SACA
- Steam Drags
Danville 2003
A steam powered Dragster skillfully engineered by the steam team of Chuk Williams, Jim Tangeman and Art Gardiner enjoyed an impressive coming out party by capturing the First Place Honors of the meet. JW
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Thanks to Chuk Williams for sending in the photos and story
The Danville meet was
one of the best meets I've ever been
to--lots of great lectures and discussions, and I finally got to meet
a lot of people that I've only known thru emails. John Wetz had a
great demonstration of his monotube controller-I'm sold!!
The dragster was well received, everyone was very complimentary
and we came away feeling like the long trip was worthwhile.
To give you a bit of background-the car has a 130 inch wheelbase,
the frame is chromolly tubing,
total weight is 775 lbs. The steam
plant consists of a Carter monotube generator and a 3 cylinder
converted outboard engine with dual overhead cams, a bore of 3-1/8"
and a stroke of 2.8". The
drive train incorporates a clutch with a
chain drive to the solid rear axle.
We did the 1/8th mile in 10.6 seconds, and feel the car has quite
a
bit more potential....
The construction of the car was a joint effort, with
Art Gardiner
and Jim Tangeman contributing the engine from their PSL project,
and myself building the frame and doing most of the assembly. Jim
Tangeman built all the custom metal fittings in his shop-him and
I did 3 weeks of intense testing and refit before the Danville meet.
The dragster took approximately 5 months to build, was a blast
to drive and was a very enjoyable project for me. Hopefully the time trials
will continue long enough for us to really develop the car.....