djr81

Then try Nisswreck

There are a number of reasons 1. Cold fuel is more dense. 2. Hot fuel will vaporize. 3. The cars dump a massive amount of heat into everything. Historically cooling the fuel was at its most important when the cars were limited to 150 litres for a grandprix. This was in 1988 for the turbo cars from memory. The extra few % of fuel gained was invaluable. Presently you are only allowed to cool the fuel so many degrees below ambient. This is what BMW got in trouble about at the Brazillian GP a couple of years ago. All pumps are affected by the temperatures of the fluid passing through them. All pumps heat up the fluid they are pumping - the most pronounced example of that being your turbo. As an aside if you think of the 20000+rpm the F1 motors used to run at then you can get an idea of the tiny period of time the injector has available to deliver fuel to the motor. To help in this regard the pressures run in the fueling system in the F1 cars are, by comparisiion to road cars, massive. Yes but there is nothing much you can do about it other than increase the efficiency of the fuel pump or lower the rail pressure. Broadly - the hotter the fuel the more prone you are to having pumping issues & vapourisation issues. Also a cooling inlet temp can allow more ignition advance giving more powah. Some fuels have a marked cooling effect on the inlet system. Alchohol based fuels particularly. The old turbocharged indy cars did not need to run intercoolers simply because of the fuel they used.

Well firstly, thanks for the appraisal of my experience. Yes I well understand what people are aiming for when experimenting with different gases in their tyres. Simply put you are after a gas that shows little change in pressure for a given heat input. There is next to no difference between air & nitrogen in this regard. Which was my point. As for the gas damaging the inside of the tyre - no race tyre I have ever used has died of old age. They either A. Get punctured/flat spotted/damaged in the side walls from saw toothed edged kerbs. B. Get heat cycled too many times or over heated & lose their grip, ie go off. C. Get worn out. The life of a race tyre is short & ugly. No one I have ever met cared less about the insides being subject to chemical attack. In any case when you go to a track you change the tyre pressures regularly. So unless you bring your own nitrogen you are wasting your time.

Unfortunately the demise of the straight six is less to do with the motor itself & more to do with making the car easier to design for frontal impacts.

Yeah that is pretty much what I did.

Yeah its Wanneroo so clockwise. Only four serious corners, three right handers - 2 x 180 degree & 1 x 90 & one left hander (90 degrees plus a little). Plus a few less substantial wiggles. Give me a break (please). It was cold, it was wet, I was tired, out of practice and err, um refer to the driver's book of excuses for further info.. Oh and it was the long track and none of the other AWD's managed to go any quicker on the day.

Adjustability is all good up to a point. The point being you cannot adjust a Whiteline bar to be as stiff as a Cusco one. So you need to have a good think about what rates you run rather than just pick a bar because it is cheap etc. Actually does anyone have the diameters (internal & external) for the Nismo bars???

Well brand association can work - but only up to a point. I would suggest that the link between what Toyota sells on the car lot & F1 is too tenuous to be useful. On the other hand rallying (the sport Toyota gave up to go into F1) has done wonders for any number of manufacturers - Ford, Subaru, Mitsubishi, Citroen, Lancia.....

To answer some of the various questions: Sort of one of those things - you either know someone with one who uses it for work or you can't get them. I was pretty happy with the fronts to be honest. Did you just call me a tool? Just used it the once (it rained later) to check that the settings were about right. I am reasonably confident they were.

Yes I am by that stage (past the marshals post) - I also changed the shot for you.

As I said RE55's work fine on a wet track. Here is a photo taken by BNR#@ on the weekend illustrating the point.

As the title says here are some shots of my tyres after fours laps of Wanneroo last weekend. Should be pretty self explanatory. Car is an old R32 Gt-R. Laps time was nothing special (65 second laps) and the track was cold & a little greasy. Thought they may amuse someone.

Unless there is standing water ie puddles on the track you will be miles infront with the RE55's.

Actually the issue is different to what you have described. Take the case any random team. At present they can spend as much as they can get. If the business is profitable at those expenditure elvels then a budget cap will simply remove a very large amount of the worth of the company. How are they going to slug sponsors if the same sponsors know they can only spend $100 million a year, for example? The other issue is how do you price a component made in house. You can't go down to Woolworths & get a price check from isle 5 for a secondary circuit bypass valve CNC machined from the heart of a solid forging of unobtainium, now can you?

