In 1968 I designed and built a class-winning micro-midget race car. I was 22 years old with a high school education, half a year of college, and no engineering training at all. My only useful experience came from a few teenage years spent keeping a series of Cushman motor scooters and later an Indian Woodsman motorcycle in good enough condition to get me to school and back. I was in the third year of a four year tour in the Air Force, stationed at Ramstein Air Base, Germany. As luck would have it, the base had a micro-midget club and a 1/8 mile paved oval race track. I unexpectedly became the owner of a Class B micro-midget racer due to a friend’s accident with my Mini.
That car, and all the other cars in its class, were made using junkyard parts from Goggomobils. The Goggomobil was a German microcar built by Hans Glas Gmbh, in Bavaria. Beginning in 1955, this little car had 250 cc, two cylinder, 2-cycle, motorcycle-type engine built on an aluminum crankcase that included a 4-speed transmission and a differential. A simple universal joint connected the differential to a short axle with a 4.80 x 10” wheel on each side. For comparison, the Mini I owned at the same time also had 10” wheels but they were wider. The Goggomobil engine was mounted behind the back wheels in the style of Volkswagen and Porsche. The front suspension consisted of a pair of Y-shaped frames pivoted at the forward center of the car, each holding an stub axle and a spring loaded shock absorber. This arrangement provided a rudimentary independent 4-wheel suspension that worked well for a car with a top speed of less than 50 mph!
All the cars in the club were designed in the style of American oval track racers. In this style, the driver sits upright toward the rear of the car with the engine between the driver and the front wheels. This style fit well with the Goggomobil powertrain because the driver’s legs could be out in front and the engine could hang out the back. I can’t remember actually racing that original car, but I remember so well that I had just seen the movie “Grand Prix” and I was determined to build a micro-midget in the style of the Formula 1 cars in that movie.One thing I noticed right away is that the engine in a Formula 1 car was between the driver and the back wheels. It was obvious that this provided much better weight distribution than having the engine hanging out the back.
I was reading a lot of motorcycle magazines around that time and somewhere I read about a motorcycle with a sidecar that had something the riders called the “secret reverse.” The article stated that with the engine idling very slowly, the manual ignition timing could be slowly retarded until the engine would stop turning in the normal direction and would actually start running in the opposite direction. This is possible with a 2-cycle engine because there is no valve timing to require reversing. All that is needed is to set the timing on the other side of top dead center.
So, the first thing that went into my design was to mount the engine ahead of the back wheels and to run the engine backwards. The second thing was to make a laid-back seating position so that I could stretch out in the car and keep the center of gravity as low as possible. The third thing was to put the pedals out in front of the front wheels, in order to put my 200 pound weight as close to the center of the car as possible. I made a simple hand sketch, got hold of some lengths of 3/4” water pipe, and went to work. I had to overcome a few obstacles, like making a shifter linkage that would work from the opposite direction of the shaft that shifted the gears and making a major change to the front suspension. There were a few other things but somehow I worked them all out.
The simple pivoted front suspension design of the Goggomobil had a basic design flaw. Because the axle was fixed to a frame that pivoted in the center of the car, the camber of the wheels would change radically as the wheel moved up and down. In other words, the top of the wheel would lean in when the wheel goes up and lean out when the wheel goes down. I noticed that starting in1965, Ford pickups were using a twin I-Beam front suspension. Basically, they used a single solid axle for each wheel and pivoted the I-Beam on the opposite side of the truck. Using that idea, I modified the Goggomobil Y-shaped axle frames so that I could pivot them on the opposite sides of my racer and be low enough that I could pass my legs over them to get to the pedals that I mounted out in front of the front wheels.
Another problem that cropped up was that the Goggomobil engine was designed with a forced- air fan cooling system. This didn’t work so well with the engine running backwards so I designed some big air scoops on the sides of the car to channel as much air as possible onto the engine’s forward facing cylinders. It’s hard to say how effective this really was because a set of pistons would only last about 3 or 4 race days before breaking up. Of course, running the engine wide open in 3rd gear all the time didn’t really didn't promote engine longevity.
Each race day started with time trials. The six fastest cars then raced in the Trophy Dash, with the fastest car in pole position. I won a lot of these races because I had the fastest car and all I had to do was stay on the track and not make a mistake. After the Trophy Dash, there was a 20 lap race and a 30 lap race leading up to the final 40 lap race. These races were all done in what was called Australian Pursuit. For these races, the fastest cars were lined up at the back and the slowest cars at the front. This made for better spectating because there was a lot of passing as the faster cars from the back worked their way past the slower cars at the front. It also gave the slower cars a chance to lead the pack and the possibility to win, although I don’t think that ever happened.
