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fast, cold

To: <ba-autox@autox.team.net>
Subject: fast, cold
From: "Tibbals, Paul" <PHT1@pge.com>
Date: Fri, 4 Apr 2003 13:56:09 -0800
Jeff Winchell said,
        <...who had the best 5 events in the country last year.

        1 John Ames       Corvette SS     497.35
        2 Sam Strano      Camaro   FS/ESP 496.36
        3 Steve O'Blenes  RX-7     BP     496.22
        4 Bill Beutow     Corvette BSP    496.06
        5 Bob Tunnell     M3       BSP    495.52
        6 Erik Strelneiks Corvette SS     495.13
        7 Gary Thomason   Corvette ASP    495.11
        8 Mike Johnson    Camaro   FS     494.33
        9 Tom Harrington  Kart     F125   494.12
        10 Doug Newhard   MR2      ES     493.94

        P.S. Tom Berry in an ESP Camaro missed making it a clean sweep of fast 
cars by
        .02 points by being a nice guy to his co-driver/car owner. :-)

        Looking at the cars and classes, it seems the fastest drivers drive fast
                cars.>

Was it Coolidge who talked about liars, damned liars, and statisticians?  :))  
I'm a big fan of overanalyzing results too.  In this case I'd say that this 
could also be taken as a comment on the indexing system.  If it tends to place 
these cars closer to the top (negative handicapping) then this pushes the 
faster classes to the top 10.  Obviously in either case these drivers are very 
fast and very consistent.  

But: if it's only "fast" you're tracking, what about the A Mods?  What is 
preventing someone with a slower car from getting the same percentage of its 
maximum out of it consistently?  If they're just as talented, but not on this 
list it would seem that the index is at fault.  

OTOH, maybe it's just saying that people who have gotten really good at 
National-level autocrossing, who typically would have large investments in time 
and travel already, also enjoy driving high performance machinery, and more 
importantly can afford it.  

Wow, as far as the CO2/cold packing is concerned, I thought that there was 
something against that in the Solo rules, but if you all don't know it then I'm 
probably wrong.  Which would you rather cool?  If you have a choice, make it 
the air.  
-The gas is only mixing as one pound per 14.7 pounds of the air, if you work 
out the proportions then cooling gasoline isn't nearly as effective in cooling 
the total charge. 
-Efficient combustion takes complete evaporation of the gasoline - liquid gas 
does not burn!  Supercooling it will retard evaporation. Fine atomization at 
the injectors only goes so far, increasing surface area to enhance that 
evaporation.
-Also, the closest information that I could find on cold gasoline is that 
aviation gas, which is fairly closely related to auto gas, has a specified 
maximum freezing point of -72 F.  If your cold can gets the gasoline to dry ice 
(-106 F) temps it will have a good chance of turning to molasses.  If it gets 
cool enough to really change its viscosity then your jets/injectors will be out 
of their calibrated ranges, probably costing you all that HP.
-Gas doesn't get much denser with cooling, the air does, so you'll get much 
more air to combust if you cool the air.
-And if you're drawing air from your engine compartment, all that CO2 from the 
dry ice will be mixing with the air, diluting your mix and robbing power.

But I fully expect to see Andy with a cool can around the water sprayer, icing 
down his Azenis tires between runs at the next event!  ;-)

PaulT

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