39 replies to this topic

[Teapot]

Merrily wandering in the "Racing Sport Cars" webpage i came upon...this "thing" (take a look here...but...beware!Nobody can bear that sight too long:
http://racingsportsc...6-05-photo.html
(look at number 10 car...and for the two pictures at the bottom of the page)

Entered by Herb Adams Racing for the first Mosport event in 1983(driver Milt Minter), it appears to be a side engined car and, all in all, a quite ineffective device.

I'm looking for further informations and pictures.

By the way...are there other examples of side engined racing-cars (apart from Granatelli's STP-Paxton 4WD) ?

[wibblywobbly]

What a great idea! A GIANT scoop! Wouldn't want to see a side impact, though!!

Thanks for the link!

THere was a car by Smokey Yunick, I think. An Indy car, iirc, where the driver sat, precariously, in a "side car" alongside the engine.

[Teapot]

Originally posted by wibblywobbly

THere was a car by Smokey Yunick, I think. An Indy car, iirc, where the driver sat, precariously, in a "side car" alongside the engine .

AAARGH!

I've just seen this car you said: it was called the "Hurst Floor Shift Special" and enrolled for the 1964 Indy (recording a somewhat lacklustre performance)...at least it seems a little better than the Can-Am one...at least it wasn't kept together with tape!

[2F-001]

What about the TARF - the Gilera powered 'twin-boom' oddity (driven by Taruffi in record attempts - I'm not sure what else it did) ?

[dbw]

in the world of 750 club racing the "side engine" layout is not uncommon.....

[Muzza]

What about the most famous of all side-engined cars, the one built by the Granatelli brothers for the 1967 Indy 500 - that equipped with a Pratt & Whitney helicopter turbine and driver by Parnelli Jones, came so close to winning that race...

Today, that's the most cherished car in (permanent) exhibition at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Hall of Fame.

[Teapot]

Originally posted by 2F-001

What about the TARF - the Gilera powered 'twin-boom' oddity (driven by Taruffi in record attempts - I'm not sure what else it did) ?

IMHO it was rather a motorcycle than a car...but still I think it suits well this thread! It was dubbed "Bisiluro" (that in italian means "Double Torpedo") and reached about 130 mph in 1948 with a V-twin Guzzi engine (not Gilera...but I'm not sure of this, since many engines were used until 1957).

[dmj]

And of course there was later, even more drastical, Taruffi's project, Osi Bisiluro "Silver Fox" show car on Alpine basis. This car was for sale with C.Pond a few years ago and I'd like to know who bought it, where it is now and if it is finally going to be restored to working state as rumoured - in its showtime sadly it remained only a static exhibit...

[D-Type]

Don't forget the Nardi that ran at le mans in 1955.

And didn't Taruffi also produce a Maserati-engined Tarf?

[lanciaman]

Originally posted by Teapot


AAARGH!

I've just seen this car you said: it was called the "Hurst Floor Shift Special" and enrolled for the 1964 Indy (recording a somewhat lacklustre performance)...at least it seems a little better than the Can-Am one...at least it wasn't kept together with tape!

Luckily it did not make the race. Though remarkably a couple drivers actually tested it. The sidecar looked just like a motorcycle sidecar held on with tubing, and you couldn't help think about the device parting company with the main chassis...not to mention the complete absence of track input through the driver's butt since it was isolated from the chassis.

[Joe Fan]

Worse yet, car #8 looks like a pontoon boat.

[Buford]

Originally posted by lanciaman


Luckily it did not make the race. Though remarkably a couple drivers actually tested it. The sidecar looked just like a motorcycle sidecar held on with tubing, and you couldn't help think about the device parting company with the main chassis...not to mention the complete absence of track input through the driver's butt since it was isolated from the chassis.

Duane Carter shook it down. Bobby Johns crashed it in a qualifying run. Fortunately he hit the the wall in the rear in turn one. Had he hit on the left side, he would have been squashed. The car was fast enough to make the race.

[dretceterini]

Yes, there were 2 TARFs; one had a Maserati engine

[lanciaman]

Originally posted by Buford


The car was fast enough to make the race.

