While we're thinking our way through streamliner body design remember the
human factors. The biggest contributor to frontal area is usually the driver
and the cage we have to wrap around him/her. We compromise frontal area so the
driver can see to drive and move arms and legs on the controls. Cut these
factors too close and you compromise the mission with a driver who can't
perform at 100%.
I firmly believe that the first thing you do in designing any race car, LSR
cars especially, is configure the driver's pod for optimum safety, driver
performance and car performance. For the vast majority of us that aren't
skilled draftsmen/design engineers that means mocking up a full scale driver
cage out of cheap temporary materials, climbing in and out of it and testing
all control positions and safety gear. This means that for just about
anything but a stock body car you do this before anything else in the building
process.
If you do a good job with this mockup then you cut external templates from
plywood or something that define the minimums for the surrounding parts. Use
these templates to trace the body mold bulkheads. Place the engine, wheels,
tanks, firebottles, etc. and that pretty well defines the car. The next issue
is the tradeoff between maintainability and the length of your trailer.
Anyone who has lost a dzus button in the belly pan when you're 4-5 cars back
in the line will understand what I'm talking about here. And so it goes--
Ed Weldon
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