It Could Have Gone Better

if you watch this channel then you know I bounce between projects like a coped up sixth grader at a toy factory but this one has been on the back burner for a while partly because the races I was hoping to attend last year all got rained out but also partly because I got a bit burnt out on it so much so that I dragged my feet on getting it ready for this season and missed the first event back in May June was rained out but July is the last event before Bonneville speed week so I wanted to take it out shake it down and see how it did at speed I wrapped up the last few things got it out to the lake bed and went what you might call super fast [Music] depending on your definition of super fast [Applause] if you forgot about the land speed car don't worry I forgot about it too it spent most of the last year getting covered in dust and random parts from other projects I pretty much haven't touched it since almost a year ago when I took it out to the desert for some slow speed test runs those went well but I had some trouble getting it on and off the trailer mostly because it's 15 feet long and has about an inch of ground clearance giving it the worst breakover angle of any car ever this time I had some tricks up my sleeve I raised the back of the Forerunner with some ramps I also sort of just left the car on this dolly that I had made to move it around it worked well enough why am I loading the car onto the trailer because I am going to take it to church [Music] not that church this church church Automotive testing see I got the car running last year but I never tuned it and to tune it I need to put it under load since the city of Los Angeles won't let me drag race it down the 405 I have to take it to a dyno it was a pretty bad tune to start with but we got it tuned up to about 193 horsepower after an hour and a half we did have one issue the bike engine kept overheating we found out that this was because I had an air bubble in the cooling Loop so it was a pretty easy fix I did run it for a little bit including that test run out in the desert so I thought I got all the air out but it is a pretty complex cooling system so there was some stuck in there somewhere I took temperature measurements from both sides of my water to water heat exchanger using this data I can calculate the heat transfer coefficient and the effectiveness of this heat exchanger I'm not going to but I could even with the ramps under the tires the biggest problem I had at the dyno was actually moving the car around getting it on and off the trailer and turning it around in the parking lot you can't fit a floor jack under it and it has the turning radius of a battleship I have this dolly I used to move my trailer around so I thought why not make the land speed car into a trailer I welded up this contraption that hooks to either the front or back of the car and makes it super easy to move around there were a few other things that needed to be done before I could race the car one it's not technically a Streamliner like this not because it's totally naked but because the wheels are totally naked it's almost a lake stir but lakesters have to have the wheels on the outside of the body it actually doesn't fit into a class like this I have to cover two of the wheels at least so I bought the cheapest plastic trailer fenders I could find and screwed them on the front they probably would have let me run without these it just wouldn't count towards a record which I'm not going to set anyway without a body but it seemed like a good idea to keep my front tires from creating a rooster tail of dust directly into my eyes I also had to adjust the seat belts modify the pneumatic parachute release and add car numbers and class to the side not much work yeah this car has pretty much been done for a year foreign the big goal of this weekend was just to pass Tech inspection and complete the Rookie Run Tech inspection was pretty easy I took this car up here last year before it was done and had some of the tech inspectors look it over to see if anything was wrong and nothing was wrong then still nothing wrong I did have to show that I could easily exit the vehicle they call it the bailout I did this two times at home the night before with no problems I actually did have a slight problem I had to sort of slowly get into the car getting in with the fire suit on the seven point harness the Hans device and the controls tilted down it starts to get a bit claustrophobic once I'm in there it's fine but I did take my time to get all strapped in it's cozy bailout was good Tech inspection was good I attended a rookie orientation which is just where they tell you all the stuff you're supposed to do and not supposed to do all of which I knew because I read the booklet and also I did this before about 10 years ago with that death trap of a motorcycle I built but it's been a while so I went through it all again and for the rest of the day we relaxed watched the beautiful desert Sunset and listen to hundreds of side by sides that decided to start an impromptu drag race next to us it was basically race Wars from The Fast and the Furious but somehow less safe there were multiple wrecks things went on until 2 30 in the morning I'm surprised we didn't see any ambulances but they did look like they were having a fun time on the door the next morning with about three hours of decent sleep we got the car ready for its first run and towed it to the start line we decided it would be easier to tow the car with the front tires off the ground so we just towed it by dragging the dolly this worked really well for about a minute and a half after that we just pushed it I got all suited up in a black thick fireproof suit that is exactly not what you want to be wearing in the middle of the desert in July but probably exactly what you want to be wearing if you're on fire sitting in the car for a while revealed a few flaws in the design for one the seat is not very comfortable there's a kink right below the middle of my back that needs a little bit of padding I could also use something to rest my feet on and