Perhaps adding even more misery to the 1964 event.

[Buford]

Yeah. Can you imagine after the monumental disaster, later Johns is zooming along and his little sidecar separates and flys into the grandstand or something.

[Ruairidh]

Originally posted by Teapot


Entered by Herb Adams Racing for the first Mosport event in 1983(driver Milt Minter), it appears to be a side engined car and, all in all, a quite ineffective device.

I'm looking for further informations and pictures.

There is a nice little article about Milt Minter in this month's Porsche Panorama (the PCNA monthly rag) describes him as the "greatest Porsche driver no one can ever quite remember". Milt (who is now 70) himself says "I had to be adaptable, because I never had any money. I always drove for other people which meant that my career depended on the telephone ringing". The article focuses on his Porsche days (remember which mag it is in!) so no mention of this odd beast.

[lanciaman]

Originally posted by Ruairidh


There is a nice little article about Milt Minter in this month's Porsche Panorama (the PCNA monthly rag) describes him as the "greatest Porsche driver no one can ever quite remember". Milt (who is now 70) himself says "I had to be adaptable, because I never had any money. I always drove for other people which meant that my career depended on the telephone ringing". The article focuses on his Porsche days (remember which mag it is in!) so no mention of this odd beast.

Herb was a Pontiac guy, was he not? Who built Tullius' LeMans for TransAm, a car that had unlikely success? I saw the car race in an SCCA event, with, I thought, Adams driving...though may be wrong.

[canon1753]

Most short oval supermodifieds have a side mounted Chevy big-block.

I also (I regret to inform you all) "designed" on paper a F1 car with a side engine and sent it off to Arrows. They did not write back.

Thus ended my designing career before the end of high school!

[Buford]

Yeah, like they did all that well on their own!

[Wuzak]

Might have been a bit of a hassle placing the Herb Adams car in RH corners........

[Henri Greuter]

We need a Le Mans specialist for this one:

I remember having read that in the early 80's, (best guess: 1981) there was a car, (designed by I believe Max Sardou) and this car had a BMW 6 in line located next to the driver. Car failed to qualify.
I remember reading about this car since I wondered how it was possible to let such a car forfill the requirement of having at least two passengers. Regrettably, there was no picture of the car in the article in which I read about it (DNQ car remember....) and I didn't bought the magazine either.(school boys didn't have enough money for that)
Is there a Le Mans specialist (Or BMW fanatic!) among us who could look that up? a French entry, BMW powered, likely in 1981.


Henri Greuter

[Jeremy Jackson]

Henri,

That 's the Ardex S80, drivers by messrs. Perrier/Lateste/Jean-Louis Trintignant. I think Sardou was actually the entrant.


Here is photo I have of it, can't remember where it's originally from

[rdrcr]

1981 ARDEX S80

[Henri Greuter]

To Jeremy Jackson and rdcr,

thanks for backing up a little corner within my grey matter!


Henri Greuter

[Teapot]

This is a tech one...

What are the real benefits of such an outlandish layout? For sure you can obtain a better longitudinal weights allocation...but can those things keep a reasonable line, even on straights?

[Henri Greuter]

At ovals it works to reduce the load on the wheels on the outside and reduce tire wear.
If my memory is correct, the Ardex used the principe to create a wingcar profile with an as large as possible tunnel at the end of the car to create high downforce.
It made the car far more nose heavy too of course to bring the engine more forward. But Ford built a front engined prototype once (1983)

Anyway, how the Ardex worked and why it was built as it was, an interesting concept to know more about.


Henri Greuter

[dancin stu]

Originally posted by Teapot
Merrily wandering in the "Racing Sport Cars" webpage i came upon...this "thing" (take a look here...but...beware!Nobody can bear that sight too long:
http://racingsportsc...6-05-photo.html
(look at number 10 car...and for the two pictures at the bottom of the page)

Entered by Herb Adams Racing for the first Mosport event in 1983(driver Milt Minter), it appears to be a side engined car and, all in all, a quite ineffective device.

I'm looking for further informations and pictures.

