land speed record

Well,while ya are arguing over streamliners...I bought two ready made "frames" for my purposes with lamont steam turbine bike project.And could care less if Bonneville knew how fast I drove my steamers, as long as the steamers knew about it.At new three wheel motorcycle built in Shevesport.With gas engine it does 5hp/55ftlbs.....with the same size turbine 300ftlbs torque and tops out at 137mph.with 100hp turbine been kicking around
pending the success of 50hp ...develops 600 ftlbs and on napkin at least will top out at 190mph.
Since,the frames are the things actually lined out at this time, might need to bail until I got something to show for the talk.

Well,I screwed the address for eliomotors.

Crap--I wish this website would save replies as "drafts", just lost a thoughtful reply but will try once more:

High speed achieved in minimum is largely a function of "drag" and not that of "power-to-weight"; the latter determines how fast it will get up to speed--but the former ultimately determines how fast it can go.

Soo--how fast do you need to get the speed--but more importantly how fast do you really want to go? Nuf said.

B.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/24/2015 11:30AM by Bill Hinote.

That Elio car is an interesting concept, but it looks like it's got some hurdles to cross. Apparently the quoted specifications are all predictions and not measured performance. Production dates have been coming and going for years. The latest seems to be from January a prediction that if they got $240 million then, production would start in the middle of next year: [carbuying.jalopnik.com] They've designed their own engine, but I can't find any mention of it running.

Anyway, as Bill says, it's the aerodynamic drag which causes the power to go up with the cube of the speed. Assuming the Elio car will do the claimed 100 mph with 55 hp, 200 mph will be 55 x 2 x 2 x 2 = 440 hp.

At Bonneville the roadster class has exposed wheels like the Elio and some of them get up to 200 mph, but they're using big block V8s which are making far more than 440 hp. That makes me think the Elio performance numbers are pretty optimistic.

I'm also curious how they'll hit their price target of $6800 when a basic 900cc motorcycle is about $8000. Take the motorcycle and add a roll cage, body, doors and windows, a differential, CV shafts, independent front suspension and rack and pinion steering, a heater, defroster and air conditioning, antilock brakes and airbags, then drop the retail price by 15% while paying back the $240 million loan for the brand new factory and all the R&D.

Interesting concept, tho.

Tim

Beware, there are many scams on the internet lately where they are looking for a pre-orders for products with pricing too good to be true. You know what they say about "if it's too good to be true"?

Anyways, typically the project never happens and they disappear. Not saying that is what this is, just seems to be a trend lately of these types of appeals for money. Be careful.

-Ron

I was very excited to learn about your new record attempt with a new car and power plant. The Knowles axial piston expander is very interesting as well. Hopefully its basic design will be up to the necessary power. Will the hot area around the valves in the center of the engine cause problems?

Lohring Miller

Lohring,
Thanks for finding those old writings on the amazing Kenneth Knowles engine and Rolly the pictures from the 1980's. It was a magnificient effort on his part that was too late for any government money as that had all gone to others. He went around the country showing the engine(as it existed) to SPS, SES, Besler, Lear and others and it appears he had modified its clearance volume so that it would run on shop air with a lower compression ratio by rotating one wobbler plate one spline so that both pistons did not come to top dead center at the same time. Craig Standbridge put a lot of time and effort to disassemble and reassemble the engine and I much engineering time trying to understand why the few blueprints left that had not been water damaged had been changed to what showed up inside when taken apart. I first saw the engine in 1982 then owned by Ed Gallant of then famous reputation for all his machining talents on making new Stanley blocks and parts in New Hampshire.. Knowles three dimensional stress analysis prior to computers was exceptional and going broke on this attempt has happened many times to engineers with a dream that lack funding. If anyone looks back into the back page of the old 1970'sSACA magazines they will find his add for sale from his place in Vermont. I don't think he ever went back to engineering after this exhaustive effort of brilliance.
GeorgeN

Hi George,
Curious if the Knowles engine was ever run on superheated steam. Thermal distortion would be my concern. 100 psi air pressure only tells you the parts work together.
There were several of these types of engines in the Engineering Lab at Stanford, including an FAA certified Hermann cam engine that worked.
Interesting how so many try to avoid using crankshafts and connecting rods, Z cranks, cams, wobble plate and swash plate just for starters
Warmest regards.
Jim



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/24/2016 03:51PM by Jim Crank.

Lohring-

You have mentioned one of the few things that aren't desirable about this engine-the heat losses associated with the basic design of the engine. Some of the losses can be ameliorated by changing a few things-as I have mentioned in the Bulletin article. As we all know, every engine is a compromise and this one is no exception.

Having said that-we(my M.E. friend Art Gardiner and I) feel that the Knowles engine will do the job very well when we get the oil system and a few other details worked out.

After all-we're only going for 200mph this time!

Regards-Chuk

Jim,
I don't think Knowles ever ran it on steam. His uncompleted Doble type boiler was a masterful job of winding and spacing although not necessarily the best way to go. He had also made the quartz thermostat, beautiful throttle valve, pressure safety valve and all the other components.
Craig and I ran it off his Derr boiler that was in his truck and although superheated the engine was not under any load and we didn't measure the temperature at free running pressure. Heat loss of the central ring is a concern but that heat loss is per hour and when one divides by a million admissions per hour the loss per admsssion becomes small and the engine more adiabatic. So glad Chuk and Art are trying to work out some of the incompletions and problems. After all it doesn't have to run too many hours to be prepared for a high speed run. May success be had so that we can celebrate the work of Knowles and his admirable engineering.
GeorgeN

Hi George,
Glad to hear it at least ran on steam and didn't freeze up.
Right, it only has to run long enough to smash the record. It does indeed look like it can do the job
Back to the book.
Regards
Jim

I had a strange dream last night. It was about the/a Streamliner. All four wheels were under the faring. The power plant was biased on a Wankel 13B engine which is 4 cycle. The engine used 4 injectors.. So I was thinking this was a compact power plant, which used a large reheat stage feeding the intake.

Just a weird dream I had.

Going back a few posts, what is the LaMont turbine that we are talking about. I missed that part of the conversation. I am always wondering how to get an efficient turbine without having a lot of windage loses. Tom Kimmel

All files from this thread

File Name	File Size		Posted by	Date
Stanley scientificamericanFeb 9 1907.pdf	326.7 KB	open | download	Rolly	06/17/2015	Read message
image.jpg	1011.1 KB	open | download	Brian McMorran	06/20/2015	Read message
imgm.jpg	12.2 KB	open | download	Batteryman	07/06/2015	Read message
elio-by-elio-motors_0-100_1.jpg	151.4 KB	open | download	Arnold Walker	07/23/2015	Read message