Australian Belly Tank

[Milwaukee Midget]

It seems if we hit the intended mark at Gairdner this year that he may have found some coin to get us to Speedweek, and then to ship the car over to him in the UK to work on another body.

A trip down Pendine Sands, perchance?

[Reverend Hedgash]

Bloodhound
I am just listening to Richard Noble on BBC Radio 4 talking about Bloodhound. Jeez... it is going to be quick. He is talking about how his mental processes have sped up over the years yet that effects like changes in pressure still re-orientate your sense of perception on these runs and so that you think the car is pointing straight down, "but that only lasts for a few moments so you just ignore that..." Cool as a cucumber that one.

At 400mph he then needs to turn on the hydrogen which pumps a tonne of hydrogen into the rocket in 17 seconds, he is not just a passenger.

I keep getting updates from Roscoe MacGlashan whose own 1000mph car is still on track. He is doing it on a shoestring compared to Bloodhound and I am very concerned that either he will not be finished before Bloodhound or he will be and will kill himself doing it.

Banana Splits
I love those guys but Snorky? Stew is definitely Drooper and the Colonel is Bingo but Snorky??? I want to be be Fleegle. I can't play guitar, I can't sing (and yeah I have a keyboard in my office), but I want to be Fleegle. Fleegle was voice by Paul Winchell who was an inventor and was the first to build and patent the mechanical heart with Dr. Heimlich!
Better show than H.R.Puffenstuff but I think the writers wrote that on the dark side of the drugs that they wrote the BS's.

Streamliner body
Yes movement here. I am seeing the Dean later this month to discuss the streamliner body of the tank. He is a composites guy so hopefully he'll get excited. I have spoken to additive manufacturing staff and looking at getting it made here. I have a PhD student and an Iranian scientist who did his PhD on an extreme low drag vehicle assisting on testing some ideas I have on a new shape for the car.

We are following the road that SoCal took with building a streamliner over the chassis of the tank. This is because the tank is sorted and we have it already and cannot afford the time or the money to build another car. I know that it is wider than is ideal but then there are some improved stability issues which is good on the S part of FSB, our design mantra (every part has to be Fast Safe Beautiful).

As for the body's wetted area yes it maybe larger than the tank body but when you add into that the drag and turbulence created by the axles, tie rods, and wheels that is a small price to pay for what will be a net overall improvement in slipperiness so it should actually go faster than the tank. This historically was an argument against the original So-Cal tank and it proved the nay-sayers wrong so I don't think the physics have changed too much since then. Still the proof is in the pudding and a bad design will be slower than a good design so no guarantees until we put it on the big white dyno.

We could narrow the axles and improve the frontal area but I would hate to destroy what we have in the tank as we are so proud of the shape as it stands.  The idea of the streamliner design is that we can continue to use both bodies on the car, even at the same meet if we desire getting maximum bang and fun for our buck. It is going to be tricky to get a good shape over the car but my feeling as a creative is that limitations help you to be creative in many ways as it rules out so many options and forces you into new pathways. As Clint says, "a man's got to know his limitations" and we know the car pretty well.

Bonneville and UK plans
The plan I'd like to see happen for the car is if it runs to hopes at Lake Gairdner next year with the new Haltech fixing the problem them we should green light taking it to Bonneville for Speedweek 2014. I do have a possible sponsor for some of this but I would also look at some crowd sourcing funding to make it happen and the whole team can go. Then after whatever happens in Bonneville instead of taking it back to Australia we ship it to campus here for its new body to be attached and fettled. Whilst here the bellytank can do a run on Pendine Sands in Octobe with the Hot Rodders making it a car that has run on three different famous landspeed tracks in three different countries. I(I don't know why this matters so much but to actually drive where Perry, Seagraves and Campbell all broke records excites me enormously). I have been talking to one the heads of Yorkshire Air Museum which has the longest runway in Britain and is the home of many landspeed record attempts (including Richard Hammonds ill fated rocket car excursion) and it would be possible (and ideal) to test the new body on the car there until sorted as it is only an hour north of here.

