Getting ready for the Hill climb

The hard work of taking Hill climb pictures almost made me too tired to click the pics.

I talked to the builder of this Porsche and he said he dyno tested it and it produced 1200 hp at sea level, and he estimated at this altitude it was making close to a thousand horsepower. He entered the car in two separate categories, rally car, and something else, so his driver was on the track a lot. It was supposed to be in the Pike's Peak Hill climb earlier this month, but he didn't have it finished in time.

This is one of those times when I'm glad I can have two separate story-lines going on in my blog post, the story-line that I'm writing about and the story-line that the pictures represent. Because there's not a whole lot more I can say about the race except.... I walked up and down the mountain trying to get different views of the race and ended up tired and sunburned but happy nonetheless.... The End.

Fortunately, captions for the pictures I took will continue the Hill climb race story-line, and the written part of my blog can now be brought up to date, so I'm no longer writing about the past, which I find very confusing because I have enough trouble writing about the present, so now I'm officially moving the blog post to the present.

One of the things I did to the little Bronco before this trip was to install an igniter for the gas stove, so I don't have to use matches or those long gas lighter thingies. I tried the cheap Piezo igniters, the ones that make a loud noise when you light the stove, which only worked sporadically.

 Then I bought and installed an electrical igniter; it has a battery in it and two electrodes. It makes no noise when you push the button; it just makes a strong spark jump between the electrodes and lights the stove first time, every time. In fact, it works so well I'm thinking of putting one on the Arctic Fox.       

https://www.amazon.com/MENSI-Ignition-Electronic-Catering-euqipment/dp/B07BF5652B/ref=sr_1_69?dchild=1&keywords=Gas+grill+igniter&qid=1626188122&sr=8-69  

I think one of the reasons it works so well is the Piezo igniters depend on the stove burner being the ground that the spark jumps to, which means that the placement of the positive electrode is critical to getting a reliable spark. The one that I ended up with has a positive and a negative electrode, so it makes a strong spark no matter where it is, so as long as it's near where the gas is coming out of the burner, the gas will light.

                                                     Theboondork

There's a category for just about anything that wants to run Hill Climb, I think this one must be in the station wagon category.

In the morning the drivers that are pitted at the finish line pits, get suited up and head down the mountain to the start line.

It is truly a run what you brung race.

This young lady, who by the way loved to show off whenever she saw me pointing a camera at her, adopted the Darth Vader look.

Where as this young lady was always pretty in pink.

Quads are all the rage to race. Their relatively easier to ride, it's a lot cheaper to make one race ready than a car. And is a good way to get the younger kids involved in Hill Climb.

Stock cars are very popular with lots of parts and decades of knowledge available to make them go fast.

And of course trucks. I don't see any large lifted trucks here, for the most part they tend to be top-heavy and flip over rather easily. Most trucks are small, low to the ground, and with the biggest engine you can squeeze into one.

You will also notice not many folks will have fancy paint jobs. Fancy paint will get you noticed but it won't shorten your time to the top of the mountain, and that's mostly what they care about.

And these cars take a beating, they can slide off the road into the rocks and trees every once in a while so a paint job doesn't last very long.