Sweepstakes' most "Forbidden" topic: Cheating!

[DeVos]

As we are talking purely hypothetical I would not go the flywheel or electrical route. I would use a reversed trike with a hollow rear axle containing a hidden jet that blows compressed air against fins machined into the inside of the rear wheel hub. The compressed air would leach from the pneumatic braking system and would only give a mild, gentle push (the amount of energy needed to make a 'reasonable' improvement in freeroll time should not be much).

Makes you wonder if the teams that use(d) pneumatics should have had more scrutiny...

As part of a team that had to deal with pneumatics (for example, please see Mirage's weird pneumatic suspension), I would avoid adding any unnecessary complications in that department. With things like leaks, stuck valves, and even temperature changes throwing off adjustments, I wouldn't want anything to do with your air jet fins(also, don't you need some of that air for passing drops unless you have a redundant set of brakes?).

Anytime I idly started thinking about ways to add cheating devices, it came down to performance vs added weight. With competitive buggies being designed to shave every last ounce off, adding a flywheel, which by it's very nature needs to fairly heavy, seemed like a losing proposition. The air tank volume you'd need to have any appreciable effect shoots down the finned wheel idea. An electric motor always seemed like the best "added part" cheat to me but still adds significant weight with only minimal gains.

I always came to the conclusion that the most effective cheats were the "subtracted part" type. Can I get away with a single layer of carbon fiber? Can I delete the extra locking fasteners? Does the driver really need her harness? Basically, what could I delete and have no one notice. I never saw or heard of these things actually being done, mostly because of the lopsided risk/reward, but they always seemed less likely to be noticed and easier and simpler to accomplish(K.I.S.S.).

[jess_thurston]

please don't "delete" any driver harnesses, I promise this is something I'll be looking for this year

[Jmohin]

1.) In regards to pneumatics brakes + fins on the axle:
a.) Don't use air brakes. If were me, keep the brakes simple (drop brake or something), strap a paintball CO2 can to the driver's leg, and hook it up to the blower using a quick-release mechanism. I can think of a ton of creative ways to hide all this, plus the GPS pcb/battery.
b.) Pneumatics give the appropriate amount of boost to not raise eyebrows. Which brings me to....

2.) Electric engines. Looking at low-end torque values, and battery energy-density/weight ratios, electric engines are:
a.) not easy to conceal. First of all, electric motors get a fuckload of low-end torque, so, depending on how it's installed (a good engineer could get around this with gearing), you'd see the difference in speed as soon as it clicks on. Also, the motor and batteries are bulky.
b.) If we're talking about weight, which I will get to, batteries are ridiculously low energy density for their weight. The fact that batteries have basically not progressed in concept since their invention is an embarassment to chemists (of which I am included). Gasoline stores orders of magnitude more energy per weight. You might as well carry .5 oz of gas and a tiny combustion engine, probably comparable in weight.
c.) Makes you wonder why there ARE 8 extension cords plugged in for one truck.....(Joke, I'm sure they don't use electric motors). In all seriousness kids, if I were in charge of the rules, a ton of electric heaters are just as dangerous as a solvent left open in the truck. Combine them, and ... well, just be careful not to repeat the 80's.

Anywaysss...
3.) Weight!!
We mechanics are obsessed with shaving off those last few pounds. Unfortunately, as well as we do our jobs...
a.) one pound might be well within the swing of a driver's normal diurnal weight swing. Heck, if she hasn't gone to the bathroom in over 12 hours, that will do it...
b.) As light as the buggy is, a bad performance by a pusher will eat up quite a bit of time on the course. Whether a lighter buggy makes up for it with the other pushers and the freeroll is up for debate, but a bad hill 2 can easily kill those 17.66 repeating ounces you took out of the steering.
c.) I think rolling resistance and energy loss to the course might be worse than any weight gain.


So, a 2-pound pneumatic might easily pay for itself if it gets + 2 seconds free roll and a great hill 3 roll out. I'm not advocating it, especially because the engineering that would go into it would be better spent improving steering and weight, and the time spent on it would be better spent sanding (!@#*&).