Rogers and Hammerstein taught me that you need a plan to have a plan to come true but cadets also taught me that a plan also needs to work in the first place and be flexible to allow for unforeseen elements and I reckon it passes muster on those points too.


Reverend Fleegle

[Jon]

Wasn't actually thinking wetted area, was thinking frontal area.
My mind sees all the air that is currently going under the axles will have to be displaced a long way to go a conventional Streamliner route.
The Carbonite liner has made the air around the axle area much happier than a standard axle tube without moving it very far. Believe that would be a good concept to pursue, maybe even a Trihull arrangement if you wanted to get funky.

PS, not my car, love your work.
jon

[SPARKY]

  to all you guys

[Reverend Hedgash]

Hey Jon, you are right in that the frontal cross section area will be bigger. My understanding of aero for that is that if we can keep the boundary layer attached for as long as we can and have a much higher percentage of it smoothly going around the car and joining neatly up behind then the drag will be less than the total of a bunch of separate entities.

The good thing about getting this student on board is that he can test some different shapes and combinations and permutations using fluid analysis software which will give us some answers to these questions, (with the caveat the only real way to know is still real world testing but the software is getting much better these days given formula one input etc.)

You are also right about slipstreaming the axles, a simple aero teardrop shape over the currently circular axles will reduce the drag by a factor of 10. That is if we had ten times less axle out in the wind which is significant and so we will be doing that on the axles for the bellytank.

Having outrigger pods would be fun and I do like the Italian catamaran style bellytank that was at the Freo motor museum but by my reckoning there would be a greater wetted area doing it this way than a more bulbous shape (remembering a sphere is the most volume you can make with the least skin).

Finally it kind of is your car Jon, it's everybody's car who contributes to it and we thank everyone for their thoughts and contributions as we cannot do this alone and we only know any of this stuff through discussion with everyone else and looking and thinking about what they have done. So keep those questions and observations coming, they are greatly appreciated and make for a better car. I will publish results of our analyses here when we get them done.

Dik

[Dr Goggles]

You are also right about slipstreaming the axles, a simple aero teardrop shape over the currently circular axles will reduce the drag by a factor of 10. That is if we had ten times less axle out in the wind which is significant and so we will be doing that on the axles for the bellytank.
Dik

yep, we'll definitely do that, because a guy called Jon has made some 'glass fairings for the axles.....just sayin....

[SPARKY]

I can see a cover up coming soon---

[tauruck]

I can see a cover up coming soon---

The "Glass Slipper".

[Tman]

Wow, lofty plans guys! Go for it!

[Milwaukee Midget]

Whilst here the bellytank can do a run on Pendine Sands in October with the Hot Rodders making it a car that has run on three different famous landspeed tracks in three different countries. I don't know why this matters so much but to actually drive where Perry, Seagraves and Campbell all broke records excites me enormously.

Rev, there's a degree of romanticism in this sport that few outside it will ever understand.  It's based in history, mystery, mastery and legend.

I've got to believe that this would be the first car to have run on all three courses.

I charge you to conquer the world.

[grumm441]

A day in the grass at http://www.chopped.com.au/
One for the sponsors, both of them
G

[Dr Goggles]

Yes, Chopped.

Simon Davidson talked me into taking the tank, initially I was hoping to take both of them but in reality the Sprite, the little 165 gal. job with no motor, and being too low to drive there, and um not being a race car as the fall back option as an excuse for being a static display I wasn't taking it.

Simon arrived on Wednesday and we did some body assembly before we collected the trailer from Pete's, had dinner and checked out his Whitworth mobile , we got back to the SOS lab and Idiot Wonderland where my drunk neighbour tried to give me direction in backing the trailer, that was a portent.... Thursday morning we trailered the car and Simon left to photograph a wedding that was happening that day at Chopped...... I took Friday off and doid the last few things before I set off for the 80 mile drive. I got there and it was log jam, single lane dirt track, solid cars and people darting in and out ..me with a trailer that doesn't fit anyehere and a car that you can't unload anywhere that isn't flat. I stopped at the service station around the corner for a final check...