So every race started with me in the very last position in the starting grid. The cars would be push started and the pack would make a couple of laps to get up to speed and get all the cars bunched together for the start of the race. After the start, I would always hang back on the first couple of laps because there was always the possibility of a crash in front of me. After the second or third lap, the cars would start to string-out into single file and I would start moving toward the front. My car was not a lot faster than the other cars but it handled better and turned a little sharper. Unless I was stuck behind a slower car, I kept the throttle wide open throughout the whole race. My style was to cut the wheel very sharply going into the turn so that the back of the car would slide out a little and point me straight across the center of the 180 degree oval. Then I’d power out onto the straight, gaining speed and rpm to prepare for the next 180 degree turn. If I could get beside and inside the car ahead of me while going down the straight, I usually come out ahead on the next straight. This didn’t always work. If I was the outside car in the turn, I just didn’t have the horsepower to pull ahead on the straight. The other car and I would just go around the oval like horses on a carrousel. We would go around this way for a lap or two before a slower car got in the way or the other driver made a mistake and I could break free and get back to my fastest line.
Of course, it wasn’t always easy. The biggest danger of losing came when I would start lapping slower cars. It’s so easy to get stuck behind a slower car while the car behind is just waiting for this mistake on my part. It took careful planning to swoop around the slower car so as not to lose too much speed and more than once this tactic didn’t work. Also, sometimes the engine would blow or someone would crash in front of me. I won a lot of races and took home the B-Class Championship Trophy that year. I was a hero in the club and they gave me a nice going away party when I came back to the states the following year.
The BattleBots Report
It has been said that watching a BattleBots competition releases the kind of human emotion witnessed in the Roman Coliseum but without the empathy of human combat.Well, I don’t know if that is true but I can report that whenever one robot knocked some parts off the other robot, the crowd roared.As each contest would start, the robots would try to maneuver for position and then close on each other to begin pushing and shoving to try to gain some advantage.The crowd remained relatively quiet during this period but if one of the robots managed to slam the other up against the wall, or turn the other robot upside down, or tear some parts off the other robot and throw them across the arena, the crowd roared.If one of the robots was knocked to pieces the crowd loved it all the more.
The BattleBots competition held in Las Vegas used the same television set as the BattleBots show on Comedy Central.Each of the four 4-hour sessions was sold out (about 500 seats).There were about 200 people in line to get in when the doors opened a full hour before the start.This competition was actually a taping for the TV show.Lots of TV cameras, stagehands, and bright lights.The same 40 ft. square, bulletproof glass- enclosed arena was used although it has been enhanced by new hammers in each corner.The new hammers look like big steel mallets.The head of each hammer is about 10” in diameter and 18” long.The handle is about 5 ft. long and each has a 6” air cylinder to swing it down against the steel floor.Two guys outside one corner of the arena control the hammers, kill-saws, and other obstacles during the match.The hammers became so popular during the weekend that the hammer controller, a guy named Pete, developed his own cheering section.Chants of Hammer, Hammer, Hammer erupted whenever a robot had the misfortune to find itself under the punishing blows.If the hammer smashed the hell out of one of the robots and finished the match, then chants of Pete, Pete, Pete were followed by tremendous cheering and much laughter.One time, a robot named RA was caught under the hammer.RA was built into a car tire lying on its side.When they picked it up at the end of the match, all the broken parts fell out on the floor and they literally had to sweep it up with a dustpan and put it in a bucket!
The wide range of robot designs and capabilities are just too numerous to mention.Some of them are simply a low box with wheels on two sides and a wedge or plow on one end but the majority have a wide variety of weapons from engine driven saws to mechanical arms.Some have great names like “Diesector”, “Overkill”, and “Vlad the Impaler” while others are more for laughs like “Evil Fish Tank”, “Shish-ka-bot”, and “Doorstop”.Some robots are strictly designed to disable their opponent like the viciously effective “Ziggo” that looked like an upside down stainless steel mixing bowl but with cutting teeth and a very powerful motor to spin the bowl of teeth.Others were designed for crowd appeal like the very popular “Buddy Lee Don’t Play In The Street”!Buddy Lee was basically a red fire truck body with a big-headed doll driver and, inexplicably, 4 stuffed dogs in the back of the truck.
