Author Topic: Australian Belly Tank  (Read 3171268 times)

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Online salt27

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Re: Australian Belly Tank
« Reply #3630 on: March 10, 2013, 11:19:34 PM »
Post coital stupor :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D


Caught that yellow dog did ya. :roll:

Offline Dr Goggles

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Re: Australian Belly Tank
« Reply #3631 on: March 11, 2013, 01:03:59 AM »
That "yellow dog" was the former DLRA E/GL record. :cheers: :cheers:
Few understand what I'm trying to do but they vastly outnumber those who understand why...................

http://thespiritofsunshine.blogspot.com/

Current Australian E/GL record holder at 215.041mph

THE LUCKIEST MAN IN SLOW BUSINESS.

Offline grumm441

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Re: Australian Belly Tank
« Reply #3632 on: March 11, 2013, 03:14:59 AM »
Shaguar....

And Ferd.....  We all enjoy Marlo's build dairy
And I think I would enjoy Hawaii as well
I might stop there when I drive over from Australia this year???

http://www.dlra.org.au/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=377



G
Chief Motorcycle Steward Dry Lakes Racers Australia Inc
Spirit of Sunshine Bellytank Lakester
https://www.dlra.org.au/rulebook.htm

Offline Dr Goggles

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Re: Australian Belly Tank
« Reply #3633 on: March 11, 2013, 03:42:03 PM »
Shaguar....

And Ferd.....  We all enjoy Marlo's build dairy
And I think I would enjoy Hawaii as well
I might stop there when I drive over from Australia this year???

http://www.dlra.org.au/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=377



G

It's been quiet here because each time we fire it up you say something weird like that and our heads are a little raw from scratching 'em. :|
Few understand what I'm trying to do but they vastly outnumber those who understand why...................

http://thespiritofsunshine.blogspot.com/

Current Australian E/GL record holder at 215.041mph

THE LUCKIEST MAN IN SLOW BUSINESS.

Offline Jon

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Re: Australian Belly Tank
« Reply #3634 on: March 11, 2013, 06:57:40 PM »
Sooo.
What is the 2014 plan then?

jon
Underhouse Engineering
Luck = Opportunity + Preparation^3

Offline maj

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Re: Australian Belly Tank
« Reply #3635 on: March 12, 2013, 02:11:20 AM »
2013 is not done yet
there is a 1/2 container spare above the bikes  :wink:

Offline stay`tee

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Re: Australian Belly Tank
« Reply #3636 on: March 12, 2013, 02:42:21 AM »
2013 is not done yet
there is a 1/2 container spare above the bikes  :wink:

what an excellent oppertunity,  :wink:,

 ill even tow it from SanFran to Bonneville and back if ya want, :-),, will have a 10' UHaul with spare towbar,,
« Last Edit: March 12, 2013, 02:45:47 AM by stay`tee »
First Australian to ride a motorcycle over 200mph at Bonneville,,,

Offline Dr Goggles

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Re: Australian Belly Tank
« Reply #3637 on: March 12, 2013, 09:15:51 AM »
2013 is not done yet
there is a 1/2 container spare above the bikes  :wink:

Lotto tickets is the only hope I've got  :roll:

Just to let people know the Spirit of Sunshine story isn't on hold, in fact it is as busy AS IT HAS EVER BEEN. Fordboy is crunching numbers for us. We have gone from licking our finger and sticking it up in the wind( man, that could sound really bad) to sitting on the floor with our legs crossed and LISTENING. Mark is trying to set some reasonable parameters for us to work within. As he said " I don't believe in testing to destruction, it is a waste of time and money", we are now drilling down into the real capabilities of the combination we have and looking for untapped potential as well as making ourselves aware of boundaries that we are already leaning heavily against. It seems that we may well keep a 6400 rpm limit on the motor  and seek to slightly shift the torque peak while gearing down further.


