Yes, I spent my off days watching NASCAR’s 3 major touring series on TV from Atlanta. This is where I like to watch cars, running in a controlled environment away from vulnerable users so they can go as fast as physics will allow. Then it becomes fun in both the visceral sense and the more ethereal mental sense. There is a kind of zen thing in making a car go as fast as it can around a turn, I can tell you from experience. That’s why I want to build the Sprint-T in 1:1.
I’m currently listening to a trance version of the Leek Spinning Song, and it’s pretty good. It’s almost like the Leek Spinning song needed an injection of bass and synths to make it good. Bad part is this version is only 3:37 instead of 1:00:00+. I’d would really like to get a couple of good beats going and on endless loop while I do my writing. Seriously I’m typing up a small storm right now. The right sounds and beats are like writing nitro for me, a musical shot of NOS to the keyboard. Now if I could just find the right hour or so YouTube video to play in background…
I’m a couple of days away from being able to get $11 in gift cards from that game I play on my mobile phone, or about 2000 points. When I do that I’ll have enough in my Amazon balance to get the plastic raw stock to make the frames for all 3 variations of the Mini Sprint-T. Yay! Progress! I’ll still need to get the rear axles, wheels and tires, and the vacuformed bodies.
If this seems a tiny bit disjointed I’m actually free-associating as I type with a 2½ hour trance track running. I’m thinking about the 1:1 Sprint-T and the 1:25 Mini Sprint-T and music and the service I was at this evening, and the fact that I’m on the Nominating Committee to pick the next board for the church (so that I don’t end up on that same board), and butterflies, and the aerodynamics of the Sprint-T and how they compare to an actual winged sprint car…
On that last part, one of the things I have been looking at is streamlining the tires, particularly the wakes off the tires. By its nature the Sprint-T will have a small frontal area. The trick is going to be not letting the air get too disturbed by things like exposed frame members and other bits and bobs hanging out in the wind. Some of that is going to be unavoidable because of the fact that the basic bucket was designed in 1922, when aerodynamics of road cars was still considered a black art, and I want the car to remain identifiable as a model T Ford with a ton of modifications. The other part is the aforementioned exposed frame members hanging out in the breeze so as to maximize d4 for the whole car, much like the raised rail sprint cars that inspired it.
But again, part of the appeal of the T-Bucket is the absolute minimum car it is, 4 wheels, an engine, enough body to keep a person inside when it’s going down the street, and only as much structure as is needed to keep all the aforementioned bits flying in close formation and pointed in the right direction for (hopefully) maximum performance. That means things like fenders or wheel fairings are not part of the esthetic. The sprint car is similarly an open-wheel race car without anything covering the tires . But part of the appeal of building a hot rod is making something new, even if it is derivative from other kinds of cars . So at least one of the Mini Sprint-Ts will have wheel fairings on at least the front wheels, just to see how it looks. And I might run it and one without through a water tunnel to see how the flow goes compared to fenderless. Because if the fairings don’t clean up the flow off the back of the wheel then they are just dead weight and can go in the trash. The only reason they would be there is to improve highway aerodynamics for gas mileage and maybe for downforce when racing.
And I think I have meandered enough through the labyrinth of my mind. I know where I’m going in there, but sometimes I see a shiny and go off in a different direction than initially planned.
PSA, Opus
Witch on a Bicycle 