FYI: Dec 12 MythBusters: Airplane Hour

Dudley Henriques wrote in
:

Bertie the Bunyip wrote:
Looked it up. The Stanleys set a record in 1906 of 127 mph.
Interestingly, in the very early days, land speed records were
dominated by electric cars, the fastest of which was 65.79 mph in
1899..



Bertie



Can you imagine what it must have felt like for those early guys at
127 indicated on that frame and chassis? Those guys had guts!!


They don't call it the heroic age for nothing. I have driven a 1911 car
at about 70 and that was actually not too bad at all. Braking was not
what you could call the best . I once drove this car dwon the side of a
mountain with the wrong gear selected at the top and didn't dare try to
change once i had ealised I was going too fast. It had a transmission
brake as well as the tiny rear wheel brakes, but they were all on fire
and almost completely useless by the time I reached the bottom. The cars
handled better than you might imagine, though. There were no shocks on
them, but the leaf springs were very long and very supple and that
damped out the ride better than you might imagine. The steering was
fairly good on many of them as well. Tires were skinny, but they were
usually about 45 psi or moe on the larger cars so didn;t deform much on
corners, so that was usually OK. the brakes, though...

the other big concern was that if you had artillery wheels (wood) they
could collapse under side loads. IIRC this was th ecause of the very
first auto fatality.

Bertie