[shafeeq]

As we are talking purely hypothetical I would not go the flywheel or electrical route. I would use a reversed trike with a hollow rear axle containing a hidden jet that blows compressed air against fins machined into the inside of the rear wheel hub. The compressed air would leach from the pneumatic braking system and would only give a mild, gentle push (the amount of energy needed to make a 'reasonable' improvement in freeroll time should not be much). Ideally it would automatically activate once the buggy reached a certain speed during freerolls (controlled by a unit disguised as (and with the dual-functionality of) a data-logger) and/or, perhaps, after the data-logger's accelerometer or GPS detected that the buggy had cleared the chute. The driver would not be involved in activating the cheat and even the mechanics would not have to know about it as charging the brake with compressed air and making sure the logger has fresh batteries would be part of routine maintenance.

Hypothetically speaking, of course, this would be particularly convenient if your buggy design happened to include a bunch of sealed hollow spaces. Too bad that in order to be effective enough to be worthwhile, the pressures get into the scuba-tank range, leaving one with the challenge of hiding a scuba compressor or industrial gas cylinder in the truck to refill from. Plus, a having a lightweight, homebuilt, pressure vessel next to the driver makes 2oz of flammable liquid seem positively safe in comparison.

[Carl Nott]

Yes, this is purely hypothetical. To be honest any team that could pull off a hidden cheat of this type is probably going to win without cheating.

A wrinkle with the compressed air approach is the temperature of the expanding air, which could have some amusing side-effects.

Hypothetically speaking, of course, this would be particularly convenient if your buggy design happened to include a bunch of sealed hollow spaces.

Yes, a friend mentioned that some offroad folks use a custom, hollow bumper that they pressurize so that, in the event of a breakdown far from help, they can run air tools. For a while, at least.

[TommyK]

Yes, a friend mentioned that some offroad folks use a custom, hollow bumper that they pressurize so that, in the event of a breakdown far from help, they can run air tools. For a while, at least.

Was it ZN or Beta that had a pushbar that doubled as a pressure vessel? You could fill it from the push handle or some such? Good multi-tasking if you ask me.

[abordick]

please don't "delete" any driver harnesses, I promise this is something I'll be looking for this year

You go, Sheriff!

[jess_thurston]

:D

[Elmo Zoneball]

Yes, a friend mentioned that some offroad folks use a custom, hollow bumper that they pressurize so that, in the event of a breakdown far from help, they can run air tools. For a while, at least.

Was it ZN or Beta that had a pushbar that doubled as a pressure vessel? You could fill it from the push handle or some such? Good multi-tasking if you ask me.

Beta, IIRC -- they had pneumatic brakes on "825," "POS" etc. There's old 8mm movie footage on YouTube that shows the pan of what I think is the precursor of "825/POS" being ogled by all manner of Beta alumni circa late '60s, as the pneumatic actuators are run through their motions. Rumor had it that that buggy was substantially designed/built by Beta alumni who worked at Alcoa.

The pushbar is a no-brainer as the place to store pressurized gases, especially when push bars were hollow Aluminum tubes as they were up through much of the '70s and perhaps early '80s, if not later.

Off-topic, but illustrative of the topic of rule breaking in the racing domain: "Smokey" Yunick was an old school auto racing figure, and was associated with all manner of tricks that skirted both sides of the rules book:

Another Yunick improvisation was getting around the regulations specifying a maximum size for the fuel tank, by using eleven foot (three meter) coils of 2-inch (5-centimeter) diameter tubing for the fuel line to add about 5 gallons (19 liters) to the car's fuel capacity. Once, NASCAR officials came up with a list of nine items for Yunick to fix before the car would be allowed on the track. The suspicious NASCAR officials had removed the tank for inspection. Yunick started the car with no gas tank and said "Better make it ten,"[2] and drove it back to the pits. He used a basketball in the fuel tank which could be inflated when the car's fuel capacity was checked and deflated for the race.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smokey_Yunick

Clever fellow. Who knows what he could have done with a buggy and a copy of the rule book.

[Carl Nott]

Yes, a friend mentioned that some offroad folks use a custom, hollow bumper that they pressurize so that, in the event of a breakdown far from help, they can run air tools. For a while, at least.

Was it ZN or Beta that had a pushbar that doubled as a pressure vessel? You could fill it from the push handle or some such? Good multi-tasking if you ask me.

I remember this post.

BTW, re-reading that post, connecting the training wheels on a 2-wheeled buggy to a retracting pushbar is like the buggy mechanic version of pornvision.