RE: TC the Devil's work

["Dave Dahlgren" <ddahlgren@snet.net>]

See if this makes sense I want the lightest possible car with the most power
I can get for a given displacement. I want to torque limit if needed to keep
this light car as hooked up as possible somewhere around 10% slip.If F=MA
still works.. I will have the fastest accelerating car I can build. The rest
is a gearing problem in order to be at the correct speed at the entrance to
the 5. There are plenty of ways to figure the gearing out correctly. For a
very shameless plug I wrote some that works very good. It will tell you how
fast you should be going at what point on the track along with accel rates
time and distance and all that stuff. It runs all the delta V and delta T
every foot down the track until you reach terminal velocity. Last year we
ran Turk's car and somehow managed to break the ring and pinion a 3.25. We
were running it with a 0.85 high gear for an effective 2.76 final drive. All
we could find was a 2.75 or 2.76 R&P to replace it and run the first 3
gears. The best we got out of that was in the mid to high 230's and a 216 at
the quarter. We finally found enough parts to build a 3.25 R&P and use all 4
gears. The quarter speed went up to the 220's and the last mile was in the
mid to high 240's with a 249+ exit speed. The software predicted both things
happening due to the higher average accel rate for the first 4 miles. How
would you explain what happened differently?

The only way that I can understand you can be going faster at the 4 is to
accelerate harder. I will qualify that as the highest average accel rate.
The peak rate is meaningless. If my average accel rate 0.6 G and yours is
0.4 with a peak of 0.7 for only 10% of the time I will be going faster at
the 4 than you.
dave