From yardsticks to lasers
Stock Car Racing History
I was fortunate to be able to attend a week long session at the 'Pi' data acquisition training center in Indianapolis a number of years back. Their data loggers are straight out of the space industry.
Those laser emitters are aimed at the track at an angle and the receivers are adjacent on the chassis and mounted horizontal. As the car moves up and down the lasers 'reflection' is received in a different distance from the emitter. That distance is recorded and vectored to determine the change in vertical height.
At one time I had a 'porta-power' rigged up where the cylinder looked like a shock absorber at the left front wheel. The pump was located under a box that I made to support a fire extinguisher. I had to make 'special' firewall and floor sections to hide the small hydraulic line.
It was used to control nose height at the super speedways. (3) pumps from full release would result in 1/2" increase in nose height, and I would then set the suspension to the correct inspection height. After the car left pit road and was pulling up on the backstretch, the driver would raise the lid to the fire extinguisher box and release the valve on the pump and the cars nose would go down 1/2". That 1/2" could result in over 1 to 1-1/2 MPH and often resulted in an increase of 8-16 positions in qualifying.
When coming down pit road, prior to get the tire temps checked, the driver would again raise the lid and put the three pumps back in prior to going back thru inspection.
In 1975, starting with the new Chevrolet Laguna's, I had another item that I made for additional 'help' in qualifying that could also be used during the race. The previous year, while in California, I visited an aircraft surplus store looking for specialty tools, etc., and I had purchased an aircraft landing light assembly. While doing the aluminum duct work above and below the bumper, I noticed a large unused area between the two and decided to put the landing light mechanism in that location. On either side of the upper opening I installed sections of window glass frame from a mobile home storm door. Then I made a sliding 'partition' that was attached to the landing light mechanism and put them both in the area below the entrance to the radiator and above the front spoiler inlet.
When the driver wanted to utilize this component, he would switch the alternator switch up as well as the 'spare' switch that was adjacent to it. They were wired in parallel, and when they were both up it engaged the landing light motor and the block off plate would raise up into the way of the grill inlet tunnel and block off the air flow less than 1/2" behind the front grille screen.
Not only was this a nice addition to our qualifying package, it was very useful during the race as well. If a particularly fast car came by, you could raise the block off and tag along until the water temp got too hot. It could also be used to pass a car of similar speed by raising the block off until you could pull up on and then pass that car at which point the driver could lower the block off to keep the water temp under control.
For short track races, another approach to faster qualifying speeds was the use of putting water in the roll bars and releasing it thru the lower bar just above the floor pan hump that was 'conveniently' located above the balance tube between the two exhaust pipes.
Maybe I better quite 'spilling the beans' on too much of this stuff. It still remains possible to write a book some day, and I won't have anything left to write about!
