Chaparral

[Pat Buckley]

Perhaps the next performance "frontier" should be in that area of making it possible for the driver to withstand these incredible G loadings? Pressurized driver suits, seat that rotate longitudinally to counter the effects of cornering, etc....

I think that it is foolhardy to think that we have reached the limit. History has shown us otherwise.

[Eric Johnson]

For what it's worth

I lost my interest in slot cars when they achieved 300 mph scale speeds and you could hardly see them as they raced around the track.It wasn't as much fun anymore.

Eric Johnson


I remember fighting with my brothers over who would get to "drive" the afx chapparal 2e slot car. Haha.

[David Briggs]

I believe that next step is called flying! otherwise it will degenerate into large scale slot car racing with the ultimate goal of seeing who can survive the longest under the high G forces, the drivers will just be lab rats like the early astronauts.
I am not certain that racing would be fun under those circumstances, sounds more like a death march, similar to my last marriage!

[Mike from Vegas]

Points on undrivability well taken. John, you have good taste... The 2J was an animal, especially considdering it had the Chapparal "mystery automatic". I had the great fortune of finding an article from Road and Track about the early Chapparals (from the 2 to the 2E). It concluded by explaining how the "automatic" worked. Turns out that it was just a manual fitted with a torque converter instead of a clutch, eliminating the need to modulate the clutch. Concerning its ground effects, Jim Hall had the car going around the track like it was on rails. Anyway... I too thought of a series of racing- real stock car racing. What I mean that the car would have to be a production car that is avalible to the general public, meaning that homolagation (pardon my spelling) numbers would be around 2000. The factory can have no more than 5 entrants, all of which have to be 100% road legal. That means that the car has to pass emissions, noise, and safety standards. The cars would race on not only super-speedways, but on road courses like Laguna Seca and Nurburgring. The cars would be inspected before each race for emisions and noise (I can't figure out a way for safety to be tested before each race). The cars may not be tuned specialy for each race, as they must be tuned for the series. The cars would be seperated into classes by the cost of the car to the public. On top of that, the cars would be divided by wheter they are stock or not, meaning that if you are not racing for a factory team, which cannot modify their cars, you will race in the stock class if your car is stock. If your car is modified, you will race in the non-stock category.

[Mike from Vegas]

Scratch the modified category, as that defeats the purpose.

[Chris Ardern]

There's a book called "Chevrolet Racing: 14 Years of Raucous Silence! by Paul Van Valkenburgh" that documents Chevys back door racing program. It went back into print and is fasinating. I got one for Christmas. It tells all the inside stories about struggles between corporate managment and engineering and how Chevy achived what they did without officially being involved in "Racing". Jim Hall, Bruce McLaren, Smokey Yunick, Mark Donahue and Roger Penske. They were in the middle of it. I know the big three made a pact to not race in 1957. What's the story with Ford? Did Henry just say heck with it and do it anyway? There sure was no secret about who was behind the Lemans Victories.
Chris
Historic Race Car Replicas

[ChrisL]

Mike, That category already exists and is one of my favourite forms of racing. It’s called production car racing and the Bathurst track (in Australia) is featuring the WPS 12 Hour Showroom Enduro this year for these cars. The perceived problem with this type of racing though is that it does not creating close racing, so then the rule makers get involved and before you know it, it becomes just another parity formula.

[Chris Ardern]

So much for trying to get this thread back on topic.

[Mike from Vegas]

Sorry, Chris. Anyway... It's ironic that you brought this up on this forum, as the GT40 prompted Ford's violation of the racing ban. After trying to but Ferrari, they decided to beat them at LeMans (as you probably know what happens next.). After this desision was made, Ford began to drag race and participate in stock car races to change Ford's image to "total performance".

[Howard Jones]

OK I'll bite! I pick Indy.

Current technology will get us a 1 passenger car with engine in the middle down to about 1000 pounds fairly easily. So I'm going to stay with the thought and mark my unlimited Indy car at 800 pounds. All carbon of course.

Now, fully covered body... again...of course. Engine along side the driver in the center of the car. We can fill the rest of the car with pumps, turbos. etc...

We will seal the entire bottom of the car and pump ALL of the air out and draw a huge vacuum. Maybe seal two areas independent of each other one at the front and one at the back. We can use a computer to ballance front to rear slip angles with vacuum in each area thus we have no real need for wings. Perfect grip, and nearly unlimited by today's standards.

