Showing posts with label SpeedHunters : The world fastest S13. Show all posts
Showing posts with label SpeedHunters : The world fastest S13. Show all posts
Monday, February 7, 2011
SpeedHunters : The world fastest S13
You’ll notice that the dry sump system sits inside the cockpit area. I assume this is to allow for full flexibility with engine setups.
SpeedHunters : The world fastest S13
The McMeekin Brothers 240SX was built to house a wide variety of engine types. The Buick straight 8 is the third engine the car’s housed… it’s previously been home to a Flathead V8 and a Indy spec Aurora V8 both of powered the car to the XF/GC record of 156.778 in 2005 and the E/FALT record of 235.890 in 2006. This second record certainly makes this car the world’s fastest S13 chassis!
SpeedHunters : The world fastest S13
Don told me that they built the car to be "safe" even at speeds edging past 240 mph. This is rather evident when you inspect the roll cage area. It’s properly beefy.
SpeedHunters : The world fastest S13
The center pillar in a roll cage is something I’ve never seen previously… but after seeing video footage of cars going airborne at Bonneville… I can understand why it’s been built this way.
SpeedHunters : The world fastest S13
All of this has been done to make this chassis as strong as possible…. I noticed that some competitors often added weight to their car to gain traction and stability on the salt flats, so in this case, making the car heavier is likely to help its performance and stability at speed on the salt.
SpeedHunters : The world fastest S13
Also notice how a full tube chassis has been built into the floor of the car. Both subframes have also been tied together…
SpeedHunters : The world fastest S13
Check it out…. a vintage Buick straight 8 engine has been shoe horned into the engine "room".
SpeedHunters : The world fastest S13
Accidents at Bonneville are not normally based on a car hitting another car or impacting a trackside object…. if you get in trouble above 200 mph, it usually means that the car is going to go into a series of rolls, or slide a long way on its roof…. so all safety measures take these elements into account.
SpeedHunters : The world fastest S13
For the McMeekin Bros race team, the choice of a S13 chassis was entirely based on its good aero numbers. They were also looking for a car that could easily accept a wide variety of engines, depending on what class they were looking to run at Bonneville on any given year…
SpeedHunters : The world fastest S13
.. So the choice of the 240SX chassis was a practical one based on the needs of their Bonneville plans… but unwittingly, the McMeekin team are now in possession of the fastest S13 on the planet. And as we know, this is a chassis type which has a huge following in drift car scenes around the world… but it’s an unexpected gem to an example constructed to fly down the salt flats of Bonneville!
SpeedHunters : The world fastest S13
As a good portion of Speedhunters readers are partial to machines from the land of the rising sun, one of our goals at Speed Week was to collect images of all the Japanese cars at the event. Although Bonneville is very much the stronghold of American evolved rods, lakesters and muscle machines, Japanese cars do have a reasonable presence at the event.
So I knew I was on to a winner when I spotted this red S13 in the startline area of the Salt flats a few days ago.
So I knew I was on to a winner when I spotted this red S13 in the startline area of the Salt flats a few days ago.
SpeedHunters : The world fastest S13
A glance at the inspection certification stickers showed the car has been coming to Bonneville for a few years now…
SpeedHunters : The world fastest S13
As a Bonneville newbie, one item that’s become clear to me is that the chassis and engine selection for a land speed record car are two very separate and distinct choices for any car builder. Most competitors combine the engine and the chassis in order to enter what appears to be hundreds of different classes. Often a builder will try and find an overlooked class, build a special car and go for the record. People may even show up at Bonneville with more than one engine in order to set multiple records with one chassis.
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