Human Powered Vehicles Built for Speed
 

We need to start adopting some of this stuff for rc speed attempts...

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I was surprised about the part with the wheel openings being half the aerodynamic drag of the whole thing... I should note the boat tails on a bunch of those things.

And the speeds those guys are getting, wow. If they can move ~250 pounds to over 75mph, we have some work to do with what, 3-4 horsepower moving less then 10 pound machines? :whistle:

That's cool. Some day when I move to AZ (:lol: "some day") I'll have to go for that record. You're right about RC's, we should be hitting 200mph by now. I'll have to work on that too.

Think about it, it that thing goes 82 mph with 0.5 hp... leave out the poor human and put a properly-sized brushless motor and RC gear in :)
It probably has less drag than a regular 1/8 vehicle.

That's true. I'm sure we could brew something up....

Nic Case holds the rc speed record at 161mph.... Rumor has it that one of his cars has seen 190mph

Where is this 161mph video? I've only seen the 134mph video.

I think a lot of it is tires. The skinnier the tire, the less rolling resistance there is, but you also get less traction. With fatter tires, you'll get tons of traction but there'll be a lot of resistance and friction... Or maybe we just need more room and a slower acceleration?

Well, with our 5" diameter tires (or 2" with touring cars) we achieve more contact patch by increasing width.

With bicycle tires which are at least 20" in diameter, they can still be very thin but can have quite a large contact patch due to the diameter.

But that is quite impressive, I must say.

Does everybody remember that I bought a neu 1521 off Nic Case? I did, and it's gone 140mph. How fast has your 1521 gone?:intello:

contact patch for a road bike tire at 100-120 psi is about the size of a postage stamp if not smaller, but i wouldn't think that breaking traction would be a problem for these things the way they are geared.

with all the power our cars have and the relatively short distance to get to top speed traction is more important, and finding a balance between rolling resistance and traction will be key.

if there was near unlimited runway then super skinny tires and wheels would greatly increase the speed, as you could slowly apply throttle to prevent loosing traction.

Thanks josh.

I'm not saying that he has a massive contact patch, only pointing out that even though the tire might be super skinny it may provide much more contact patch than someone might think due to the diameter.

I do agree that if we put touring car width (or even skinnier) tires on all our vehicles that it would greatly increase top speed, but the new WFRCC rules have tire requirements for MT's, so that class is still screwed (tires have a diameter and width requirement).

I wouldn't mind going to that exact same stretch of road as they did and maybe having a chase car follow the RC to keep it in range. 5 miles is plenty of space for any solid 500hp to get up to speed, be it a Viper, Porsche Turbo Carrera, Corvette Z06, M5/M6, etc.

Bah, that's easy to beat. Just carry the motor in your 1:1 car doing over 130mph and simply throw it out the window (forwards of course). :smile:

Or just air mail the motor to a friend and have him air mail the motor back. Boom, your 1521 just went at least 500mph.