As it happens I did a track day in the wet last weekend. On RE55's. They were new though. To be honest they are fine - even to the point where there are puddles on the track. Just try & drive around the said puddles as you can get aqua planing at spots you don't want to. Corner grip is pretty low & your biggest issue will be having a lose under brakes. Just keep it straight & everything will be fine. You can be confident that your times will be ok as most people who take road tyres wont be going hard & anyone on R compounds will be in the same boat as you.

Dunno. Mostly motor racing expertise comes out of the UK & Italy. Even then it is mostly England. It is about the only thing the Poms do well. Although looking at the scores from the cricket last night I should watch my words.

I agree with you with regard to Toyota. Honda I have always regarded as being the best of the Japanese manufacturers at design & manufacture. World class. Look at their record in bikes as an example. I think the problem is that there is so much money needed to be tipped in by the car companies (ie engines & cash) that they think there is better value in doing it all themselves. I guess it has worked ok for Renault but Mercedes Benz has done the best of anyone.

Yeah I am yet to be convinced it is a bargain for some. Toyota is the classical example. Say Glock & Trulli come good & wipe the floor with everyone. Are you going to merch up then head down to the local Toyota dealership & buy yourself a Camry Sportivo? Nah, me neither. On the flip side is Ferrari who can trot out any number of crap F1 cars & yet make squillions selling Ken & Barbie "Ferrari" Motorhomes....

Sounds for all the world like something is binding in the front end. Get it up on a hoist & have a look.

There is nothing inherently wrong with trying to reduce the amount of money manufacturers have to tip into the sport to keep their teams competitive. Think about any or all of them. Can you really see Toyota wanting to keep spending hundreds of millions of dollars per year just to trail around with the Force India mob? Or the same for Renault? Or BMW? As far as public pronouncements from the F1 teams & the FIA there is a simple rule to apply: Nothing is as it appears & almost none of it is even remotely close to the truth.

That is a bit harsh. How about some tennis, JPM style?

What you don't already when the tacho goes past 10k?

Some other facts: All gases will increase in pressure when the temperature increases. But in the absence of an increase in temperature no gas will continue to "grow" as you put it. In terms of their respective constant volume specific heats - that for nitrogen is 744 Newton metres per kilgram Kelvin & air is 720 Call it 3% differential. By your logic if nitrogen does not pass through the tyre & other gases do then all I need do to get nitrogen filled tyres is put some normal air in them & wait. Dry is good. But you don't need nitrogen to get dry air. The difference between dry air & nitrogen is minimal. Air is approx 80% nitrogen anyway. If you are filling your tyres from bottled gas it is easy to use N2 as air. But who in the real world has anything other than oxy, acetylene & maybe argon sitting around in bottles? Getting the pressure correct is fundamentally more important than anything. Figuring out what pressure to run at is the hard bit, not what gas to put in the tyres.

The thing that amused me most about the British GP (other than Eric Cantona swapping merchandise with Alonso - look it up) was that other than Ferrari all the factory teams got smashed by their respective customer teams, ie Brawn belted McLaren, Red Bull belted Renault, & Williams smashed Toyota. So is it back to the olden days when the manufacturers only supplied motors & money? The McLaren was horrible. No high speed aero. Made Hamilton look like a muppet & his team mate worse. I am sure LH is massively motivated to race for 15th place. The other "highlight" was the confession that basically everyone had chucked their KERS in the bin. More brilliance from the FIA. Think about it - all the teams that invested in KERS got owned by it. BMW particularly. Atleast it gave the three competent independents a chance to shine.

There is a reason why every police occifer in WA sounds like Reg Hollis.... simply put very few locals want to be in general duties and/or trafiic. Largely they come here from the UK because the weather is better and there are fewer stabbings. But back to the topic: The almost inevitable result of going on a cruise is that you will be tarred with the same brush used for the spanker ripping skids. Fortunately there are enough well organised events (sprints, hillclimbs, even drifiting if you can stomach it etc etc) to allow people to enjoy themselves without those same idiots turning up to ruin the day.