Landracing Forum
Thrust-powered Land Speed information => Discussions on absolute land speed records => Topic started by: martine on October 21, 2014, 04:50:37 PM
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Apologies if this has been asked before but...
How many wheels did Blue Flame have and if it was 3, when did the FIA rules change to specify ALSR cars must have 4 wheels or more?
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I think you will find it did indeed have 4 wheels / tires. 2 in the front very close together under the nose and 2 at the rear in outrigger fashion.
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Thanks for confirming...I've been poking around the internet and only just found a photo which showed the 2 front wheels...very close together.
Interesting it used rubber tyres...I always though the speed limit for rubber was around 500mph - you learn something everyday.
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Martin,
FIA have I think always insisted on 4 wheels which is why Craig's first SoA jet car record (which only had 3 wheels) was rejected by them. But no matter - the FIM cater for 2 and 3 wheelers so his record was ratified by them. And it was faster than Bluebird CN7 before Campbell got his 4 wheel record. But here's a curious thing, Craig set subsequent records with the same car before building SoA Sonic 1 and those records appear in outright record tables. Plenty of posts elsewhere on this forum to illustrate the point that sometimes rules & regulations take a while to be clarified and aligned with use of new technology or step changes in design.
Cheers
Robin
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Martin,
The pic below shows how close the two front wheels were mounted. And if you have access to Facebook the Speed Record Club has some great pictures of the Blue Flame previously on show at the Goodwood Festival of Speed here: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.656216021074779.1073741833.359703307392720&type=3.
The Blue Flame's Goodyear tyres were good for up to 700mph.
Phil
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The Blue Flame, indeed, had four wheels. At the beginning of our design process I clarified with FIA that we could mount the front tires close together. So we did, about 1 inch apart. We also had asked if the two front tires could mount on a common wheel. NO! So the front wheel/tire assemblies were independently bearing mounted on the front axle. Running on rubber tires was never a problem. We had twelve sets of Cragar wheels and Goodyear tires initially. Goodyear spun the assemblies up to 850 mile per hour!
Goodyear’s tire design for The Blue Flame was an improvement on their previous LSR tire. The chief engineer’s comments on the changes: “Different type carcass fabric increased as far as possible for strength to weight ratio, a product called 1260's/3 cord. Breaker cord was smaller cord for less centrifugal weight. More bead strength with a double bead on each side with the number of bead wires increased to 25x10 approx. Tread compound changed to latest long wear endurance and least amount of co-efficient of friction.”
We lost one wheel/tire assembly when the supporting mandrel broke at speed (I believe a balance weight flew off) on the test fixture. The tire was destroyed but the wheel only suffered some scuff marks. Of course, it was never used after that. We were limited to 700 miles per hour by Goodyear in 1970 only as a precaution, due to our lack of experience at Bonneville. The plan was to return the following year with full power and attempt a supersonic record. One of the tires was used on every one of the 26 runs, several over 600 miles per hour!Two front wheel/tire assemblies were replaced when one began to lose nitrogen pressure. That was probably an O-ring seal in the wheel flanges. Only one leaked but we replaced the pair since it was a time-consuming operation. One rear wheel/tire assembly was replaced after it locked up under braking – while being towed in the pits. The rubber tread was scraped down to the cords. It could have been run structurally, but there would likely have been some imbalance at speed.
The LSR lads who have been running solid wheels may have saved themselves a lot of trouble by running pneumatic (rubber) tires on the Bonneville salt flats rather than having to run at the various desert venues.
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Here is a nice shot of Gary with the Cragar wheel and alongside The Blue Flame on the salt - showing four wheels. Well, three of the four. You get the concept.
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Thanks for sharing the history on this. Can you describe the front end set up & the geometry involved & if you have more pics, don't hold back on us!
Sid.
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The steering consisted of a four-bar link controlling the front wheel assembly. Here is a Solidworks model in The Blue Flame.
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Two more views of the front steering and suspension. I made these Solidworks solid models from my original blue line drawings.
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I figured they would be mounted on the outside, I like that 4 link setup, the whole frame reacts from the action at one end.
The coilover's are at the front?
& Is that a rack & pinion steering the frame or hydraulics?
Sid.
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The steering means consists of a Champ Car steering box with a pitman arm mounted in the cockpit. A drag link carries the steering input motion forward through the LNG tank compartment and HTP tank compartment into the front wheel compartment. At that point, the drag link drives linked pivot arms transferring the linear steering wheel input to the closed yoke wheel carriage assembly. It had to be robust in order to control any reverse input from the heavy wheel/tire assembly from the road surface and centrifugal forces at high speed. The spring/shock struts were mounted forward of the wheel carriage assembly.
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Here is another view of the steering linkage where it attached to the closed yoke steering carriage. Had to break this up to meet the 500kb limit.
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Also, I forget to mention the overall steering ratio was 90:1. The angular steering limit was +/- 1.5 degrees. That resulted in a turning radius of ~1/4 mile. Obviously, not a slalom racer. To turn around quickly at the end of a run, we placed a skid under the front wheels and pulled it around 180 degrees. Not elegant, but worked every time. You can see this on the Youtube video "Break the Record".
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I had seen that clip before & just watched it again.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nOFVUNoT5wE
I know now whom I'm communicating with & it's a pleasuer to be in your company.
