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RE: Lightweight wheels...drive only?

To: "Eric Buckley" <ejbuckley@earthlink.net>
Subject: RE: Lightweight wheels...drive only?
From: "Kevin Stevens" <Kevin_Stevens@Bigfoot.com>
Date: Sat, 29 Jul 2000 23:16:22 -0700
And yes, I intended for that to go to the list.  ;)

KeS

> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-autox@autox.team.net [mailto:owner-autox@autox.team.net]On
> Behalf Of Kevin Stevens
> Sent: Saturday, July 29, 2000 23:09
> To: Eric Buckley
> Cc: Ax List (E-mail)
> Subject: RE: Lightweight wheels...drive only?
> 
> 
> <private>
> 
> God, will someone take the slide rules away from these guys before they hurt
> themselves?
> 
> KeS
> 
> > Eric,
> >
> > You made some good points.  It will require more energy to "spin up" the
> > non drive wheels than the drive wheels due to inefficiencies.  As you
> > said, the flexing of the body won't be significant unless your driving a
> > Mustang without subframe connectors.
> >
> > Additional inefficiencies will come from the deformation of the tires.
> > For the sake of this discussion lets consider the drive axle the source
> > of the energy, and all 4 tires/wheels are the same weight and size.
> > Consider only the portion of energy needed spin the tires/wheels from 0
> > to 60 mph, the simple analysis says energy to "spin up" 4 tires/wheels
> > will be 4 times the energy to spin up one tire/wheel. I'm sure someone
> > can look up an equation for stored energy in a flywheel (tire/wheel).
> > The drive wheels are driven directly from the axle so there won't be any
> > inefficiencies for the drive wheels.  The other wheels will get their
> > energy from the drive wheels, thru the inefficiencies of the drive
> > tires, and thru the inefficiencies of the non drive tires.  The
> > associated rolling resistances will manifest itself as heat (lost
> > energy) in the tires.
> >
> > I would now conclude that the lighter wheels should be put on the non
> > drive end if all you're interested in is acceleration.
> >
> > Bob Mosso
> >
> >
> 
> 

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