The 181ci de-stroked N/A motor is seriously back on the table too.

we did OK this year, but the truth is it just opened the door to a whole room full of !&^*#$ , stay tuned, so to speak. :cheers:
Few understand what I'm trying to do but they vastly outnumber those who understand why...................

http://thespiritofsunshine.blogspot.com/

Current Australian E/GL record holder at 215.041mph

THE LUCKIEST MAN IN SLOW BUSINESS.

Offline Milwaukee Midget

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Re: Australian Belly Tank
« Reply #3638 on: March 12, 2013, 09:36:12 AM »
a whole room full of !&^*#$ :cheers:

I've been cleaning out the Pommy Porta Potty for about a year now.  Once one understands HOW on earth the !&^*#$ got stuck to the ceiling in the first place, it saves you from having to completely swab down the whole outhouse.

"Problems are almost always a sign of progress."  Harold Bettes
Well, I guess we're making a LOT of progress . . .  :roll:

Offline Dr Goggles

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Re: Australian Belly Tank
« Reply #3639 on: March 15, 2013, 07:20:00 PM »
All I can say is wow!

Thanks Mark, along with the heart-attack breakfast I just had that is going to take some digestion.......


That is EXACTLY what we have needed........


I need three screens to read it all at once................. :cry: :cry:
« Last Edit: March 15, 2013, 07:28:22 PM by Dr Goggles »
Few understand what I'm trying to do but they vastly outnumber those who understand why...................

http://thespiritofsunshine.blogspot.com/

Current Australian E/GL record holder at 215.041mph

THE LUCKIEST MAN IN SLOW BUSINESS.

Offline Milwaukee Midget

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Re: Australian Belly Tank
« Reply #3640 on: March 15, 2013, 07:45:32 PM »
I need three screens to read it all at once................. :cry: :cry:
Get a couple of new ink cartridges - I suspect you'll need 'em . . .
"Problems are almost always a sign of progress."  Harold Bettes
Well, I guess we're making a LOT of progress . . .  :roll:

Offline generatorshovel

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Re: Australian Belly Tank
« Reply #3641 on: March 15, 2013, 08:05:24 PM »
There goes your pocket money for a while Rev & Doc .  :-D
Tiny
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I would prefer to make horsepower, rather than buy, or hya it, regardless of the difficulties involved , as it would then be MINE

Offline Reverend Hedgash

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Stuttgart Mercedes and Porsche Museums
« Reply #3642 on: March 16, 2013, 06:34:51 AM »
While the Colonel and Dr G crunch those numbers (thanksFB) I'll give a report for my visit to Stuttgart's Mercedes Factory and Museum and Porsche Museum visits that I just completed.

Mercedes factory
Stuttgart was bombed heavily during WW2 with the heavy industries of Mercedes (tanks) and Heinkel (planes) being specific targets. Mercedes were one of the few to survive the war and subsequently bought up huge amounts of land around them.

Visiting the factory to pick up the new family car is still a tradition in Germany and so the factory has a much more public persona than many car makers in the rest of the world. This sense of community continues into the factory staff itself where Mercedes’ policy is to never sack an employee (unless there are disciplinary problems) and apparently never has. This is despite the fact the factory is extremely full of very cool robots primarily assembling and checking parts made from other factories in a very impressive and very long line of assembly (this was an engine plant). Amazingly even though mostly populated by robots the factory is not 24/7 but a normal working week with weekends off. This is a product again of community values (religion is still very important in Germany with Sunday still pretty sacrosanct) but also of some financial judgement that the financial advantages for running the plant 24/7 were not enough to justify the managerial and community expense.

Overall a very interesting tour revealling the importance of branding throughout the line and the complexities of making vehicles for every corner of the planet and the variations that necessarily entails. The Quality Control measures were extraordinarily impressive which is a sentence that I didn't think I would be writing anytime soon socially.

Mercedes Museum
The museum located next to the factory is a tower with an awkward façade as this is very much one building designed from the inside out. It is all about the experience and story or Mercedes and is arranged in a chronological order starting from the first car (a Benz) to future concepts and is a luxurious array of beautiful vehicles shown with plenty of space to appreciate them.

