land-speed
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Re: WINGING IT ON THE SALT ........

To: Dale.Clay@mdhelicopters.com, gridlen@yahoo.com
Subject: Re: WINGING IT ON THE SALT ........
From: FastmetalBDF@aol.com
Date: Fri, 26 Oct 2001 19:04:42 EDT
     Yes, Dale,  you want the CG up front, and I believe the low polar 
moment, necessary in helping circleburners through the turns, is a definite 
asset in
keeping the car on its straight path when it wants to get a little squirrelly
on less than perfect salt ....... it offers less leverage for the rear end of 
the
car to overcome the traction patch of the rear tires and slide sideways 
.......
just as if you whip a short dumbbell of the same weight as a baseball bat
back and forth from the wrist ....... the dumbbell has a much lower polar
moment of inertia, and is much easier to swing back and forth in opposite
directions, despite having identical weight .  We used to get a kick out
of how long it would take for some of the ( slower ) modified competitors 
to realize it made more sense to weld up light tubing nerf bars or use a 
piece of ( hole sawed ) aluminum channel, not too wide, as a bumper 
instead of the heavy steel wallbangers that were a leftover from the jalopy
years when the flatheads ruled .  Some of the builders never figured it out 
.....
they just copycatted what the guys regularly grabbing the checkers did
....... but the bottom line was it helped their handling .  Maybe a few of 
them never paid much attention in their science or physics classes in 
high school, even if some of their motors ran pretty well ......
       Racing is like Life ....... we realize after many years how little 
                           we really know  !!!
        Bruce in windy Connecticut, where Rich Fox would have had on 
at least a sweat shirt today, over his tee shirt .......

     LIVE  YOUR  PASSION  ......  FOR  YOU  LIVE  ONLY  ONCE

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