probably something that goes under my knees basically something to keep my legs from flopping around in a wreck I also need one of those water bottles that has a straw I tried drinking out of a water bottle with my helmet on and all in the car and I just ended up waterboarding myself also the handlebars need to go forward about two inches I hadn't sat in the car with the Hans device on until after it was all assembled and that does change my seating position noticeably I took notes on everything but all that will have to be fixed at a future date because it was my time to drive most of these cars have a push truck that sends them off at speed and this would be a good idea for a future me but for today I was just slipping the clutch a lot after I got going a couple of things became obvious one is that the steering is a little Twitchy it's too sensitive I'll need to adjust down the ratio I already did this once by whitening this pivot here but it needs to be done again probably by moving the pivots near the handlebars in closer together another thing that became clear is that I forgot to clean off my visor I couldn't see the speedometer at all and I was having some trouble seeing the cones let me give you a Matt's eye view here that's about right also the course was pretty chewed up so I had no idea how fast I was going the car was too Twitchy and it was floating around on the dirt not feeling very stable so I just kind of took it easy waiting for the Finish Line hoping I could see the Finish Line El Mirage has different license levels you can't go faster than 150 miles per hour until you've completed a clean run between 100 and 150. I went 81 slow for a land speed car but my first run on that death trap of a motorcycle 10 years ago was 59 so I'm moving in the right direction it was a clean Rookie Run I was no longer a rookie but I still had the lowest license so we took a brief break got back in line and went for another run this one went worse we did remember to clean off the visor and adjust the speedometer so I could see it I started the engine and warmed it up but the motorcycle in front of me had an issue so I had to wait in the car for a while when it was finally my turn to go I stalled it got it started again but I think I accidentally launched in second gear so it was not a great start [Music] but I can see my speedometer so that was nice I slowly accelerated feeling out the car in the course my first run was a little unnerving because the car was floating around a lot it didn't feel planted this time it also didn't feel planted but I thought about it more like a dirt bike and less like a car and then it kind of clicked it felt alright so I started accelerating to get up into the hundreds and the car died just lost all power not sure why just nothing but then it came back and I started accelerating again back towards the hundreds but then it went away again just no power weird with the Finish Line in sight the power came back on and I punched it trying to accelerate to 100 in the short distance I had but no I got to 88 miles per hour they ended up running a third round but we called it a day I wasn't sure why the car was dying and even though it was only 11 30 in the morning it had been a long day I kind of wanted that 100 mile per hour run but even without it it had been a successful weekend I got two runs in finished up all the rookie stuff and had a short list of stuff to change and fix I hung out with some good friends met some great fans and I learned a lot as for why the car died well I looked at the data and did some tests when I got home I'm running a total loss electrical system I had problems with the battery draining with the rectifier plugged in I'm guessing I need a diode or something BMW goes out of their way to make it super hard to work on your own stuff so I can't even find a wiring diagram for this bike engine so I just disconnected it I assumed the motorcycle battery would be enough for two runs but apparently not the car shut off as the battery dropped below about 11 volts I started the car in my garage and slowly dropped the volt down at about 11 volts it started sputtering and dying so I'm gonna guess that's what it was I also decided to buy an actual car battery to replace the motorcycle battery which I should have done to begin with there was one other upgrade this weekend that was needed sitting in the hot ass desert made me consider a purchase that would make land racing better an RV I actually have space in the side yard to fit a small one so I started looking around I don't know if you've looked for RVs but they run the gamut in price and quality I very specifically do not want a project I want one that's ready to go doesn't need a new engine or a leak fixed or anything like that I have too many projects I don't need another one so I looked around and found a 22 foot long 2003 E350 based Gulf Stream RV it has all the necessary items like a shower an air conditioner and plenty of Towing power for what I need it also has a V10 engine which is reliable except that sometimes they like to eject the spark plugs out of the cylinder while driving so we'll see this thing needs a name so come up with something clever and throw in the comments I'll pick the best ones and we'll have a vote a vote that may or may not be rigged in the meantime I'll be doing a few small modifications I need to switch the direction my gate swing so I can close the gate with the RV parked there I also need to update the backup camera I need to add a table the house batteries are bad so I'll have to swap those out but I might put in some old EV batteries and add some solar on the roof so I can have more power and oh my God I bought another project it used to be that you had to impress people to get people to watch your show now you just have to impress the algorithm so do me a favor hit that subscribe button all hail the algorithm [Music] thank you

Channel: SuperfastMatt

Views: 458,209

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Id: WE7oa618z0A

Length: 10min 45sec (645 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 15 2023