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Re: Lightweight wheels...drive only?

To: <autox@autox.team.net>
Subject: Re: Lightweight wheels...drive only?
From: will@kalman.org (Will Kalman)
Date: Sun, 30 Jul 2000 00:56:55 -0700
The light wheels should go on either end of my car.  I think that settles it
:^)


>Eric,
>
>You made some good points.  It will require more energy to "spin up" the
>non drive wheels than the drive wheels due to inefficiencies.  As you
>said, the flexing of the body won't be significant unless your driving a
>Mustang without subframe connectors.
>
>Additional inefficiencies will come from the deformation of the tires.
>For the sake of this discussion lets consider the drive axle the source
>of the energy, and all 4 tires/wheels are the same weight and size.
>Consider only the portion of energy needed spin the tires/wheels from 0
>to 60 mph, the simple analysis says energy to "spin up" 4 tires/wheels
>will be 4 times the energy to spin up one tire/wheel. I'm sure someone
>can look up an equation for stored energy in a flywheel (tire/wheel).
>The drive wheels are driven directly from the axle so there won't be any
>inefficiencies for the drive wheels.  The other wheels will get their
>energy from the drive wheels, thru the inefficiencies of the drive
>tires, and thru the inefficiencies of the non drive tires.  The
>associated rolling resistances will manifest itself as heat (lost
>energy) in the tires.
>
>I would now conclude that the lighter wheels should be put on the non
>drive end if all you're interested in is acceleration.
>
>Bob Mosso


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