Re: Bonneville Salt Mini Racer built in NZ
Posted: Sat Aug 18, 2012 5:56 pm
yonks ago i made this graph ,working from a drag simulation software , sems to tie in with thier 280 odd bhp ,maybe a little more speed to come ?
Last report.
Al
Well it been a busy few days since our last update. Sorry for letting it drift. You may have heard the news already but things have gone well.
I just checked back and it looks like when we last sent an email we had just qualified for a record run. The next day we were on the Salt before dawn and had about 45 minutes to prep the car. All the cars in impound were then towed to the start lines and began their gave it a good go.
On our qualifying run we recorded 142.103mph on mile two. Our record run we recorded 151.087mph to give us an average of 146.6mph. A new record. Needless to say we were stoked, especially so when Nelson said the car was still accelerating at the end of mile 2. All that remained was the formality of a post record tech inspection.
The car was in good shape so we lined up again. This time the thinking was to run to the end of mile 3, giving more time to get to the car's potential top speed. It worked, with the timing ticket showing 156.045mph! As far as we know, thats the fastest speed ever recorded for a classic Mini.
The Cooper went straight back to its parking spot in the impound and after checking the car over we went back to the campsite, again pretty stoked.
The next day was Friday, last chance for record runs. We were there before dawn again and did our prep but soon discovered another wee gremlin that we weren't able to fix in time to do the run. We were disappointed of course but we were still going home with a record, plus we still have the timing ticket that shows we broke 150mph, a crazy speed for a vehicle designed to be a space and fuel efficient city car. Given an extra hour or two we might have had a record over 150mph. Thats not up to us though, thats up to the gods of speed.
So, what next? Firstly we're all heading home, some towing the Cooper to a container in LA, some taking the long way and taking in the sights, others flying out of Salt Lake City today.
We'll be getting together all the images, deleting all the rubbish ones and putting them up somewhere for everyone to see, plus we've got enough footage to make up a wee film of the whole experience. If theres enough interest, we might put together a book. Let us know what you'd like to see.
Finally we'd like to say thanks to all of our amazing sponsors, crew, 150 Club members and supporters, including the 1400 plus supporters who joined us on Facebook.
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Mike Wilson - Project 64
