I have been wathing both threads with some interest. After doing a little
thinking (very little, getting old), I remembered a cautionary note from deep
in the recesses of my mind on using Nitrogen to fill your race car tires.
When I first went to work for Boeing, about a thousand years ago, I worked in
Flight Test at Boeing Field. While thee there was a terrible accident in the
hangar. A mechanic had the task of filling a demounted 727, or maybe it was
a 707, main landing gear tire with Nitrogen. Boeing used a cart with I
believe it was 8 full K bottles (220 cu ft) of Nitrogen connected to a
manifold and regulator. He connected to fillinf hose to the tire, which was
laying flat on a pallet and began the filling process in which he set the
regulator to the proper pressure. The lunch bell rang and he went off to
lunch. He returned to the task right after lunch and when he reached the
tire, it exploded. It blew him completely in half with body parts going every
where. Of course he died instantly. Now, the investigation showed that the
regulator leaked and permitted the tire and K bottles to come to an equal
pressure, a very high pressure. The cautionary note for us is that the use of
nitrogen to fill our tires through regulators whic get very little attention
in the way of maintenance (prolly - assuming here), may prove to be a
dangerous task indeed. So if you go this way and it is a good way, be very
cautious in handling the regulator and oteher items and never leave the
system connected to the tire.
On categories,,,did I read that to have another class, there needs to be at
least three cars requiring the new class. How many does it take for a new
category which may involve lots of new classes within that category? Are
there that many cars waiting to run and are now just running for time? I
have no doubt that the organizational effort needed to conduct more classes
is manageable because it is just book keeping. The only added effort is in
training inspectors to recognize the non allowable hardware. Being somewhat
cynical, I have to ask this question: why is this being contemplated? How
many cars are there that do not have a class in today's set of categories and
classes? Is this just and end run to allow a few more people to become record
holders with their present cars which are not competetive? Since I have a
little bit of familarity with the girly Camaro of Keith's IU'll use it as an
example, hoping he doesn't get angry with me. Keith could very well go to the
salvage yard and acquire a more aerodynamic Firebird body fairly easily.
Transferring the mechanicals to the new car would involve probably just
effort and little outlay. I am sure that this capabi;lity exists for others
as well, so where's the beef? Why is beiong contemplated? Spell it out for
me? Actually I don't care, but there seems to be a hidden agenda here. And as
fo Keith he is going to build a monster BMS vehicle soon, so I am sure this
doesn't affect him very much (I hope, he was the only car I could think
of...and he is my bud).
mayf
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