Darkside is comin'
- Thread starter Darkside
- Start date
Thank you. It was a lot of fun, and I'm really happy it went as well as it did. Way better than I was expecting. I cant wait to get it back and work with it some more. I'm also working on a second car to send in. Spent a good portion of the day on that. I'm totally hooked.
Hope you get one together and send it in to join us in the fall like you said. If you had fun watching mine, you'll have an absolute blast watching your own. I look forward to seeing you on the hill.
Thanks Chuck.
Congrats on your sub 3 box stock. Pretty impressive with no fenders.
Just push the axle in until the wheel won't move
Basically, making a part move uses energy. If the wheel can vibrate and/or turn, it's a potential energy sink. Pinning it to the car makes it part of the body for all intents and purposes.
Additional gains can be had by tweaking the angle of elevation/attack to reduce aerodynamic losses from the wheel. I am not super clear on if there is a "best" angle for this or if every car is a little different in this regard, so I'll wait for those with more experience in that regard weigh in. I'm hoping to build for BASX next month, so I'll be listening...
Great to learn this, we always left the lifted NDFW free to rotate. My philosophy was that it would encounter air resistance which if pinned down would translate to the car, slowing it down. But if the wheel was free to rotate some of that air resistance energy would go into turning the wheel, in effect some of the air resistance would be wasted into getting the wheel to move instead of slowing the car. I will try it also out on my own track to see the difference, although it's a wooden track so not sure if will really be noticeable.
So I've got a bit more to add to this. As I said in an earlier post, I tested this with one of my graphite cars and saw a definite speed gain of about .002. So the first thing I did when I got this car back from the league race was lock the wheel. Actually I ran it down my track a few times as it was to get a new baseline just in case it had changed in its travels and it was right where it was before I sent it off. Then I locked the wheel and tested it some more, and to my surprise, there wasn't the same definitive gain. So I played with toe in and toe out on the lifted wheel and it still never dropped below its previous low time. What I did find, however, was a gain in consistency. Before locking and tuning the lifted wheel it would run, on my track, anywhere between the occasional 2.354 on the high end and the equally occasional 2.349 on the low end and anywhere in between. After locking the wheel, I never saw another 2.349, but I also never saw the random slow runs either. The range is now consistently between 2.352 and 2.351. So in the end I was a bit bummed that I didn't see a huge gain in time. But the car is now much more consistent, so I have a much better baseline to work from.
I personally have not seen more than .002-.003 gain in locking and tuning the ndfw. However, I have seen gains in consistency much like dark side.
Hey Ironband, I had you confused with Loud2ns, and thought you were racing Blue Flame. (Got a little confuzzled in my excitement) Were you racing? And if so, which car?
Sorry I missed this - I race under the name "Inclined Kinetics" - I was racing "Baseline" in Box Stock. Hopefully I'll get my BASX finished for BASX-Am in July.
Lol! How funny is this, I just signed up for the APR board yesterday and made that connection while scrolling through posts. I saw your Inclined Kinetics logo next to your name Ironband, and I was like Oh that's who that guy was. 
Hope you get it ready. I'll be back with Bad Finger and hopefully a second car. I look forward to racing with you.
Hope you get it ready. I'll be back with Bad Finger and hopefully a second car. I look forward to racing with you.
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