Hi Jim
That is a good idea. That fraction of a second it takes to figure out which
direction it want to go often is long enough to find yourself parked somewhere
without a prior booking :-)
However on the speedway I found that the front of the car was always going in
the direction the front wheels were pointing, the back could do whatever it
liked.
Rally drivers use the brake thingies from time to time. Speedway drivers only
use them to stop in the pits :-)
Under hard braking front wheels develop enormous slip angles until they
totally lose grip. Rally drivers often lock up front wheels aproaching a tight
corner, releasing the brakes alows the front wheels to resume rotation which
can give a neck wrenching turn in the direction the wheels happen to be
pointing. Immediate application of opposite lock in the other direction is
required to straighten up. Saw crazy bloke in a Saab do this and slot the car
through a cattle grid about 10 feet wide without breaking step. His navigator
was reading his course notes at the time. Man there are only two people in
this world that I would trust to drive me like that (and I am one of them :-)
) without freaking out a little.
With my little heart problems I think my racing days are probably over.
Licence authorities get funny about that stuff :-)
Dirt track racing on a 1/4 mile circuit is much gentler on clutches and
brakes. Like I mentioned brakes are for parking it in the pits (they don't
even fit them on speedway bikes) Clutch is used to get moving or to assist
restarting when pushed by the tow truck. I replaced the Aussie four speed in
my XU1 with a 1 tonner three speed and fitted gearing and tyre size to give
about 80mph in second gear. First gear was used to get rolling or to put it on
the trailer otherwise used second. We had rolling starts so gear changing in a
race was not needed. One pedal control, push down for faster and more
sideways. Turn wheel thing to keep front going in the right direction.
Obstacles are driven round, over or through :-). because the wheels are mostly
slipping on the dirt surface the stress on the clutch is probably less than in
a road driven car. On my end of season strip down the clutch driven plate
still looked like a new one. Of course I had replaced several axles and a dif
centre in the duration :-)
Keith
55 Californian
----- Original Message -----
From: TIGEROOTES@aol.com
To: alkon@bigpond.com.au
Sent: Tuesday, January 28, 2003 1:27 PM
Subject: Re: VOLVO Clutch
Keith,
Obviously you have been around. On another tangent, I always put a
loop of tape (for a visual reference point) on the top center-point of the
steering wheel of any car or boat I was crewing for. It really paid-off in
circle-track dirt-racing and surprisingly well in hydroplane racing.
Jim
|