The Rainy-Day Oddball Thread.

[Sea Fury]

The Hurst Floor-Shift Special, aka the Smokey Yunick "Sidecar:"



Tyrrell P34/Ford F1:

1976 spec:



1977 spec:



Chaparral 2J:



Brabham BT46B:



Ferrari 312T6:



Williams FW08D



1976 March 2-4-0/Ford F1:



And my personal favorite:

KENNY REECE'S 3-to-1 Supermodified, tested by Tim Richmond:





Discuss.

[cornutt]

Interesting the different approaches to the six-wheeler concept. As I recall, the motivation behind the Tyrell was to get the front wheels out of the airstream. They decided to try a front wheel small enough to hide behind the shovel nose (which was all the rage in those days). When they tried the tiny front wheels, they found that they couldn't get enough traction because the contact patch wasn't big enough. So somebody thought, "Well, we'll just put on two more of them". The Williams, on the other hand, was specifically trying to get more power to the ground by increasing the total traction available at the rear. Interesting concept, but managing the unspring weight must have been hell for whoever had to design the suspension. Not to mention what it did to pit stops.

One Indycar that's always intrigued me is the Fageol Twin Coach Special that ran Indy in 1946. It was armed with not one but two Offy 91 Midget engines, one in the front and one in the rear. Lou Fageol had an obsession with twin-engine vehicles and somehow convinced Art Sparks to build this one. Each engine drove the nearest pair of wheels via a pair of Miller front-drive transaxles. Because the rear engine was in front of the transaxle, Sparks had to make a mirror-image crankshaft and camshaft for it so it would run in the opposite direction. Both engines had Rootes-type superchargers, and apparently placement of them was a problem, for as the driver sat in the cockpit he was actually sitting on top of the rear engine's supercharger. The engines weren't synchronized; they were only coordinated by means of having both connected to a common throttle linkage.

There is no way in the world this thing should have worked, but not only did it work, Paul Russo put it on the front row and led the early part of the race with it. Unfortunately after about 20 laps it crashed. Driving it must have been near-impossible with the two engines constantly fighting for control of the car, which is probably why it crashed. Apparently, after that race, the car was dismantled and pieces of it were used to build some sort of concept car.

[Gomer Simpson]

Chaparral 2J:

Wth is that thing?

[Sea Fury]

Wth is that thing?

CAN AM car with two fans mounted in the rear, driven by a snowmobile engine, that sucked air out from under the car and basically generate grip by sucking it down against the pavement.

[Glenn]

Wth is that thing?

Chaparral 2J Vacuum Cleaner

[Coyote]

Who drove the Tyrrell? Did they get any good results?

What year was that Brabham? Cool car.

Thanks for posting the pictures.

[cornutt]

Chaparral 2J Vacuum Cleaner

It was the first ground-effects car. But none of those wimpy venturi tunnels for Jim Hall! He installed a snowmobile engine to run those two fans in the rear. The entire underside of the car from the cockpit leading edge (just back of the front wheels) was sealed up with Lexan skirts that just touched the concrete. They were attached to the rear suspension so they moved up and down with the wheels and maintained the proper clearance.

The car absolutely destroyed track records everywhere it went. Unfortunately it had reliability problems and never finished a race in fully functioning condition. The fan engine was air-cooled and had a bad probem with overheating. A side effect of the vacuum was that the car made a pretty good track sweeper; it sucked up marbles and debris which all went out through the fans, chewing up the fan blades and knocking the drive belts off. But when it was running right, it left the McLarens who had been dominating the Can-Am seres in the dust.

At the end of the 1970 season, the SCCA banned it. They based their ban on a rule against "moving aerodynamic devices", which ironically was aimed not at the fans but at the Lexan skirts that sealed the underside. Jim Hall, who had been racing in SCCA events since the early '60s, quit in disgust and I don't think he ever entered another SCCA event again.

[Sea Fury]

Who drove the Tyrrell? Did they get any good results?

What year was that Brabham? Cool car.

Thanks for posting the pictures.

Jody Scheckter (yes, Tomas' dad, who won a race with it at Anderstorp, Sweden '76), Patrick Depailler, and Ronnie Peterson drove the P34 1976-77.

The Brabham fan car, which likewise used that so-called "cooling" fan to generate grip (except this one was engine driven-it's said that when they revved the engine in the pits, it kicked up a dustcloud and the car squatted down) was driven in only one points-paying GP in 1978, again at Anderstorp, where it won the race in the hands of Niki Lauda. His teammate was John Watson. Lauda even beat Mario and Peterson in the fabulous Lotus 79s. After that, and having seen the car vaccum-clean its own racing line and spit rocks out the back at following cars, it was banned. Thus the BT46B fan car won 100% of the points-paying GPs in which it was entered. I think Nelson Piquet drove it in the non-points Brands Hatch Race of Champions the next year but the car broke down. (In addition to the fan, it had surface-cooling radiators, which you can see on the top of the aft section of the car, to cool the Alfa Romeo flat-12; it didn't work very well and had chronic overheating issues. That was one of the excuses they used to get away with the big-azz "cooling fan:" "Gee, gov, we need that big fan to cool the engine because of our radiator problem...." They just neglected to mention that the big fan also just happened to suck the car down on the ground like it was on rails!)

[Gomer Simpson]

CAN AM car with two fans mounted in the rear, driven by a snowmobile engine, that sucked air out from under the car and basically generate grip by sucking it down against the pavement.

There are real wheels under there somewhere, right?

It looks like a giant lego car.

[cornutt]

There are real wheels under there somewhere, right?

It looks like a giant lego car.

Yeah, it has rear wheels. They were a beeyotch to change; the rear cowl had to be removed and they had to be careful not to break the Lexan skirts. But the Can-Am series of the time didn't have scheduled pit stops, so they could get away with it.

[cornutt]

Here's another funky-looking Can-Am car, the original AVS Shadow. Note how high up the driver is sitting:

[The Stickman]

Here are my contibutions.

[cornutt]

Holy crap.. I'm glad I'm not the person who has to sit right next to the clutch in that thing.

[Sea Fury]

I've always wanted to build something like that...,with a 911 Turbo engine out back.

[drdisque]

http://classicracingphotos.com/Galle...serialNumber=3
Doug Goad/Andy Pilgrim Wheel-to-Wheel Racing IMSA Camel Lights Pontiac GTA

(sorry site won't let me post it as an image, have to click the link)