On 10/17/04 8:53 PM, "Stan Wilder" <wilden1-1@SBCGLOBAL.NET> wrote:

> With less than 100 hp the dream of 100 in a Vanagon is just a dream unless
> you drive off cliff and read your airspeed indicator on the way down.
> I think Bruce just dropped the hammer on his hybrid toy to see how
> everything behaved and reached that 101 as part of the test but that brings
> up the speedometer error that is about 10% and that means he was only doing
> 92 mph. Well within reasonable speeds for Texas Highways for all Pickup
> trucks, SUVs, MPVs, 18 wheelers, and Rice Rockets of both the two and four
> wheel varieties.
> 
> Stan Wilder
> High Performance Ceramic Coatings
> www.engineceramics.com
Last year after a proper breakin on my subie mod I took it out on the flats
on i70 towards kansas.  Took it up to just under 6k on the tach.  At that
speed my speedo is definitely off by very close to 15 percent.  (only goes
to 85). However 5.8 x 18 is comfortably (uncomfortably) over 100mph. Havent
done it since and don�t plan on it.  Even at a moderate 80mph a crosswind is
not nice in a vanagon or any slabsided vehicle.  For a regular vanagon to
hit those speeds is right at the cutoff.  The subie electronic cutout is at
about 6.2k  the vanagon electronics cuts out at about 5.8k plus or minus a
little.  I am told that the last couple years of the vanagon the ecu cutout
at 6k but no change was made to part numbers.

Aerodynamically everybody seems to be missing one thing.
If I have a very unslippery vehicle with a coefficient of 1 (flat surface)
and a slippery vehicle of .5 and the surface area in question on the .5
vehicle is 3 times the area of the vehicle with a rating of 1,  the .5
vehicle is much higher in resistance than the vehicle with a rating of 1.

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jimt
Planned insanity is best.
Remember that sanity is optional.
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