Little bitty engine running HUGE boost. The F1 cars of the 80s made 1500Hp from 1500cc's in qualifying trim. No No NO!!! There are NO RULES. Lets go with rockets. No need for drive train now. All we need is a calculation as to how much thrust we need to reach max speed at the end of each straight. Front back and the two connecting short straights between turns. So we light it off at the exit of turn 4 burn it to the braking zone for 1. Then light it off again between turn 1 and 2 (this would be a little one) brake and then light another big burn for the back straight. Same little fella between 3 and 4 and, walla a lap record on exit from 4. It's just a matter of computer control and timing.

Maybe we will need movable aero brakes. Reverse thrust? Hummmm?

Remember they just landed a probe on a asteroid 350 Million miles away from earth that was about 20 miles long. How hard could it be? They used a 1980 computer and spent only 25 million. What does Williams spend? Renault? Hell it would be pocket change for Schumacher.

What do you think Penskie is capable of? Surely MUCH more than me. He has already run a Indy car at Talladega at 240+mph years ago. I think Rick Mears still holds the close course record with that one. They just ran the boost up and trimmed out the aero. Goodyear got nervous at about the same time as Rick. God knows how fast they could have made that thing go.

The only thing that limits the performance of the car is the driver being in the way of packaging and interfering with the guidance.

I do not doubt that a current CART car could run 250MPH laps at Indy if the rules were not applied and the budget was available. Just more boost and more down-force would do it.

Our "car" could go as fast as the driver could drive it. Without the driver.......??????

Oh and you guys are right. The fact that the rules in the 60 CANAM did exist is what made it so cool. I am glad I was here to experience it. I don't think I would enjoy NASA rockets at Indy. They wouldn't sound right!! Not like those big V8's. VA ROOOOOOOOMMMM! Maybe thats why I made my car so loud.

[Marcus]

Originally Posted by OC_

From what I understand, the car was killed by other race teams (Mclaren) lobbying for the car to be banned. Oh… what could have been only if things were different…

No doubt Jim Hall was a very innovative racecar designer. But don`t forget that in the 60`s his team served as General Motors backdoor racing department. So it comes as no surprise that he even had his own test track for trying out his wild ideas, something other teams (including McLaren) couldn`t even remotely dream of.
According to Eric Broadley all the other teams (except Ford of course) had no really strong backing from large manufacturers. They all had these sort of wild ideas but no real ressources, they were too busy " racing at weekends and fixing at weekdays".

[Ian Anderson]

Howard

Your F1 figures are a bit low!
The1500 turbo engines would do 1500hp on the overtake boost button during the races

The BMW qualifying engine was reputed to make 3000hp for 3 laps.

Remember those were the says when engine swaps were the norm.

Ian

[Marcus]

Unless Chaparral ran 1500 cc BMW Turbos this thread seems to a little bit off track.

[Chris Ardern]

The 2D is on it's feet, getting painted. Stay tuned.
Chris
Historic Race Car Replicas

[Mike from Vegas]

Chris, I noticed that you left out the hideous roof scoop that the origionals were equipped with. Good for you. Are those BBS wheels? Absolutely beautiful.

[Big-Foot]

Originally Posted by actvpwr

The 2D is on it's feet, getting painted. Stay tuned.
Chris
Historic Race Car Replicas

I was just getting ready to post a link to your website and here you are..

[M. Duell / Owner TTR]

Coming along great Chris. I passed along the link to the Cranky guys I told you about. Most liked the idea of the Group 7 car as well.



--Mike

[Brian Hamilton]

Hey everyone,
I'm new here. I have been lurking around a bit though. This topic caught my eye because I spoke with Jim Hall a few years ago to help me develop a race series much like a modern day Can Am. He helped me a little bit but then his busy schedule got in the way and more used him for quick advise from time to time. I still have his phone number and address in my wallet. Talk about a once in a lifetime experience to be able to talk to a real legend of motorsports! What a wonderful guy too!!
Anyway, through his help I created a rulebook for a new series that is only 14 pages long. (Trust me that's short!!) The only reason you don't see cars running in it today is because I couldn't get sponsors to help with the upfront cost of starting a race series. The cars were easy, anything that ran ALMS or LeMans from 1996-2006 will work, I just opened up the rules a little. If anyone would like to see it, feel free to PM me with your e-mail address and I'll send you a copy. I'm still keeping an eye out for sponsors and investors if anyone has any leads!!

Laters,

Brian

[allanfeldman]

Just for information the Chapparal sucker car the 2J and Jim Hall will be at the Goodwood Festival of Speed in June along with the Howmet TX turbine and an array of world land speed contenters including Breedloves Spirit of America.
Regards Allan

[P4Replica]