By the way...are there other examples of side engined racing-cars (apart from Granatelli's STP-Paxton 4WD) ?

I'll be able to have some more info for you in the next day or so, theres a small bit about it in I think Joseph Katz - Race Car Aerodynamics or Forbes Aird - Aerodynamics for Racing and Performance Cars.

[Michael Oliver]

Originally posted by rdrcr

1981 ARDEX S80

Richard

Thanks for posting the link to Sardou's website. I like the bit about discovering ground effect in 1973 'so well before Chapman'. The difference being how many races (let alone World Championships) did his ground effect car win and how many did Chapman's?! And also presumably nobody told him about Peter Wright's work at BRM in the late 1960s...

Michael

[soubriquet]

If you want to see TARF 2, it is conveniently located here in the Fremantle Motor Museum, WA.

http://www.fremantle...951bisuliro.htm

The Peter Briggs collection has some quite nice machinery amongst the dross.

Cheers

[Ray Bell]

And I was just about to ask where it had got to...

I knew that Allan Hamilton didn't have it any more... or at least that it wasn't in his toy shop. I saw it in the Porsche Distributors warehouse (alongside a 908 and a 917, as well as the T430 etc...) about 1979 or 1980.

[Teapot]

Originally posted by dancin stu
I'll be able to have some more info for you in the next day or so, theres a small bit about it in I think Joseph Katz - Race Car Aerodynamics or Forbes Aird - Aerodynamics for Racing and Performance Cars.

Thank you, Stu!

[dancin stu]

Ok here it is, sorry for the delay, its exam time.

From 'Aerodynamics for Racing and Performance Cars' - Forbes Aird.

'The twin boom or catamaran approach has occasionally been tried on raod racing cars. All such efforts to date have lost more performance to structual and engine airflow shortcomings than they gained from reduced frontal area.'

Judging by the picture of the Adams Can-Am car on the same page, I'm guessing the following is probably about the car:

' The precise control of wheel camber needed by the modern racing tyre cannot easily be achieved by any means other than a conventional wishbone type suspension system. As luck would have it, the inboard ends of the links of this established arrangemnt inevitably wind up quite close together near the centreline of the car; on a twin boom design there is nothing but fresh air in that area. This forces the use of unconventional suspension, which yields unconventional results. another problem is that many racing engines are vee shaped, and trying to fit such broad shouldered machinery into a slot no wider than a tyre inevitably cramps the exhaust system to the detriment of power.
Finally the structual problems are daunting, the camber sensitivity of modern tyres makes such demands on the geometric precision of the suspension system that the structure to which the suspension is attached must be extreemly stiff'

Hope it helps

[gdecarli]

Originally posted by 2F-001
What about the TARF - the Gilera powered 'twin-boom' oddity (driven by Taruffi in record attempts - I'm not sure what else it did) ?

I have no technical details, but I have just uploaded a photo on Carlo Biscaretti di Ruffia Museum - Torino (Italy) thread.

Ciao,
Guido

[Aanderson]

Originally posted by lanciaman


Luckily it did not make the race. Though remarkably a couple drivers actually tested it. The sidecar looked just like a motorcycle sidecar held on with tubing, and you couldn't help think about the device parting company with the main chassis...not to mention the complete absence of track input through the driver's butt since it was isolated from the chassis.

Actually, the Smokey Yunick "Sidecar" is much more substantially built than you might realize, the side-mounted cockpit being built on to, not simply "attached" to the main part of the chassis, the entire structure being of then-conventional chrome-moly tube frame construction. It is welded up integrally with the rest of the chassis, so if in a hard crash it had "separated", the driver would have been in far more trouble from the impact alone. Being thus constructed, as a solid part of the chassis--it just looks delicate because of the bodywork--I would think the driver would have had just as much feel of the track in his hindquarters as in say, a roadster (and there was plenty of track to feel back then, as Indy was still a fairly rough, bumpy track, even though by 1962, even the front stretch bricks had been covered in asphalt. Ever notice those funny, angled and jagged looking little "stripes" in the track surface of Indy from those 1960's years? Every one of those was a strip of concrete that had been poured into the spaces left where cracks in the relatively thin asphalt were cut away, then filled with concrete. Indy's asphalt surface back then was perhaps no more that 4-5 inches of asphalt on top of the original bricks.

