Saving the Salt

[wheelrdealer]

Chris: as my mother would have said, damned if you do and damned if you don't. As a guy that has been in the car business for. 35 years I am hyper sensitive to the environmental movement. It's been my job to pump out big SUVs or 6 plus liter diesels when that's what that's what the public wanted. Environmentalists hate guys like me. But your point is valid, as racers what are there 1,200 of us maybe more or less? Leverage comes from numbers. We have huge passion but we don't have big numbers. Chris what you are talking about is leverage. The environmental movement has leverage. If our current strategy has us dealing with not enough salt...then we may have already lost. Then we may have nothing more to loose but lots to gain.

Outside the box may be what we need.

Respectfully,

Bill

[kiwi belly tank]

As some of you know I am close to finishing one of the 500 mph capable liners & doing it on a tiny budget with no sponsors. I wanted to know the truth of what is under the surface of the salt to know if I will have somewhere to run so last night I hit the road & was on the salt at 8.30 this morning.
In continuos rain & wet salt I bored a small test hole over 2ft deep between lands end & the dyke.
The story that there is a layer of dirt on top of a whole pile of salt is absolute bull $hit!!
There is a thin crust of salt on top of an 1/8th to 1/4" of a dirt-salt mix (varies down the course) with about a 1" crust of hard salt crystal under that, then that crumbles into sloppy brine dirt/mud & by about 2" down, it is straight brine dirt with no salt crystals at all & that was the same beyond 2ft.
I bored some shallower holes about every mile or so with the same results & then another 2+footer at the 7 mile mark with the same result. I crossed over to what is probably Mike Cooks course due to location & direction & that was the same. All holes were beside an existing marker & I filled them back in so I took nothing away.
I took pics & video of everything but will need help from a friend to assemble & post all this $hit.
I spent the rest of the day getting pic's & video of Intrepid's pumping system & canals then climbed the two highest mountains behind Wendover to get a bird's eye view of the salt, the canal's & Intrepid's pond system. I did this to give everybody some understanding of how this all works but the scale of it even surprised me.
About 15 miles east of Wendover on I-80 there is another canal with a pump on it that was running & feeding a canal on the south side of the railroad & it's a big muther but I couldn't get any visual's as UHP ran me off.
I'm running on fumes here with a lack of sleep in the last couple of days, I'll get the visual stuff to you as soon as I can.
  Sid.
 

[tauruck]

Way to go Sid.
That's the way you do stuff!!!!!.

Take it easy though.

[bearingburner]

Legislators may listen to what 1,000,000 of his constituents are saying but he listens more intently to 1 constituent with $1,000,000 to donate.

[Malcolm UK]

Legislators may listen to what 1,000,000 of his constituents are saying but he listens more intently to 1 constituent with $1,000,000 to donate.

And I was just about to suggest that a petition to the President is started, which needs it seems just 100,000 'constituents' from anywhere in the world. Then I read the previous entry quoted and thought does anyone have $100,000 to make a difference?

Looking forward to seeing the visuals of the latest true tests made on the salt.

[maj]

Good on you Sid ,about time for some facts

[fredvance]

Sid, thank you so much. now we know that as a race course Bonneville is in deep do do!!

[Cameradude]

The Omens have been cast by this administration. Fossil fueled stuff is taboo. "Renewable" energy ( wind/solar) is most favored by most bureaucrats. If you are building a "renewable" LSR  congratulations, otherwise speed dreams might die at the hands of our so called leaders. I think all of us regular folks must unite and do our best to send our enemies home for good an start over with more sympathetic to our desires. We must vote and vote SMART.

God speed to all you racers.

[Gary Perkinson]

Thanks, Sid...great info... 

[entropy]

Sid,
     Someday i wanna buy you some beers and yak a bit.  Your need to go see for yourself really rings my bell.
      Based on what you saw/measured, are you optimistic for BMST, WoS, WF will happen this year?  TFA ia already paid up for WoS so we are hopeful!
karl

[fredvance]

Yup, we are in for WOS too.

[Kansas Bad Man]

When I first raced Bonneville some 15 years ago I never in my wildest dream's thought it would come to this . As what was said on the AMOS AND ANDY SHOW when I was a kid, "what a revolting development this is ANDY" is so so true.

one of the 1200

Max

[jl222]

  Thanks Sid...Should make us all wonder why save the salt hasn't been doing this for years.

   Speaking of BS how about 1,000,000 + TONS OF SALT and I'm pretty sure an 18 wheel truck and trailer load is 50,000 lbs
  or 25 tons [ I wanted to check with local gravel company before posting weight and capacity but 222 car is waiting and Troy
is on his way out]
  
  Anyhow 1,000,000 divided by 25=40,000 truck and trailer loads 

   I've posted before trying to get others to do the math.

  Yards per truck and 81sq ft per yd at 4'' deep will come later.

                JL222

[dw230]

John,

Who is to pay for this? The boat ramp put in by Ron Main was $40K all by itself.

DW

[BasementBorn]

Sid, The current statement that there is a layer of silt in between the salt layers is actually pretty consistent with both what you observed and the measurements save the salt have done over the last 10 years. The average for their measurements has been about 1.8" across the courses. We have been racing on thin salt for years. Some thing definitely needs to be done but I don't think this is the end. At least not this year.

JL222 when you are doing your calcs there are a few things you need to consider. First a cubic yard is 27 cubic feet. Second, the salt will not stay on the track. You have to figure that 4 inches across the entire basin, 36,000 is acres. That's 19,360,000 cubic yards. The average belly dump holds about 18 cubic yards. 1,075,556 truck loads. Say an average of 20 mile round trip with average consumption of 10ish miles per gallon that's 2,151,111 gallons. Diesel is what about $4/gallon, that's $8,604,444 just in fuel. Plus you have to pay for people, trucks, etc. Dry salt laydown is a good concept but tough to make that feasible.