I can't believe I posted at getting rid of walls again!

[slicktoast]

:confused:

[bella]

well, if you're bored of it, stop posting!!!! it's such a **** topic that everyone should stop putting things on it. don't think i ever posted on it.

[Crash Test]

but i like picking on Fraklin....

[Liz]

Engines powered by gerbils! Or two-year-olds. They have lots of energy and they could help have tantrums when things go wrong.

Ben Hur type wheels to discourage passing on corners.

Rubber walls so the cars will just bounce off; a good pilote could use the "pinball" effect to take out other cars and advance his track position.

Metal track and hold the cars on by magnets, ont downforce.

Brett, hydrogen is explosive - see "The Hindenberg" for details. You'd be putting a trackload of bombs out there and you'd better have really good insurance. Helium might work better and the cars could lift over their rivals instead of having to go around them.

[Crash Test]

"Metal track and hold the cars on by magnets, ont downforce."
-im thinking along the lines of metal wheels...eliminate the need for wheel changes....only have to sacrifice a refueling man at pit stop time...

[Liz]

Well make up your own silly and pointless topic and we will pick on you for awhile.

How about "get rid of helmets, we want to see what the pilotes look like"?

Or maybe "put doors on Champ cars so the pilotes won't fall out."

[Crash Test]

I'm still hell bent on having tethers attached to the cars to so they don't go spewingb off into the grandstands.

I still reckon fitting the cars with a periscope is a good idea, so the drivers can see traffic ahead of them on the track, and say if a car goes into the water at track like Detroit or Surfers, the rescue teams can find them easily.

How about fitting the cars with a migit camera man, so the incar shots can pan around? sure other classes do it mechanically, but cart sure aint Nascar....

I think afterburners would be a goer, could be a fantastic gimmic. People could bring marshmallows to the race Downside would probably be pitstops every lap (done by robots so no one gets burnt when the car leaves the pit) and it would probably discourage close raing...(image race, team owners would be hoping that their driver gets on the front row or else they would be looking for a new one in the morning....)

External combustion engine which was suggested in the looney toons thread.

Gimic races in Antacrtica and the North Pole (combined with afterburners, catchy slogans like "burning up the ice" will appear...)

Why not turn qualifying into an egg and spoon race or an obstacle course?

How about having electric motors? Pit stops would be a lot safer as you would just plug the car into the wall. Drivers would not have to wear fire proof suits, just a lead coat to protect them from the battery acid. (don't worry about electrical fires...)

How about we have parachutes attached to the cars? (i swear i have never seen this before in my life). Who cares if the car gets in a spin....we'll design cars with gyroscopes that correct spins, so only head on accidents will ever occur.

Why not use rocket fuel as a propelent? the cars would go a lot faster...

GO ON LIZ PICK ON ME!! I CAN DEFEND MY ZANNY IDEAS< JUST TRY ME!!!

[Crash Test]

OH another brilliant idea!

I can't help but notice that head injuries are putting drivers out. Why we eliminate them? I mean we can stick them in a jar (like futurama) and we can ask them for their thoughts on how their corpse is performing during the race.

[enzo]

Better yet, make sure that their accountants only include the "cash out of pocket" in their costs analysis. That'll slow them down better than any attenuators !

[enzo]

Oh, I almost forgot. Check this out :
http://nitronic.com/research13/mlsc.html

[Green_man4421]

Or how about run the cars on a track they would never come off? Like train races?

Or run the carz on pure Hydrogen ( i am serious on that) or Solar power,

[TimD]

Hydrogen? Electric storage batteries?

Far too environmentally unsound.

I say the cars should be powered by tightly wound elastic bands. Admittedly the time between pitstops would be somewhat brief, but think of all the added pitlane drama.

Who knows, Michael Andretti might even finish a season with fewer points than when he started!

[Neil C]

Gravity.

Line up the cars at the edge of a cliff...green flag...crews push cars off cliff.

mechanical grip: meaningless
aerodynamics: the key to winning
development costs: a box of rocks will do
energy source: renewable, there's a lot of gravity out there
safety: uhhh, maybe Franklin has some ideas here, but there would be plenty of openings for new drivers after each race

[Franklin]

If this were 1963 at the Indy 500, does anyone think that any of the above people would NOT be among those saying "That's just ridiculous, that'll never work" (while looking at the wide low profile tires introduced that year by Mickey Thompson).

[Franklin]

Enzo,

You would do well to remember that at www.nitronic.com/research13/mlsc.html I can provide an example of actually having built a forward-thinking cutting-edge car, while you on the other hand continue to make unsupported assertions about the many racecars you claim to have designed. Besides being the first purely propeller-driven racecar, the propster is also one of the few amateur-built sandwich composite monocoque racecars in the world.

In 1987, when Gordon White set at Bonneville the FIA record of 159 mph for normally aspirated two-liter engines (using an Offy in a 1947 Kurtis Midget!), White eventually had to add 300 pounds of ballast to the normally 850 pound empty weight car. And that was with only about 175 horsepower. Some of the really powerful cars at Bonneville such as Al Teague's carry over 600 pounds of ballast.

Although this first propster is a compromise design due to a shoestring budget, the other advantage of the propster concept (besides the elimination of ballast) is the option of placing the engine much farther ahead of the rear wheels for maximum separation between the center of gravity and the center of pressure.

Below is a comparison between a VW Bug, a VW-powered airplane, and the propster.

