Hello from rainy England.
No record breaking attempts over here this year so far.
Very interesting thoughts on rear wheel steering. Remeber that Glynne
Bowsher built a test vehicle based round the front wheel drive Mini car to
show Richard Noble that a rear steer arrangement would work on Thrust SSC.
Mini drove through front wheels which were locked into straight ahead
position. rear wheels were in the Thrust arrangement on a chassis
extension out of the rear. Richard Noble claimed that it worked OK at fast
road speeds - 60 to 70 mph.
Andy Green, writing in Nobles book, confirms that he had to adopt a special
driving method to control the motion of the Thrust SSC car by thinking
ahead of the point of having to put in a correcting input. At the critical
yaw point which occured on each run Andy had already put correcting lock
onto the steering. This was in the transonic speed region - not likely to
be a problem with a wheel driven automobile. With no self correction Andy
also had to put in lock the opposite way to stop any 'swing' from getting
out of control. The remarkable skills of a test pilot and ace fighter
pilot helped. Andy describes Thrust SSC as technically 'undrivable'.
Where ten is uncontrollable to a pilot he rated Thrust SSC at 8.
But should this occur at 300 mph ? All that can be done is build it and
try it I guess.
As for using a fork lift truck - sorry but a Brit has got their first. In
1995 David Brodie, a respected UK saloon race car driver, achieved a two
way average speed of 87.7 mph driving a Lungheinrich vehicle. His faster
run was 91.2 mph. The airfield used has a 2 mile runway length. He did
remove the forks so that they did not present a danger to any one. Cab was
equipped with rollcage and side safety bars.
Enjoying this thread.
Malcolm Pittwood, Derby, England.
ps. for an earlier question - Hydrogen Peroxide is a powerful oxidant,
not fuel, and will react violently with the oils in an internal combustion
engine - torching the aluminium of pistons and probably the cylinder liners
too. It also creates great heat as it decomposes (with the aid of a
catalyst) which does not help efficiency when adding fuel in an internal
combustion cyclinder. Peroxide is for rockets !! Stick with Nitrous Oxide
injection for power improvements.
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