[Land-speed] cockpit design and layout

ed at vetteracing.com ed at vetteracing.com
Tue Aug 28 14:20:35 MDT 2007


You forgot to confess about the duct tape arrow you put on theinside of the windshield at SW ;-) It pointed right and said"Turn Out" How come you didn't use a turn signal flashing lite ?;-))
Ed



>-----Original Message-----
>From: Keith Turk [mailto:kturk at ala.net]
>Sent: Tuesday, August 28, 2007 04:06 AM
>To: land-speed at autox.team.net
>Subject: [Land-speed] cockpit design and layout
>
>All this talk of blind cockpit drills got me to thinking about the basic
>design and layout of the drivers station...
>
>Tonya and I went to New Orleans to tech a car on the way to speedweek... Ole
>Blue hair is building a car called the "Stinkin Lincoln"... JT Nesbitt is
>quite a character, so when he called and asked... I just couldn't refuse....
>He's a very talented writer and designer... but he's very into CHEAP.... and
>confusing... The gage layout in the car was wickedly complicated... He had
>attitude gauges as well as every engine monitoring gauge in the world... all
>from different cars... the dash looked like the bridge on the star ship
>enterprise.... ( okay it wasn't really that bad... but I'm using it to make a
>point here )
>
>The way I set up the Berkeley after building the Camaro was to put all the
>gauges directly in front of me and to limit the information the driver had to
>a bare minimum.... Oil pressure, Water temp, RPM... I had lights that give
>you the ability to look at nothing but the tach... The warning light comes on
>if the oil goes below 50psi or the water gets above 220. A shift light and We
>ended up putting in a white light to tell you if there was wheel slip in
>excess of 10 percent... The real point being here everything was Directly
>in front of the driver...
>
>The Camaro has the gauges off to the right in the center of the dash and
>Everytime I look at them I had to remind myself not to turn the car.... one of
>the things that happens as a matter of course... is that if you look right...
>you will turn right... look left and you will turn left...
>
>The point of the blind cockpit drills is to keep you from having to physically
>look at a handle to actuate it... everything should be placed so that it's
>easy to find and require a minimum of movement to get to. ( you want your arm
>restraints as short as possible )
>
>I like the idea of having different style handles which indicate different
>things...
>
>Okay guys what am I missing?
>
>Keith


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