However, the most perfect example of my BattleBots experience is illustrated in the following story.A very successful Art Car builder here in Houston decided to enter some robots in the competition as a way of publicizing his metal sculpture business.This guy calls himself ScrapDaddy and he has a web site if anyone is interested in his work.He had a robot in each of the four weight classes but they all looked and operated in a similar fashion.Anyway, ScrapDaddy’s first robot committed the unpardonable sin of delaying the event.In its first match, the engine driving his saw weapon refused to start.Then he got it started and as soon as they got the door closed to start the match, it died.They got it restarted but it died again.After the third restart, it stayed running long enough to start the match but then died again.Later one of his robots broke something internally and spread oil on the floor of the arena further delaying the events because of the cleanup.All of his robots had starting problems in spite of a crewmember spraying big doses of ether into the carburetors.By the second session, ScrapDaddy was being booed whenever he was introduced.
So, in this most perfect match, ScrapDaddy (the robot) had to fight the extremely aggressive Ziggo.ScrapDaddy got his engine started and the match began.They circled each other for position; they made tentative faints at each other.Ziggo cut one of ScrapDaddy’s wheels.Then they closed on each other and the spinning teeth on top of Ziggo caught ScrapDaddy at just the right angle and ScrapDaddy was literally thrown through the air across the arena and it came to rest right under the hammer in the corner nearest my seat.Pete, the hammer man, was ready and when he brought the hammer down on top of ScrapDaddy, the crowd went wild!I mean they went WILD!Everyone was standing up, everyone was screaming, everyone was shaking their fists in the air… and the hammering didn’t stop.Pete hammered that robot into “roblivion”.He must have hit it 20 times, he smashed it down to the ground and only its lizardlike outer skin kept it from being broken into pieces.After a count of 10 from the referee, the match ended and the cheers for Pete began.It was such an incredible emotional release that after they carried ScrapDaddy out of the arena everyone had to sit down to catch their collective breath.What an experience… I can’t wait to go again!
My Ride in a Race Car
Thanks to Rush Limbough and my wife, I got the thrill ride of my life last week.Rush talked about taking his wife’s children out to Las Vegas Motor Speedway so they could drive a racecar.My wife convinced me to check it out and I sure am glad I did.I didn’t know this but the Richard Petty Driving Experience is apparently operating at all the Nascar tracks around the country.They have 7+ levels that start off with the “Ride-Along Program” and end with full driving-school training.I chose the “ride-along” for my first “experience.”The Ride-Along is basically 3 laps riding shotgun with a professional driver in a real Nascar racecar.I had no idea what kind of a deal this ride might turn out to be but after we got out to the track and listened to those engine start up, I started thinking this might be better than I had even hoped it might be.And guess what?It was even better than that!
To start off with, they put you in a one-piece Nomex driving suit and make you wear a helmet.You climb in through the window a real, and I stress the word “real”, Nascar racecar.You sit in a full-support racing seat just like the driver and they strap you in with the regulation 5-belt harness and wrap a padded neck support ring on you just below the helmet.The pit man puts up the web net in window opening and gives the driver a thumbs up sign.
They put the cars out two at a time and I was in the second car, which I thought added, a lot to the realism.The driver gets the OK on his radio and he throws the ignition toggle switch to run and holds the starter toggle down while the gear-reduction starter starts to spin up the engine.They claim that these cars have 600hp V8s and after you hear one start, there’s no doubt in your mind that it’s true.The exhaust note has that sharp sound that only comes from a really high compression engine.With the engine running, the noise and vibration are intoxicating.The drivers get the signal and we blast off.Not a tire-squealing blast off but certainly in the pin you to the seat category.By the time we hit the curve at the end of pit row, we are just about wound out in third gear.The driver moves over on to the 12 degree banked track, drops the stick into fourth and floors it.He moves the car up to about 5 feet from the wall and by the time I can turn my head to read the tach, we are flat out at something over 6,000 rpm!
We were told afterwards that 6,000 RPM in 4th gear calculates out to 162 mph and that these cars were only about 5 seconds slower than the qualifying lap times for this track.I don’t have any way to verify that but I measured 38 second lap times for other cars on this 1.5 mile track and that calculates out at an average speed of 142 mph.
