Olds Ground Effect Stocker

[Lefturns75]

I built this one as a "What If" Phantom short track pavement car.  I got the idea while reading about the Brabham BT46B F1 car from 1978.  I used the Monogram Dinner Bell Olds kit and made some changes.  This is the car that gave me the idea.

I used an old deep dish Turbine Mag Wheel from the parts box, sanded the back until you could see through the fins and added diffusers.  Presto! an industrial fan that would move large volumes of air.  I plugged this in the rear of the olds, powered it off the rear of the quick change rear and skirted the entire car to seal it to the track. 

The concept is not to vacuum the car to the track, but to lower the air pressure under the car.  Would it work?  who knows.  When you do the math it does.  A one square inch column of air from the ground to atmosphere weighs 14.7 pounds.  When you figure square inches under the car and do the math, its incredible.  This build was fun and the research was too.

[Michael F]

Cool idea on the turbine and the "healthy" sponsor!!  You build some outstanding models.

These five wides are my alltime favorite.

Very cool looking model

[Dirtman]

Out side the box that's for sure. Beautiful car. Love the ground effects!

Rett

[sentsat71]

Now that is thinking well outside of the box!!!  Very cool build!!

Makes one wonder how soon NASCAR will try something like this.....would probably "kill" NASCAR, as if they aren't in enough trouble as well.....

Didn't Jim Hall build a Can-Am Chaparall similar to both the above?  Don't remember the year, but was somewhere around 1969-1970(?)

[Lefturns75]

Sentsat Ed, you got the years about right.  Hall gave it a go but the two fans were powered by an auxiliary 2 cylinder two stroke engine.  The BT46B was a single fan and powered off of the Transaxle.  In theory, all you had to do was lower the air pressure under the car .18 pounds and with the square inches you would get 900 to 1000 pounds of static down force.  Talk about superglueing a car to the track.  The BT46B proved the theory worked and I doubt you could get anything like this past tech today.  Many don't understand this concept.  The fan does not "Suck" the car to the ground, it lowers the air pressure under the car.  The air that exits the fan is only at 55 mph or less and exits in a radial pattern, not a column.  It will not pickup rocks, clods of dirt or anything large, just some dust maybe.  I feel that the BT46B design by Gordon Murray was genius.  His out of the box thinking stood F1 on it ear and made every team jump through hoops to catch up.  Gordon proved it works, I just don't know how well it would work on a stocker.  There may be too much open area in the fenders to gain enough lower air pressure.  Who knows?  If it did work, you might see some 230+ laps at Daytona.  'Ol Smokey Yunick understood what went on under a car.  I bet he could have made it work.