John I think there is one point you are missing. Every race car is a
potential airplane it is just a matter of take off speed. You try to keep
that number above the intended top speed of the car. Any shape you can think
of will fly given enough wind. It may not be true flight it may just get
blown off the earths surface.
I think you will find out the static front to rear weight is meaningless as
a number by itself. The dynamic ones are the ones that do control whether it
will fly or not. You can be 90/10 sitting still and 10/90 at 300 mph.. I
would think the scarest thing would be to have a car that can change
attitude during a run and the aero loads endlessly moving around. If I
remeber correctly John Lingenfelters car proved this might happen pretty
well.
As an aside to all of this.. I think that the majority of the types of
classes in LSR racing are built around 1950's engine technology when the
majority of the engines that could make 1000 hp or more where very heavy and
huge. The cd on most cars was pretty disapointing as well. A fast passneger
car was around 120 mph. I think this is where the whole 200 mph club came in
and why that number was picked. It was the current technology that was the
issue. Fast forward 50 some years and the cd on a passenger car is generally
pretty good if you chose well. That is thanks to the price of gasoline.
Engine development has gotten to the point that making power is no problem
at all wittnessed by plenty of 1000+ hp 2 liter drag race engines. The new
hop up parts are stronger blocks not better heads or cams. I personally can
see the time when we go back to the cast integral head and block just to
eliminate the head gasket as a failure point. I have worked on turbo engines
that you could see fire out of the sides of the block and head joint just
before it expired...
The new LSR pioneers are going to be the aero engineers. Power wise most
times you can close the hood and quit looking there for more speed because
you are not going to find it.I would love to meet one with a keen interest
in high speed taxi testing and ground effects at high speed. Turks Berkley
went from 216 to 249 playing with the spoiler. granted it was way out of
whack to begin with but it is 33 mph as well. If you don't get the aero
right it will be impossible to put enough power under the hood in the first
place. You can probably make enough power but the parts won't take it
structurally.
rant over..
Dave
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