1965 VW Bug:
(Specifications)
Weight - 2,050 pounds (as tested)
Frontal area - 19.9 square feet
Engine - 1,192 cc, 40 horsepower
(Road Test Results)
Drag at 60 mph - 105 pounds
Top speed - 72 mph
Quarter mile - 22.9 seconds at 54.5 mph
Acceleration - 0-30 in 7.5 seconds
0-40 in 12.2
0-50 in 18.8
0-60 in 29.4
0-70 in 47.8
50-70 in 26.9

With 19.9 square feet of frontal area and drag of 105 pounds at 60 mph that works out to about a .6 drag coefficient. With a .6 drag coefficient, the 1965 Bug needed 30 horsepower at the rear wheels to go 72 mph. (The literature I've read on the open-cockpit open-wheel version of the 1937 Auto Union grand prix car gives a .6 drag coefficient for it, so apparently for a fully enclosed car the Bug has a fairly draggy shape.)

Sonerai II airplane (two-seater)
(Specifications)
Weight - 950 pounds max. gross
Engine - 1,700 cc VW, 65 horsepower
Propeller - 52-in diameter, 44-in fixed pitch
(Flight Test Results)
Minimum take-off roll - 900 feet at max. gross weight
Take-off speed - 65 mph
Top speed - 175 mph indicated airspeed at 4,000 rpm
Cruise speed - 130 mph at 3,200 rpm

So the Sonerai, even with 500 cc more engine displacement and over 1,000 pounds less weight, was still only going about 10 mph faster in the quarter-mile than the 1965 Bug even though ultimately the Sonerai was over 100 mph faster than the Bug.

The propster has an 1,800 cc engine and a frontal area of 10.4 square feet (about half that of the Bug). With me in it, it weighs about 1,000 pounds (pretty close to max. gross on the Sonerai). I'm not sure if its been reaching 50 mph in the quarter, but it's at least 40 mph.

[Neil C]

Franklin, I cant say much about the ideas you've proposed or the car you've built, but it's always easier to say "naaagh, that wont work" than it is to try to build something that will.

Even if it doesnt work, the fact that you got off your butt and actually built something means you've done more than 90% of us.

[Liz]

Hey, I thought we were being silly and pointless! You guys who want to be serious and talk about math go play on the other Walls thread and leave this one to us, um, creative types.

Neil, I like your ideas but have a mechanical crew push the cars over so nobody gets run over or accidentally caught on the wing or something and dragged over the cliff.

[Neil C]

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Trebuchet MS, Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Liz:
Hey, I thought we were being silly and pointless! <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
Uh, Liz, have you looked at Franklin's car yet?

Sorry, Frank, couldnt resist.

[slicktoast]

Hey, you humans are great!! I had a blast reading all of this. Of course w/ one exception: the serious silly and pointless technodrival.
How about:
"Get rid of tires."
"Get rid of earplugs."
"Get rid of Marla."

[bella]

ban teenagers!
ban americans!
more brazilians!

[Liz]

I think someone covered "get rid of tires" (metal wheels to be substituted, which would b jolly fun for spectators when they came off, for sure!)

Whoever Marla is, I support getting rid of her. Maybe NeilC could sign her as a pilote for his SNAFU racing team.

[Crash Test]

Yeh, i thought this was a thread taking the mickey out of you Franklin, so kudos on yet another stunning aeroplane come back.

Well since we are into eliminating walls and stuff, why not eliminate the entire race track? Have a bit of a canonball run through the downtown streets of your local city?
Good points will be:
it takes the action to the people,
cost of infrastructure: 0
need for expensive cars: 0
put a higher emphasis on navigational skills (also my proposed periscope would come in handy here)
allows a high level of audience participation (parker johnstone: "oh no! crash test in his 1991 honda civic has run paul tracy's reynard off the road into a tree. oh no! paul's not happy, he is out if the car and is proceeding to take a chunk out of crash test! oh no! crash's mum is out of the following car and doesn't like someone picking on his son! oh no! [blood, gore] end of scene)

[Franklin]

Liz,

Since they were first introduced on the SMI Motivator (a.k.a. Budweiser) rocket car in 1976, tireless wheels have been used on a wide variety of Bonneville and dry lakes cars.

[Liz]

But they don't have a lot of spectators in those venues so if the wheels come off their wagon it's not likely anyone would be sliced in half. Put one of those suckers into Frisbee Mode (which would also make them hard to see) and launch them into a grandstand of High Rollers and see how fast you can say "Class Action Lawsuit".

Crash, I like your "Death Race 2000" scenario; we could use Yonge Street (the longest street in the world) and run from the Toronto Lakefront clear into Michigan or Minnesota or wherever the heck the street ends. Everyone has to dress up in Wacky Racer costumes and BTCC rules apply. Only no team orders.

[enzo]

Liz :
You are right - Frankie's car IS silly & pointless ! Gad - the danged thing is even slower than the airplane he talks about in a quarter mile !

!59 mph with a 175 HP 2 liter a world speed record ? Heck, the US F2000 cars regularly do 153+ entering turn 3 at Charlotte with only a 150 hp 2 liter, and that's with draggy wings !

Actually, if someone builds a car so that the right side tires ran against the wall, not only would corner speeds increase, but the problem of losing it and crashing against the wall would disappear ! I don't see anything in the CART or IRL rules books that would prohibit that !

THAT'S IT !!!!! WHAT A STROKE OF GENIUS !!! Don't ELIMINATE the walls - USE THEM !!!!

And you thought Frankie had all the bright ideas ! Shame on you !!!!

Might be a ***** trying to lap slower cars though....