Mark : Very interesting about the autocross car ....... that is
quite an improvement in lap times for what would seem to be a device
providing very minimal gains ..... I do not know if this technique has ever
been utilized in land speed racing ...... but it certainly WAS utilized in
drag racing ....... by one of the all time
great INNOVATORS in drag racing science : Sneaky Pete Robinson from Georgia .
Pete was a graduate engineer and one of his main thrusts in dragster
design was to keep everything as LIGHT as possible ....... he machined down
blower
housings on the outside and went to extreme measures to lighten every
component in his rails, and this paid off early in his racing career with
wins over the big
powerful Olds and Chryslers of the early 60s era . He was an inspiration to
me to
knock a lot of weight out of my gasser, and my street cars . I would lighten
all the
parts up front until it would jump me into the next higher class, then add
lead and steel ballast behind the rear axle to reach minimum weight again,
plus a few more
pounds of removable ballast in case it came up light on the scales .
Back to Pete ...... by the time he was using SOHC Ford engines in his
Top
Fuelers, he rigged up an arrangement to literally suck the car and hence the
tires
down onto the track with more force than Mother Gravity provided ....... with
resulting lower et' s and corresponding mph increases . I believe it was
so
successful it resulted in his untimely end in a top fuel car, somewhere on
the West Coast, I think ........ my memory is nuthin' like it used to be
....... I had all the details at one time . Apparently the vacuum cleaner
effect pulled the car down so hard
that it blew a tire out or stressed the chassis to a point where there was a
failure,
resulting in the crash ........ other old drag guys here on the list might
remember
many of the details . I would have to go on a magazine search or digging
thru some old drag papers ........ I DO recall the crash was blamed on his
super
traction device , but I don' t know if he was the only one to actually use
one on
a rail ....... there were a lot of sharp cookies building cars back then
....... and
still are ...... in ALL forms of auto racing ....... ALL FORMS !!!
Take some time to look around the pits at Bonneville next month ......
or ANY track you might be at ...... some GREAT engineering and experimentation
on quite a few racecars !!! Remember, Detroit learned and copied a whole
lot from those hot rodders in dirty Levis !!! Thanks, Mark, for bringing
up this
most interesting subject ....... even if some people think it sucks !
Bruce
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