Engineers Bringing Soap Box Racing Back Again

kpw10 writes "It appears that soap box racing has made a recent comeback as traditional races are getting big attention again. But at the same it is also adapting itself into a more modern engineering challenge: pro car designers from companies like Audi and BMW just last week raced in California's Extreme Gravity Series, with super aerodynamic racers reaching speeds of 44mph. Meanwhile on the east coast, industrial designers and artists competed in the Durham "Fall Classic Soap Box Invitational" with converted lazy boy recliners and enormous eight foot wheeled vehicles. I hope this is just a sign of what's to come!" We have come a long way since the 1930's.

Comments

CMU does this every year.

[SRMoore]

I don't really have a link to anything, but CMU has been having it's "buggy" race for several decades.

Not last week...

[Quarters]

"...just last week raced in California's Extreme Gravity Series..."

The Extreme Gravity series happened the first week in September. Check the date on the byline of the linked article.

Cyclists do this regularly

[richg74]

In the end the fastest gravity racer was the Volvo entry, which hit 54 mph.

This sounds pretty fast, but road racing cyclists routinely achieve faster downhill speeds. I'm no Lance Armstrong, but I've gone down steep hills at 55-60 mph.

The difference is that a two-wheeled vehicle can negotiate turns at higher speeds than a four-wheeled one, because the two-wheeled vehicle turns by leaning. So it doesn't have to deal with anything like the same "sideways" forces at the tire / pavement interface.

I remember a couple of years ago watching some Tour de France footage with a (non-cycling) friend. It was one of the mountain stages. He asked, "Why do they have support motorcycles and cars?" I said, "Because the cars can't keep up going downhill through the curves."

only up to certain pt it seems, then opp is true

[somewhere in AU]

local perf car mag did technical measurements on track of fast m/bike vs fast car and while lap times where within a whisker of each other on this particular circuit it's WHERE they were faster and slower that showed interesting things.

cut to the chase: car was FASTER IN CORNERS than bike, and bike ACCELERATED faster in straights so they had different advantages in diff places.

I've driven the circuit the mag used and you could setup a high speed drift in off camber bend with a good car (AWD Turbo GT-R) that you would NEVER contemplate/do on a bike (been riding 25+ yrs).

So your m/bike faster in "normal" road situation up to a point but cars actually faster and faster capable, in corners.

cheers!

"San Francisco Illegal Soapbox Derby"

[billstewart]

Boingboing recently had an article pointing to a Flickr Photo Set about the Bernal Heights Illegal Soapbox Derby. Lots of silly cars, and the one rule is that every car is required to have a beer holder. Usually Halloween, sometimes other weekends as well.

Re:It can be a very dangerous sport.

[coaxial]

The whole idea of racing is there's meant to be a penalty for getting it wrong.

Really? I thought the whole idea of racing was seeing who was the fastest. I mean, race officials don't break the legs of the losers at a track meet.

Silly me.

Clearly you have not seen...

[TheStonepedo]

bicycle drifting. Parent was talking about bicycles, not motorbikes. Despite the fact that you may never contemplate doing such maneuvers on a (motor?)bike, I'm certain the folks who race motorcycles on ice tracks put quite a lot of though into two-wheeled drifting. I myself wouldn't go out drifting on bicycles because a drift gone awry would be "crashing" every time rather than "spinning out" then recovering most times.

Re:It can be a very dangerous sport.

[dj245]

I'm late. but I run the website for the UMO/MMA coaster car. We design these cars to crash. They often hit things. Very often they spin out (many cars have the driver sitting on the rear axle with no weight on the front tyres). Our car is perfectly safe with a great roll cage, 4 point harness, the frame has multiple redundant load paths, and the bumper is designed to collapse nicely and dissipate the energy. I only wish they had provisions for keeping the crowd a little safer.

Oberursel - home of the soap box derby

[hughk]

The town of Oberursel in Germany, about 10 miles from Frankfurt was the place where the place where the first Soap Box Derby took place in 1904. Baring the odd little incident like WW2, they have been happening there ever since. They could do extreme gravity as the town lies just underneath the Taunus range of hills. Since the big one Grosser Feldberg is about 2600 feet high with a highway to the top, they could have used that, but luckily common sense prevailed and they used the gentler slope through the town instead. Even cyclists have problems on the big hill due to brake fade and a lovely hairpin.

As well as the more serious entrants, there have been mobile divans, bath tubs, etc. Unusually for Germany, you don't need to have any special license to do this, just to pass the pre-race safety inspection.

Extreme?

[Lars T.]

Bobby Car racing is extreme! Google Trans

Over 60 mph without any aerodynamics.

Re:It can be a very dangerous sport.

[GregWebb]

Ratzenberger and Senna both died at Imola, not Spa.

And how?
* Ratzenberger spun and damaged his rear wing, but didn't go in to get it checked. Next lap it failed at speed and he went straight on into a wall at speed.

* Senna had been running for several laps behind a pace car that was far, far too slow for the job (Opel Vectra), which causes a drop in tyre pressures and consequently ride height - critical in F1 as the cars run high profile, low-pressure tyres so a low pressure can cause a major change in ride height. The car was designed to run active suspension (which runs stably at low ride heights) but had to change to passive due to a late rule change, meaning the car wasn't fully stable. On the first lap at full speed he hit a bump in a high-speed corner and crashed, and a piece of the suspension came off and penetrated his helmet - a freak accident.

In any case, neither accident was by any means fully attributable to the circuit.