After entering the discrete entry, there is an enormous concrete lined atrium where you take lift shuttles inspired from 1930’s sci fi movies. In fact there are a lot of movie inspired details such as the beam-me-up floor from Star Trek to the glowing floor and ceiling from Kubrick’s 2001 A Space odyssey. These display tricks work by giving a familiarity to some of the spaces and an exciting what-could-be imaginative flavour. As can be expected not everyone who comes to these museums is a car tragic and so cleverly there are many other things to entertain those siblings and spouses who are not petrol inlined. For example running parallel with the exhibition there are zeitgeist images and stories showing the cars’ context of their design period which in turn provide much additional interest to just the cars.

I was able to see the very funky corporate entertainment spaces which are rented out 300 nights a year. They are very much a mix of James Bond cocktail bar and swish euro museum and I can see why they are so well used, who wouldn’t want to entertain clients in a business meeting surrounded by some of the most exotic cars in the world?

As for the cars there is everyone that you would expect there with my favourites being the 300SLR (the racing gullwing) that was never actually raced but used as a personal car by the head of the design team, and the reconstructed racecar transporter that I have been thinking about for the past ten years as an influence for the Spirit of Sunshine transporter. The Landspeed car developed just before WW2 was there and looks a lot rougher than I imagined in the bodywork department but I guess it wasn’t quite complete prior to being shelved due to the war.

Overall an excellent museum that I would say is a must visit when in Stuttgart which I give an 8 out of ten with its let down being its lack of refinedness in its exterior and lack of positive relationship with its immediate landscape.

Porsche Museum
Whereas the Mercedes museum was all about the internal experience and story of the cars the Porsche Museum is all about the exterior. Designed in a severely angular way (very reminiscent of the deconstructivist studies of the early nineties but you already knew that didn’t you…) and suffers from all the problems and gratuitous shape making that poor contemporary architecture is often rightly accused of. This building is designed for magazine covers and not for the positive experience of the visitor. For example the majority of arrivals to the museum will be from the excellent local train service yet the museum’s design (nor the station) has no visual consideration of this major entry portal; that is, to actually see the building’s form that it has spent so much money on you have to walk away from the building and cross the road and look back which is not the way to design a grand arrival for the excited visitor.

The interior lacks the interest and mystery that separate spaces can bring as the entire exhibition floor is revealed in one hit which means that there is no wondering what is around the corner and so boredom with the space quickly sets in (especially in conjunction with the completely white interior (save some black surrounds). The great expense to make the building do its structural gymnastics and get the exhibition floor high off the ground with very few columns is not utilised justifiably as the exhibition area has no windows save a few to dull local factory neighbours so the added height is meaningless save an extra escalator journey through a dust ridden void.

The exhibition itself is pretty cold with no photos of the people involved or places that make the story so interesting and human. 90% of the information is delivered with stereo headsets which alienate you from who you went to the museum with and so making the space is an unusually quite almost pharmaceutical space with wired zombies walking around.

There are some gorgeous Porsche cars there (928 longtail a standout and possibly will influence our streamliner body) but without the warming contextual support of people’s stories and other interesting facts this museum misses its mark completely and the opportunity that its exciting exterior promises. It’s odd in that it has all the spaces that a good automobile museum should have and the right budget but it simply has not arranged them, or detailed them, or given the love, or what makes these items so special to people, enough attention, instead they have spent the budget on a grand and ultimately meaningless formal statement of an already dated building style.

There are many ways that this museum could be improved (and simple ones such as having single ear only headsets enabling you to talk to your mate) and there are some construction works going on now so hopefully an improvement in future, but my recommendation now is it is simply for Porsche zealots only. 2/10

End of Sermon
Reverend Hedgash

« Last Edit: March 16, 2013, 07:06:12 AM by Reverend Hedgash »

Offline Reverend Hedgash

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Stuttgart more photos
« Reply #3643 on: March 16, 2013, 06:53:54 AM »
More images

Offline Reverend Hedgash

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Porsche photos
« Reply #3644 on: March 16, 2013, 06:55:05 AM »
Porsche photos