Very cool, and harder to do like that than it looks. Can you say
'anal' ? Sure you can. I am a jeweler and I can't imagine bends like
that. You could feet a small town in Africa with the scrap metal from
the heap I would produce.
JC
On Fri, Dec 3, 2010 at 8:04 PM, Ray Buck <rbuck@xxxxxxxxxxxx
<mailto:rbuck@xxxxxxxxxxxx>> wrote:
While Doc Freud (photographer and press rep) and I were keeping
our pipes from freezing, the guys at the Skunk Works were doing
plumbing of their own...well...on the liner. Air lines, oil
lines, fire suppression system lines...all sortsa stuff...even a
coupla oil filters that I hear tell weren't exactly
inexpensive...but they sure look kool. Nothin like yer basic Fram
spin-on filter, that's for sure. The phrase, "stacked thousand
dollar bills" was the way they were described to me.
All of this is in an update called, "It's all plumbing." Check it
out.
http://www.target550.com/gallery/74_its_all_plumbing/index.html
Every time I do an update on this site (and it looks like we're
gonna have 2 per week all month cuz Freud's feelin like a jolly
old elf...you can subscribe to this thread and be notified of
posts and updates:
http://www.landracing.com/forum/index.php/topic,6400.new.html#new)
I'm amazed at the grace, beauty and craftsmanship going into this
liner. When ya think that it's intended to go so fast that about
all anyone is gonna see is a blur, it's kinda mind-boggling.
Yeah, the high-quality work has to be there for the goal to be
achieved. It's a whole different ball game on the salt compared
to any other kind of racing. Ya watch top fuel drag racers and
they make pass after pass (ok, so they rebuild the motors in
between) but little mistakes get made and races are still won. In
NAScrap racing, the teams can blow 2 or 3 pit stops, the car
bounce off the wall and then still come back to win with a few
"carefully placed yellow flags" and "speeding penalties" for the
competitors. But in LSR, well...I can't start to enumerate the
times that one little thing has gone awry and the run is
aborted...even if it's the last run of the meet. It all has to
work perfectly...sorta like doing stuff in outer space.
So the quality and reliability has to be there, as does a lotta
forethought in the design so that salt demons don't creep in and
screw up the works. In 09, a British team brought a streamliner
over and didn't even get to the salt before giving up. They tried
to make it work on Highway 93 that runs from Las Vegas to
Wendover. They had the "misfortune" of picking a time of year
when there were lots of rain showers in the desert and for a team
from Jolly Olde England, where it rains 2/3s of the time...well,
they blamed all their problems on moisture in the electronics.
After a week of paying the Nevada Highway Patrol to keep an eye on
the road so they could test if they ever got it running, they
packed up and went home. So Marlo Treit, the team principal, has
decided that electronics will be kept to an absolute minimum on
the liner. That's the reason for so much air-actuated stuff...or
one of 'em, anyway.
Even with the requirements for build quality and reliability,
these guys still create stuff that looks like fine art. Looks
like, hell, it IS fine art...just made to go real fast instead of
hang on a wall.
Ok. I ramble. But it's still real kool stuff.
r
