Terry,
I am sure that some place in your presentation is the reason that you are not planning to just use an all electric drive, i.e. battery packs and high performance electric motors as you are already proposing for your final drive. Either approach will require some very challenging electronic control engineering but with an all electric drive and the 12,000 ft altitude of the salt lake in South America it would seem the all electric approach would have a huge advantage.
I have to say again that I am very impressed with your engineering and CAD abilities. I think it shows how quickly a very viable design for a landspeed car can be generated and modified quickly to provide the latest design thoughts of the engineer. I at first did not follow you thread because I thought it was a "flash in the pan" but with your continued efforts and constant modifications that are so well shown in your CAD drawings it is one of the first things I look at.
Rex
Thanks for your kind and encouraging words Rex, its great to receive such valuable input from yourself and others who have shown an interest in this design project.
My reasoning for the IC engine component for this design has to do with packaging and weight. My goal from the beginning has been to produce an aerodynamic design that breaks the 4 sq.ft. FA barrier. The latest version using modified 13B rotor powerplants, wheel motors, and a DIF layout accomplishes that.
I looked at the successful Buck Eye Bullet effort in detail and found in my opinion that weight, FA, and motor/drive train choice were their biggest drawbacks. They reported the car weighs over 8000 lbs primarily from 2 mW of battery mass. The Simspeed IC/Gen powerplants and NoS should weigh 1200 to 1500 lbs total. We're shooting for 4000 to 4500 max vehicle weight with a 47.6% smaller frontal area than the BB3 vehicle's 7.64 sq.ft.
I haven't looked at V.5.5 hp requirements for the Bolivia salt flats. My guess is the reduced aero drag at that altitude will compensate for the loss of IC hp added NoS can't provide. I do agree however that we will likely need to run at that location to reach top speed. I'm disappointed like others that we didn't see the Ack Attack liner prove record speeds were attainable at that altitude. Does anyone know of successful record attempts in Bolivia?