lizzie that helped her run so well in our Hill Climb June 1 (see Hill Climb Results). I say "we", because there were a lot of of people involved: "St. Fred" Houston, my wife, Marsue, two sons, a daughter-in-law, three grandsons, and some very good advice from wizards Tom Carnegie and Ken Kopsky.

First, we weren't interested in going really fast; for us, touring at 25 or 30 MPH and enjoying the view is more fun than 45 or 50, when I start to worry about being able to stop in a reasonable distance. Also, as the sign in Fred's garage says "Speed Costs Money", so we kept this in mind and didn't spend much.

Here, is what we did:

1) Coils: used a fresh set of coils from Ron (Coilman) Patterson . Wish I had some hard data on this, but good coils do make a difference. If you want to do this yourself, there are good instructions available from a number of sources.

2) Band adjustment: before installation, made sure they were as round as possible by trying them on a drum and removing gaps with a Precision Adjusting Tool (3# Hammer). Then adjusted so pedals were as close as possible to the floorboards plus a safety factor to minimize drag. (We use the old-style Kevlar linings, scored apx. 1/32" deep at 1/2" intervals to allow better lubrication and reduce chatter)

3) Tire Pressure: Ran 50 psi in 4.00/4.50x21" tires. Recommended is 35 psi. The ride is a little rougher, but well-lubed springs will make this scarcely noticeable.

4) Oil: Ran with 3 qts of 5w-30 oil (lower petcock). I've heard this minimizes torque and horsepower loss from flinging excess oil around by the flywheel assembly.  Will check this vs 4 qts (upper petcock) when we do some runs on the local chassis dyno shortly. 

5) Weight: Reduced weight by removing spare tire and mount, all tools, rear seat cushion, and all other non-essentials. Also ran with less than 2 gal gas.

6) Fan: Disconnected the fan. Radiator was of the flat-tube type, and had recently been flushed. Ran straight water, and didn't overheat. Air temperature about 80 deg.

7) Cam:  Used stock cam. Timed valves by piston position: intakes open 1/16"after TDC, exhausts open 9/16" before BDC. Notice now that exhausts were supposed to 5/16" before BDC. Maybe that's why the exhaust was so loud? Min. clearance was .010".

8) Ignition: Ran on 12 volts with pretty worn New Day copy timer, Magneto had been removed. Have the unproven notion that removing the mag may make for better acceleration and hill-climbing performance because of less weight and rotary inertia.