Bak,
The top speed we've reached at sea elevation was 83 km/h, i.e 51,875 mph
, in sidecar form.
We've had a test session in a French town that's also called Bonneville and is located at 1200 meters, which is close to Bonneville, Utah elevation.
The temperature and surface conditions were far from beeing similar, so the loss of performance was limited.
I'm currently corresponding with John Romero, that ran a 2-stroke non sidecar moped Express 50cc at Bonneville,
we will probably able to estimate the loss.
We are using a zero toe-in configuration on the sidecar outfit, along with the wheel far forward from the rear m/c one.
This seems to work fine for our small displacement and power engine, both in terms of rolling resistance and stability.
But the rolling resistance isn't zero : we've conducted a one-shot test run while removing the sidecar outfit, in solo form,
and I've reached a slightly higher (85 km/h) after only 300 meters (instead of 900 in s/c form),
then I had to cut the power since the sprocket ratio was obviously far too short
.
We will be conducting a last test session on next Wednesday,
with the goal to test the m/c version regarding its stability and top speed habilities.
Our racing machine is called Saline Contender.
http://www.lestriplettesdebonneville.com/Pages/Album/AlbumDetail.aspx?Rubrique_Id=7&Galerie_Id=185Saline Contender will compete both in s/c and m/c versions, but with different mud guards,
since the rules are more restrictive in m/c, even in special construction class.
Regards,
Frank.