Progress on the # 974 "Just Glad to be Here"

[CalifCarl]

The headlights seem to be the biggest rams left on the front of the car.  Is that by rule or can they be changed.

Also if they have to stay can you open them up and let air pass through them?   I was thinking you could open them up and let the air exit through a chamber to the top back of the fenders.    inside the chamber you could have  an adjustable flopper plate, which would allow you a way of adjusting your CP. Right to left and front to back.

Sorry just a lurker with a thought.    

[1FATGMC]

The headlights seem to be the biggest rams left on the front of the car. Is that by rule or can they be changed.

They are not required in competition coupe.  In fact in front of the cowl you can do anything you want.  We wouldn't even need to run a stude frontend.  The reson they are there is a personal one with Hooley.  He wants to keep the Stude look even though we know it is hurting us.  We don't have to run too much faster than last year for a record, so we are hoping we can do it with this look.  In the future who knows what will happen to the front of the car.  One thing he has started to talk about is using an import body (less frontal area than we have now) and I would assume this means it would get a totally different front than stock.

   

This is Burkland's old car that they sold.  It still holds the B/BFCC record at over 294 mph and is an example of how far you can go with the front of the car in this class.  This car ran a flathead that last time I saw it about 6 years ago, but I've heard it has run since then.

The scoop intake hole;  I understand the designing  and size.  yet it seems a bit small to pull enough air in.

the C-G and the C-P.... is this something that moving ballist weight around you can get better numbers?

Like John said you could use ballast to help with the CP/CG, but best if you don't have to.  Some people add ballast in the back to improve traction, but that just moves the CG back, which is what you are trying to avoid, so a good handling car can go to a bad handling car.  Hooley is enlarging the rear spoiler to the max allowed by the rules and hopefully that will help with traction and with the enlarged side spill plates help the CP.  CP is really the aerodynamic center of pressure of the car as seen from the side and the point on the side of the car that represents where the side forces (air) are centered on the car (hope this is clearer than what I posted yesterday).  

Since the salt doesn't have good traction that is always an issue.  In lower gears you just don't give it full throttle, but even though it is hard to spin the tires at top speed on the street it isn't that hard to do it at over 200 with a high hp car.  When you are running over 200 almost all of your hp is used to over come the drag of the air.  So think of the air as a big hand or wall in front of the car holding it back, like putting water on the ground at your rear tires with your front bumper on a wall, the car has to push through the wall of air and the only way it is going to do it is with the tire contact point and B'ville cars run narrow tires.  So what happens is the car is held back by the air and the tires just spin.  See Burkland's comments how on their 418 MPH streamliner the tires/wheels are sometimes running in excess of 130 mph faster than the car is running!

Another interesting bit of information Tom sent me the other day was that when they ran 450 mph in 2000 they were only running at 64% throttle opening out the back door.  Last year when they set the piston/wheel driven record at 418 those record runs were really parachute test runs and they were only running at 52% throttle opening and he said the track was very slippery and they had a lot of tire spin.  With a lot of tire spin it is easy to blister a tire very quickly.  With all of that in mind think of the potential this car has if it can get hooked up, and remember it is 4 wheel drive.

On the scoop size.  Is does look small and I've refigured it a number of times using two different accepted formulas and if it is not right I'm in big trouble  :oops: .  Actually it is about 15-20% larger than the formulas call for and since it tapers and gets larger as it goes towards the blower (8-71) we could cut it further up the taper and gain cross-sectional area.

Leon is right that if the scoop takes in more air than the engine can use it spills over the scoop inlet and disrupts the air flow over the car.  Of course you are going to have some of this, but the idea is to minimize it.  To figure the inlet size in sq. in. you are figuring how much air the motor uses on 2 revolutions of the motor and how far the scoop travels forward during that 2 revolutions.  That will give you the column of air in cubic inchs that the scoop will scoop up.  So you use the tire size, rear end gear, and the volumetic efficeincy of the motor.  If it is blown, as in our case, you have to take that into account and also the fact that over 200 you get a superchage effect on the incoming air of about 2 lbs of boost which is going to increase the air the motor needs.

If you want the formulas and a lot more info on scoop size and CP/CG then go to the page on my site that Doug mentioned where there are comments from Tom Burkland and some other info.  You will find that page ( HERE )

This is all pretty interesting to some and probably boring to others, but it seems the more we learn about land speed racing the more we didn't know.

c ya, Sum

[Heatnbeat]

WOW!
I'll be in Joplin sometime in August, would love to come by and take a look and your beast!!!!!!

[WZ JUNK]

WOW!
I'll be in Joplin sometime in August, would love to come by and take a look and your beast!!!!!!

We would like you to come by, but early August we will be at Bonneville.  On August the 27th the car will probably be at the HAMB Drags.  Send me a PM or just let me know when you will be in the area.

[sal37]

Wow! you guys are looking way serious there.  Keep us up to date and good luck in August.

Steve

[sirstude]

Sum,

Burkland's old car was in one of the mag's a couple of years ago and was blue then, probably the last time it ran.  For any of you that cannot figure out what it started out life as, it was a Datsun B210.  That was before the Nissan name change.  I remember the first time I saw it at a car show up in Great Falls, pictures do not do it justice.  I think they built it as a test bed for the 'liner engines.  I do know they ran haf a hemi in it one year though.

Doug

[1FATGMC]

I remember the first time I saw it at a car show up in Great Falls, pictures do not do it justice.  I think they built it as a test bed for the 'liner engines.  I do know they ran haf a hemi in it one year though.
Doug

I can still remember the first time I saw it waiting in line to run and I couldn't believe it.  At that point it wasn't Burkland's anymore and had the flathead in it.  I'm sure I have pictures of it somewhere, but that was pre-digital days for me, so they aren't as easy to find as on the computer.

You are right about using the car as a "test bed" for the streamliner's motors and they did run half a hemi in it also.  Tom said the car was sold to help finance the current streamliner.

On a side note the streamliner is entered for Speed Week.

c ya, Sum