This stuff is part of history but saddly so much of it also seems to get lost to history. Places like this forum are now keeping this stuff alive but only with the foresight & generosity of people like yourself.
Now that see the 1.5 deg of steering I don't feel so bad about the "whopping" 8 deg I have in my liner. :-D
Sid.
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Dick with Blue Flame at Goodwood.
Robin
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And with Betsy in the foreground, where I spent my first few years in the US. Cool pic!
Betsy is a classic example of history that gets lost to history. We didn't record or document anything along the way, we were just too focused on doing it. The only trail of events is what other people have recorded.
There's even less stuff on Nolan White because they didn't even set up pit at the salt, they did just about everything in the trailer & were rarely in the same place twice. We used to call him "The Phantom" because he was nowhere to be seen for a couple of days then he'd just show up at the startline.
Sid.
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Sid, you are so right about Nolan White, They got the job done. :cheers:
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Before it got rebranded Cecil's Texaco place in Gerlach had a decent size picture of Nolan's liner on the back wall taken when he checked out running at Black Rock. A bit off topic (I'm a pensioner so I'm allowed to let my mind wander :?) here's another pic from Goodwood of somebody you might recognise.
Robin
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Yeah a few of us know Jim Travis. :-D
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Some of the Teague team also call him Abo since he was mistaken for an Aboriginal on a trip to Australia.
He's a good piece of LSR history! :-D
Sid.
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45 years ago today, October 23, 1970, the last absolute world land speed record was set on the Bonneville Salt Flats. The Blue Flame, designed and built by Reaction Dynamics, Inc. in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, driven by Gary Gabelich, and powered by a purpose-built liquefied natural gas-fueled rocket motor, became the first automobile to exceed 1,000 kilometers per hour.
The mile record of 622.407 miles per hour lasted 13 years, and the kilometer record of 630.388 miles per hour (1,014.656 kilometers per hour) lasted 27 years.
This was the last successful world land speed record by an American team.
Sponsored by America’s natural gas industry through their American Gas Association (AGA), The Blue Flame was constructed in our small shop in Milwaukee with the help of numerous volunteers. The car ran on Goodyear pneumatic tires which were mounted on custom-designed CRAGAR aluminum wheels. This was the last absolute world land speed record using pneumatic tires.
Arriving on the salt in mid-September, our small Reaction Dynamics land speed record team worked tirelessly to overcome numerous obstacles as we progressed toward the ultimate prize, the world land speed record. Finally, the record was achieved at the last possible moment when winter snows ended the racing season.
So, three young men from Wisconsin (Reaction Dynamics, Inc.), with practically no real money, but with a novel idea and ambition to conquer the world of speed, were able to parlay a modest budget and hard work into reality at 630 miles per hour.
Thinking back on this remarkable achievement by our small group of hot-rodders from Wisconsin 45 years ago, I can exclaim – “Only in America!”
Here’s our story on Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5PFEnzhP9Y4
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Dick - huge congratulations to all of you. A major achievement for a team of true rocket car pioneers.
Robin
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When you say "no real money" do you recall any numbers from back then?.
It would be cool to compare it to what guys are spending now to go half as fast. :-D
I know it was rocket powered etc but the nicest thing for me is that it used tires.
I was 13 or so when I read about it in one of the hot rod mags.
Great story and video. Thanks MAYOMAN. :cheers: :cheers: :cheers:
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At the conclusion, the tally was $500,000. Building The Blue Flame cost about half that - $250,000. The remainder included propellants and other costs in static tests, transport to Utah, crew and other expenses during the 5 weeks at Bonneville. We worked in the open, under blue skies (thank God), except for a brief sojourn in a hangar at the Wendover Air Field.
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Happy anniversary Dick, you're not forgotten here.
I always wondered why the car was not museum'd here in the US where it belongs.
Sid.
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Because we did not finish the car and go for the record in 1969, per our contract, Pete and I lost ownership of The Blue Flame in early 1970.
Plan A was to go for a subsonic LSR in 1970 (Goodyear limited our maximum speed in 1970 to 700 mph out of caution) with the rocket detuned to about ~13,000 lbf. Then, we planned to return the following year with full 22,000 lbf power and attempt a supersonic record.
IGT, then the car owner, did not see a benefit to returning to Bonneville, only risk. So, the car went on tour in the U.S. and Europe for two years.
They did not want Pete and I to get the car back, so they sold it to a European collector in Holland (a natural gas executive in Europe), who later sold or donated the car to the Sinsheim museum.
He got the car for the cost of transporting, $10,000.
Actually, since the 1,000 kilometers per hour LSR created quite a lot of publicity in Europe, it probably is more popular where it is now. It remains the premier exhibit at that museum.
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Thanks Dick. It would be cool to get her back like Sid said.
You guys set the benchmark for all those that came after. :cheers: :cheers: :cheers: :cheers: :cheers:
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Still the fastest speed at Bonneville.
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Dick,
here the picture with Gary included :-D
your Blue Flame curator
Pork Pie
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Thomas,
Just in case I am the only one to notice ..... I like the small "correction" to the speed quoted.
:dhorse:
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The FIA certificate issued in 1970 lists 630.388 mi/h for the kilometer speed. This also was the world land speed record.
Some nameless person at FIA changed that without explanation in recent times.