Keith;
The test results will be interesting. Hard data beats guessing-- A
friend recently loaned me his copy of a 1960s Ford Advanced Vehicles
test report on the development & testing of their GT-40. The first track
tests showed instability at high speed and the subsequent tests showed
that it wasn't getting much better despite their efforts to cure it. The
first tests at the Le Mans circuit showed how bad it was-- the first
GT-40 was crashed on the Mulsanne Straight (written off completely) and
the second car also crashed at high speed but it was repairable. After
that, the cars were tested in a UK wind tunnel and it was found that it
had lift front & rear. Various spoilers were added and found to make a
big difference. They recorded front & rear lift as well as drag.
Interesting results from the tunnel tests; one might wonder why Ford
didn't tunnel test the GT-40 before crashing their first two cars.
Regards, Neil Tucson, AZ
-----Original Message-----
From: Keith Turk [mailto:kturk@ala.net]
Sent: Thursday, May 04, 2006 9:20 AM
To: Albaugh, Neil; Sparky; land-speed@autox.team.net
Subject: Re: High School Physics/Tunnel tests
I have a couple of Gurney strips that were on the back of the car when I
bought it... We found the car was radically faster without them.... but
I'm
going to prove to myself what they actually did... so that is one of the
tests... along with spoiler inclination.
K
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