Setting up STV RR

[CI STV]

Just picked up a nice XR6 lower, modded by Kelly Patrick, with cut-down Sporty 2:1 gears, billet carrier, etc. that I’m going to use for drag racing.
I also have an 1.78:1 JC modded XR6 lower which I’ve had for a while, but I need to get that one rebuilt. Found the new L/U in the for sale section of these forums.
So now I’ll have a couple of gear options that I can test with different props.

[CUDA]

2 to 1 is a must have with short course racing and that's all that is going on these days of 300 - 400 lb. boats.

How quick things change...

[CI STV]

2 to 1 is a must have with short course racing and that's all that is going on these days of 300 - 400 lb. boats.

How quick things change...

Yep, we haven’t even formed any sort of organization here as yet, but there’s a bunch of guys with fast boats and right now we’re having a debate about what length of course we want to do, most folks are switched on to the idea of a shorter 800-1000ft course, vs the 1/4 mile we used to do 18-20 years ago.
We went through the same thing with drag racing on land here a few years back, because we only have an 1/8 mile track nowadays. Lots of guys still talk about us “needing” a 1/4 mile track. I used to say the same thing myself. But after a while reality sets in and people realize that fixating on a arbitrary number is BS, because as cars, boats and bikes get quicker, faster and more powerful, a shorter course is actually more competitive, offers better visibility to spectators (who the hell can watch a whole 1/4 mile run without a drone, anyhow?) and is much easier on parts.
I figure if you’re slinging a Drag motor 11,000+ rpm, it must be better to get there quicker with less gearing and prop and get off the throttle at 800ft, rather than loading it with a 1.87 or 1.78 and a ~24 and holding it down through the end of the 1/4.

[mach351]

Y’all got a drag strip down there?!? Dang I’m jealous

[mach351]

Wow I just looked it up on the map and see it - that’s awesome. Is it busy?

[CI STV]

Y’all got a drag strip down there?!? Dang I’m jealous

Yep. We have an 1/8 mile, although it’s not a NHRA spec track or anything and the surface isn’t the best. We’ve been Drag racing down here for decades, but it’s been off and on, although we have a lot of cars and race cars (probably more per capita than anywhere else in the world). The 1/8 mile track was built back in the mid-2000s and then was shut down for a number of years (2011 to 2018) until myself and group of other racers formed a company and negotiated a licence with the owner and we reopened it until the license ran out earlier this year. The land has now been sold to another racer, who’s going to reopen the track and refurbish it, so we’re hoping to be running on it again soon into the foreseeable future.

[CI STV]

Wow I just looked it up on the map and see it - that’s awesome. Is it busy?

Yep, it’s surprisingly very busy here and although we have closed our borders to tourism, there’s a development boom going on now and land sales haven’t been higher, even though property prices have gone up as well. It’s expensive as hell to live here though.
We have a bunch of fast boats down here, including two former Monty Racing boats: the green, yellow and purple Mirage and my STV, an Allison drag boat, a Quartermaster, a Quartershot, another Barsh hull, a Mirage with Diamond power, a Triad DR-20, a bunch of Hydrostreams and Action Marine boats, and Mathew Caldwell’s old black Triad is being prepped in Miami now to ship down here too.
So, the plan is to form a small organization and do a few events and see how it goes.
When you live on a rock, you gotta do what you can to preserve your sanity, especially since practically the whole world has locked down.

[CI STV]

Just a bit of an update, since I haven’t had much chance to work on the boat lately, with all the stormy weather we’ve had around here. I did manage to install the Ox Performance coaming pulleys and rear tie-backs last weekend and they fit and look pretty awesome. Can’t believe this was Alex’s first set, because all I sent him was a few pictures I snapped with my cell phone with me holding a measuring tape next to the old crusty Nydahl parts, and yet the new ones they fit right into the same holes. The guides are a little different from the originals, but are also much nicer pieces, with a different (diagonal) bolt-pattern, so I’m going to have to drill new holes for them. I’m waiting until I have the midsection installed and the cables tight on the wing plates to install those, so that the guides are aligned with the cable routing as perfectly as possible.

[CI STV]

Also managed to get the transom brackets installed as well, but when I bolted on the midsection and took some measurements, it was too high, so I had to drill some additional holes in the the other half of the bracket to lower it down an inch. The transom on my boat is cut down so low (Gordon had an 10”? OMC F1 mid on it) that I had to clip the corners off the brackets to avoid the corners hanging below the v on the transom. I also cut an old TH marine plate I had and used 5200 to glue that on the transom between that and the brackets.
I also have a Baicour STV skid plate to mount as well, which will require me to plug and relocate the drain plug hole.
I’m going to start back at fitting it up this weekend.

[CI STV]

Made some progress over the last couple of weekends and I have the midsection mounted on the boat and the steering and trim pumps hooked up and working:

Ended up using a set of STR pulleys, since the holes in the PPE bars were 1/2” and I had bought the spacers and ARP bolts already in 1/2”. I have a friend who wants to buy the OXP pulleys anyway, which I still think are neater in that they have the ability to act as a turnbuckle to adjust the cable/steering wheel position on the boat.

I used some QA1 stainless steel heim joint spacers and ARP bolts for the steering. Don’t worry, I used a nylock nut on the boat. That picture is just a mock-up in my garage. (WTF is with some of the pictures rotating sideways when you post them on here?)

Since I had lost the adjustability of the OX Perf pulleys, and since I didn’t want the cable thimbles chewing up those nice anodized tie-backs I installed a couple of these stainless steel turnbuckles, which fit perfectly and gives me the ability to adjust the cable to change steering wheel position at the ramp, which is important, since I will no doubt need to adjust it to center the butterfly wheel once I’ve run it.
Will post up some more pics as it progresses.

[H2OPERF]

Looks Super nice...

[ShadowFlier]

Very nice!

[CI STV]

Got some pictures from Chris Dunn yesterday of my cowl, which is finally finished. Well, almost finished. He still needs to install the bungees and the louvers. But I have to say it looks damn good to me. Can’t wait to see how it looks on the back of the STV:

[mach351]

Shorty....my absolute favorite. Combined with 12” is sick

[CI STV]

Shorty....my absolute favorite. Combined with 12” is sick

Yeah, I think it’s going to be a pretty sexy setup. Dying to get this thing setup and running.