Incidently, the driver's cockpit of the STP "sidewinder" Turbine of 1967 is perhaps even more suspect, as it is a tube-constructed unit, simply bolted to the right side of a monocoque aluminum "spine" chassis. However, even this unit didn't cause any difficulties, when "Silent Sam" did hit the wall on its right side in practice in 1968.

Art Anderson

[jde]

Originally posted by wibblywobbly
]THere was a car by Smokey Yunick, I think. An Indy car, iirc, where the driver sat, precariously, in a "side car" alongside the engine.

Pics of Smokey's car on display at IRP last fall. I believe I heard there that it's part of the IMS Museum collection now.

-jde

[Buford]

Can you imagine how much balls it would have taken to drive that thing? Or what level of insanity? And even scarier for me, I was too young at the time but had I been 21 I would have jumped in it in a second if offered a drive. None of the other cars at the time were much safer either.

[TedN]

Originally posted by Teapot
Merrily wandering in the "Racing Sport Cars" webpage i came upon...this "thing" (take a look here...but...beware!Nobody can bear that sight too long:
http://racingsportsc...6-05-photo.html
(look at number 10 car...and for the two pictures at the bottom of the page)

Entered by Herb Adams Racing for the first Mosport event in 1983(driver Milt Minter), it appears to be a side engined car and, all in all, a quite ineffective device.

I'm looking for further informations and pictures.

By the way...are there other examples of side engined racing-cars (apart from Granatelli's STP-Paxton 4WD) ?

I was at Mosport that weekend and remember that car. It was woefully underdeveloped. Running down the front stretch, the car was bottoming out all the time. As I recall, Minter actualy stepped down from the ride as he thought the car too unsafe. Bertil Roos then ran the car. Can't remember how long it lasted.

With the driver sitting on one side, and the engine on the other, the car was basically one big downforce pig.


Ted

[Teapot]

Originally posted by TedN

I was at Mosport that weekend...

Ted...thank you for your testimony from the scene of the crime!

The car lasted seven (I believe) frightful laps...then the bodywork began to fall apart (probably a direct consequence of the bottoming you were talking about)!

[Lufty]

All I know of this car is what Milt himself told me.

It was designed by Herb Adams to be the ultimate ground effects car. the engine was placed between the wheels on right side and the driver sat between the wheels on the left, in between was a huge venturi for down force.
Milt said the thing was spooky to drive, and no one else was willing to drive it. It was very difficult to place on right hand turns and the drivers side was much lighter then the engine side. In spite of this evil car, Herb and Milt remained close friends until the day Milt died last december.

Steve

Originally posted by Teapot
Merrily wandering in the "Racing Sport Cars" webpage i came upon...this "thing" (take a look here...but...beware!Nobody can bear that sight too long:
http://racingsportsc...6-05-photo.html
(look at number 10 car...and for the two pictures at the bottom of the page)

Entered by Herb Adams Racing for the first Mosport event in 1983(driver Milt Minter), it appears to be a side engined car and, all in all, a quite ineffective device.

I'm looking for further informations and pictures.

By the way...are there other examples of side engined racing-cars (apart from Granatelli's STP-Paxton 4WD) ?

[ghinzani]

Originally posted by Michael Oliver


Richard

Thanks for posting the link to Sardou's website. I like the bit about discovering ground effect in 1973 'so well before Chapman'. The difference being how many races (let alone World Championships) did his ground effect car win and how many did Chapman's?! And also presumably nobody told him about Peter Wright's work at BRM in the late 1960s...

Michael

The Ardex would have qualified for the race as it wasnt the slowest runner (51st I think) but because it was in the top Group 6 class its 110% with the really quick Porsche 936s its 110% rule was much higher and thus it was excluded. Sad really considering it had very little sorting plus being so ground effect heavy wasnt really the ideal weapon for the Mulsanne. Anyone know if it ever raced again or where it is now?