So, back in the car, we dive down to the inside paint strip and come out of turn four heavy on the gas.We’re up against the wall in a heartbeat, and I look up, and there is a guy in the starter’s box giving us the green flag.We flash past the starter and start diving into turn one.I know the Goodyear racing tires are sliding as we drift through the turn because of the difference in the vibration of the car from when it was on the straightaway.Accelerating out of turn two, I started to notice that the muscles in my neck were starting to tighten up from the centrifugal force trying to pull my helmet out the window.In seconds, we are diving into turn three again and I notice that the engine is running at about 4,000 rpm at the apex of the turn.We take the checkered flag and start to slow down so that we can turn on to the pit road just before turn three.About a hundred yards from the pit, the driver cuts off the engine and we coast in to a stop.Man Oh Man, what a thrilling ride.I had to sit down for about 10 minutes after I took off the driver’s suit because of the adrenaline rush.
Nascar will never look the same to me again.I have never been a big fan of stock car racing but it has one advantage that I never thought of before.It’s the only, real, purpose- built, race car that has room for a passenger seat!And all I can say is this ride is well worth the hundred bucks that it costs.If you are ever near a speedway and get the chance to take a ride, I don’t think you will be disappointed.You can check it out on the web at www.1800BEPETTY.com.You might also want to check out the 8 lap Rookie Experience where you get to drive the car yourself.There was a group of gray haired gentlemen doing just that while I was coming down after my ride.
The Lawnbot Concept
The Lawnbot is being designed to mow large rectangular spaces with minimum wasted motion. It’s Cartesian coordinate steering system will use dead reckoning and distance measurement along with a few sensors to make a single pass over the entire area. Mechanically, the robot will have two sets of four wheels, set 90 degrees to each other. The robot will travel forward or reverse on one set of wheels. The second set of wheels will provide lateral motion after a set of linear actuators lifts the mower and the travel wheels off the ground. When the travel distance counter reaches the preset limit, the travel stops, the mower is lifted, and the lateral wheels move the Lawnbot over one space. This cycle is repeated until an obstacle is detected. If an obstacle (typically a tree) is detected, the Lawnbot will back up a short distance, make one step to the side, and attempt to travel. If the obstacle is again detected this cycle is repeated. If no obstacle is detected the Lawnbot will advance a present distance then stop and step laterally back to the original path. Power will be provided by the mower engine driving an automotive alternator and charging a car battery.
2001 Bonneville Air Filter Modification
I will not be the first to say that the engineers at Triumph did a great job designing my 2001 Bonneville but in typical engineer fashion they made it easy to assemble in the factory, not easy to repair in the garage. Case in point, the rubber boots connecting the carburetors to the air filter box are ridiculously hard to remove and even harder to reinstall. If you have ever needed to remove the carburetors you know what I am talking about. It’s easy to see that these boots are easy to install if theair box is on the bench and the boots are fitted on the air box before the side covers are screwed on. Then, without the back wheel blocking the path, the air box will slide straight into the frame and fit right on to the carbs. However, if all you want to do is take off the carbs to clean the jets or replace the float needles this is absolutely no help at all. So after fighting the rubber boots to get the carbs off for the third time I swore I would never do it again.
I like the contoured shape of the rubber boots, and the big air filter, so I decided to modify the air box instead of scrapping it.After some careful examination, I saw that a small removable section, on the air box side cover, would make it a lot easier to install the rubber boots. With that plan in mind, I set about removing the side covers. Of course I soon found out that some screws that hold the side covers in place are hidden behind some of the frame members (Thanks again to the Triumph engineers). Undeterred, I removed the battery and started removing the screws that hold the air box in place. I was happy to find that the box could be displaced just enough to remove the final screws and get the side covers off. With the side covers on the bench, I used a thin-blade coping saw to cut off a section around the boot hole. I made sure the section I cut off had three screw holes. I sanded the cut edges of the side covers smooth, spread silicon sealant on the flanges, screwed them back on to the air box, and then bolted the whole thing back into place.
After cleaning the jets and washing the dirt and corrosion out of the float bowls, I put the carbs back on the engine. At that point, it was easy to insert the rubber boot into the cutaway opening, with the boot rotated about a quarter-turn outboard, push it on to the carburetor, and then press the boot’s flange into the air box opening. Once the boot’s flange is engaged in the air box, it was no problem to rotate the boot into the correct position. Finally, I laid a bead of silicon on the cut edge of the removable section before fitting it into place and screwing it down. Now I’m ready to run and happy to know I’ll never have to fight those rubber boots again.
