Axels...?

[Bubstr]

Excuse me if I am missing the point on stored energy of a solid axle and a gun drilled axle. When I went to school, over 45years ago, the stored torsional energy of a bar or tube had negligible differences. It was based off of bar diameter, and bar length.

If you lock one end of a Torsion bar and turn the other with a torque wrench, to a specific degree, then increase it to the net degree, you would have that value. If it seems much like a spring rate checker, your right. A torsion bar is nothing more that a straight spring, that would be dependent on diameter and length.

All this said, the axles ability to store energy would be based on diameter and length, not if it's hollow. Hollow would only have the durability effect, if all other things where equal.

If you where looking for this stored energy to overcome the slip angle tolerances of a tire, I believe you would have better luck, looking into tire sidewall composition, tire pressures and wheel width to overcome oscillation that comes with exceeding the tire slip angle. That is my thought on this.

As a after thought, reducing un-sprung weight would aid in oscillation control. Gun drilled axles would have some effect on this.

[Bubstr]

I understand HOW it works. But do you think the folks at Stangeoval figured all this KERA stuff out by trial and error? You're right, it isn't rocket science. It's pretty simply really but it's nice to have some data to put the information to real use. I'm not asking anybody to produce it, just saying it would be nice to see.

I actually had some strange ideas about axles, rotating weight, etc. that were somewhat counter-intuitive at first but maybe worth sharing. We all agree that decreasing rotating weight decreases overall moment of inertia. But in trying to control traction in slick conditions, could this be a bad thing? In other words, would having a larger moment of inertia act like free traction control by "dampening" the torque of the engine? Something to think about.

Wouldn't a gear change decrease or increase torque, with out a total loss of it if needed? Just looking at all the angles. I've seen people decreasing engine RPM to get to a lower torque number on their torque curve for corner exit and increasing RPM to overcome engine drag entering a corner. All said wouldn't a driver with a feather foot and good seat of the pants feel, overcome most of these things. It's darn hard to tune a car for someone that treats the go pedal as a on / off switch.

[mattworx]

do you all now why a engineer cant make a race car work perfect ? its because the driver and track conditions are always changing so the #s are always changing. so in the end it comes down to what works for me might not work for you. no matter what the #s are(because you don't have them all) R&D is as important as #s or even more so on dirt cars . this is true or there would be only one car and one setup

[Matt49]

Mattworx, did you miss the part where I said, "I'm not saying that on-track testing isn't valuable"?
You make it sound like I'm saying all racing is done in a notebook or on a computer. I'm not. But you are downplaying the importance of engineering which is critical to improving performance at high levels. That's why F1 teams employ dozens and dozens of engineers and spend millions and millions of dollars on in-house engineering. There's an old saying: "races are won in the shop". What do you think that means? R&D is about a lot more than track testing. It's about doing homework and understanding what is really happening when you make a change. The track testing should be the proof, not the guess work. There is a distinct difference between the two.

But moving on...

There are definitely two schools of thought on the gearing deal. There's the one that says gear up (higher ratio) as the track slows down to get back in your power band. Then there's the one that says gear down to tame the car on exit. Personally I say leave it alone and just wheel-spin your way up the RPM you want :-)
(That's supposed to be a joke for those of you that don't detect sarcasm)

[7uptruckracer]

Mattworx, did you miss the part where I said, "I'm not saying that on-track testing isn't valuable"?
You make it sound like I'm saying all racing is done in a notebook or on a computer. I'm not. But you are downplaying the importance of engineering which is critical to improving performance at high levels. That's why F1 teams employ dozens and dozens of engineers and spend millions and millions of dollars on in-house engineering. There's an old saying: "races are won in the shop". What do you think that means? R&D is about a lot more than track testing. It's about doing homework and understanding what is really happening when you make a change. The track testing should be the proof, not the guess work. There is a distinct difference between the two.

But moving on...

There are definitely two schools of thought on the gearing deal. There's the one that says gear up (higher ratio) as the track slows down to get back in your power band. Then there's the one that says gear down to tame the car on exit. Personally I say leave it alone and just wheel-spin your way up the RPM you want :-)
(That's supposed to be a joke for those of you that don't detect sarcasm)

I like the dual boxes with the secondary box having the retarded timing lol

[Matt49]

:-)
Or disconnect the secondaries...
Or move the throttle linkage down on the pedal mount...
I like the throttle linkage move. The powers still there when you need but you just have to want it a little more.
Lots of ways to skin that cat.

[7uptruckracer]

Extra effective when you forget to change your pedal stop lol

:-)
Or disconnect the secondaries...
Or move the throttle linkage down on the pedal mount...
I like the throttle linkage move. The powers still there when you need but you just have to want it a little more.
Lots of ways to skin that cat.