We found Kyle one of the Ford brothers who told me where to set up. I could camp in the staff area, nice. We got some help from two guys camped next to us, they hadn't let the day pass unrefreshed... once the tank started rolling down the ramps they let it go ...it now has a ding in the nose...... I hitched it up and dragged it around to the main area, I was in a bad mood. The very first guy who started talking at me said..." you should put a small block in it" it wouldn't have mattered what I said, he was just a three hundred pound Furby that said the same thing over and over.....from then on I stood back and just listened to what people said...most of it was good. Saturday was entirely different, I just talked and talked, loads of enthusiastic, smart, interested people......i do get a laugh out of the guys who walk up, look into the cab, shake their head and walk away....About ten times people asked me what sort of motor, when I said V6 it was apparent that they'd thought it was a jet or rocket...."Oh, its a car engine"........kids love it, always have, women love it, the more affected the dress of the men...bandanna, etc, the less they seem impressed..."put a small block in it"...blah blah blah...."why don't ya put a blower on it?"......."you should put suspension on it"......."I'm gonna make one of these"............However the serious ones are a different thing, came across a young architect who is planning a build, a couple who are keen on buying in the States, and some others with a growing pile of parts, it was great fun talking to everyone.

I loaded it, drove home, unloaded it....got it jammed on the driveway...used the hi-rise jack to skid it sideways, bruised my hand.... At one point there were some guys watching me load at the show, I was using the hi-rise to change the race tyres off, "hey, if any of you guys have too many fingers you can come over here and have a play with this jack....", they laughed, they've been there too.

On the way home I stopped at the Chewton cemetary just near Rod and Carol Hadfield's place, it was where The Reverend and I finally decided we were doing this, almost exactly ten years ago....



Now the real stuff starts for preparations for next year, unfortunately the guy who was going to do our diff set up can't now, so I'll be finding someone else to do it...we need new front tyres.... we need some paint.....

On it goes.....

[Reverend Hedgash]

...used the hi-rise jack to skid it sideways, bruised my hand....

And there it is!

[Milwaukee Midget]

Do you ever feel like John the Baptist?

Your take on the audience mirrors my experiences.

Even when you're in what at first blush appears to be "friendly" territory - an old skool rod show - where one might expect to encounter a higher degree of understanding of what you're trying to do, you wind up fielding questions and comments that have no basis in your reality.

However the serious ones are a different thing, came across a young architect who is planning a build, a couple who are keen on buying in the States, and some others with a growing pile of parts, it was great fun talking to everyone.

Few understand . . .  but those who do - or at least want to - are the ones who make such forays past the borders of Mundanium worth the trip. 

[Dr Goggles]

I knew you'd like that I'd managed to hurt my hand Dik.

Yes Chris. I spent twenty minutes talking to an older guy who said he had built sprint cars for years who kept on about suspension. After a bit I made a point of interupting him and said....

 " I'm not sure if you heard me right?.....I've run 215 MILES per hour and it ran like a train, on the long list of things to do to this car suspension is at the very bottom, most of the things on that list won't get done. It doesn't need suspension, I'm not putting suspension on it. Not having it means it has better aero, that's why it has run so fast. That's what we're trying to do"

Fortunately there were a lot of people hanging around at that point because i could see that what I had just said had bounced off his impenetrable head and he was was busy constructing his next question about when, I was going to put the suspension on it and how I was going to put what type of suspension I was going to use.

Another guy was entertaining his mates pointing out the VW bus steering box..." I used to be a VW mechanic "I know EVERYTHING about those pieces of rubbish" ......"now you know everything about everything" I muttered to Norm Hardinge who had just told me he has the same steering box on his 200mph roadster.....it was all good natured, it wasn't the toughest or maybe the coolest car there, but it was the fastest.......I didn't bother pointing that out to anyone who didn't already know.

And?.......that's what it's all about.