Post by jac on Jul 24, 2013 0:51:04 GMT -5
Nice site, loads of things that I am interested in to be found here. Presently I am looking into the feasablility of building a lite high mileage vehicle for use on long trips. It has been years since a team of Philadelphia high school students built a 3,000 mpg vehicle, and decades since the apprentices at Mercedes built a 1300 mpg one cylinder car. I am tired of waiting for someone to offer something decent at a good price, even though I am tempted to wait for the Elio, it may well be just another flying car and 85 miles per gallon is not exactly earth shattering. With that in mind: I am presently researching the possibility of producing high-quality carbon fiber tubing at home, which it seems is now possible with minimal overhead by using shrink wraps such as are used on electric cables to squeeze out excess epoxy on carbon sleeves mounted on a mandrel. I am presently studying carbon fiber construction techniques that are used in homebuilt airplanes, to learn some of the ins and outs.
Ideally I would like to end up with simple DIY plans that anyone could incorporate into their designs or just copy outright to produce a carbon fiber based high mileage RT.
There are some fantastic materials out there these days and the impossible is becoming simpler all the time. Take this engine for instance liquidpiston.com/ which are coming on line this year for use in generators and range-extenders for EVs. My mouth waters at the thought of incorporating an engine like this into a RT.
I am not interested in as boy-racer type RT with a thousand hp and no use but to rip around a track or the neighborhood. I want to build something that gets several hundred miles per gallon, something that I could hop in and drive coast to coast for less than fifty dollars. Something that makes the price of gas irrelevant until it tops twenty a gallon. Though I do admire those who are developoing sport car type RTs. That is not my aim.
As of the moment, a FWD tilting RT with the engine just inside the front wheels and tandom seating seems the best design for all kind of reasons. As far as not handling as good as rear wheel drive, well all I can say is that most people, including some very famous people (think Top Gear the Stig and crew) have no idea how to drive a front wheel drive car for best handling on turns. And to tell you the truth I wouldn't either, it I had never come across a physicists paper on the internet, detailing the physical dynamics of FWD in a turn. Which I will not detail here because it give me a tremendous advantage in turns and I do not want to even the field, since at the moment my lowly Honda Civic can smash a Porsche on the turns simply because I know how to utalize this unfair advantage that FWD gives on turns, and like I said, no one else I know even suspects how it is done. So when someone tells me that FWD is inferior in the handling department, I just smile and don't tell them the secret. But here is a hint, if you care, it is the same dynamic that was used by Mclaren in their secret three pedal F1 set up, but which every FWD car has as an inherent feature of its design if you know how to access it.
Ideally I would like to end up with simple DIY plans that anyone could incorporate into their designs or just copy outright to produce a carbon fiber based high mileage RT.
There are some fantastic materials out there these days and the impossible is becoming simpler all the time. Take this engine for instance liquidpiston.com/ which are coming on line this year for use in generators and range-extenders for EVs. My mouth waters at the thought of incorporating an engine like this into a RT.
I am not interested in as boy-racer type RT with a thousand hp and no use but to rip around a track or the neighborhood. I want to build something that gets several hundred miles per gallon, something that I could hop in and drive coast to coast for less than fifty dollars. Something that makes the price of gas irrelevant until it tops twenty a gallon. Though I do admire those who are developoing sport car type RTs. That is not my aim.
As of the moment, a FWD tilting RT with the engine just inside the front wheels and tandom seating seems the best design for all kind of reasons. As far as not handling as good as rear wheel drive, well all I can say is that most people, including some very famous people (think Top Gear the Stig and crew) have no idea how to drive a front wheel drive car for best handling on turns. And to tell you the truth I wouldn't either, it I had never come across a physicists paper on the internet, detailing the physical dynamics of FWD in a turn. Which I will not detail here because it give me a tremendous advantage in turns and I do not want to even the field, since at the moment my lowly Honda Civic can smash a Porsche on the turns simply because I know how to utalize this unfair advantage that FWD gives on turns, and like I said, no one else I know even suspects how it is done. So when someone tells me that FWD is inferior in the handling department, I just smile and don't tell them the secret. But here is a hint, if you care, it is the same dynamic that was used by Mclaren in their secret three pedal F1 set up, but which every FWD car has as an inherent feature of its design if you know how to access it.
