1/5 Scale Leopard Turbine Powered Car / Monster

[mohanjude]

This is the first time I have installed a turbine in a car and run it. So learning a lot each time.

It is already apparent that when the brakes are fully applied the car just glides on locked wheels at anything more than 50 % throttle. So brakes will be useless in an emergency at anything more than says 60% throttle - it will help control the vehicle but not stop it if the turbine is still producing thrust. Even when you cut the throttle there is a latency of about 2-3 seconds before thrust drops (fuel in the system / inertia of turbine compressor etc)

What is clear is that thrust is very much different to having powered wheels. Even if the vehicle jumps off the ground say during a bump / uneven road surface the vehicle will continue to go forwards as it does not need wheels to keep it in foward motion. What is also worrying is that if the front end becomes light there will be no realistic prospect of steering or braking. The turbine is angled downwards to minimise the possibility of lift but didn't want to sacrifice thrust moving the vehicle forwards by having the vector towards the ground.

Steering will also be a problem at high rpm / thrust as the turbine always wants to go forwards - it would be nice if the car could bank or the turbine could swivel when turning the wheels. It feels weird when you turn the steering and the car tries to keep going forward until the back end follows through at reasonably low rpm ... wonder what happens when the turbine is screaming at 100,000 + rpm ?

Going to test run this for a little at low rpm, different road surfaces etc.. before venturing onto a open space / airstrip and opening full throttle. I think straight speed runs should be no problem. Now where did they go and test the Thrust SCC car that was holding the land speed record???

Anybody got any thoughts about the physics involved here?

thanks for the positive comments....

Mohan