so how can the pit crews at the Indy 500 not get it on? that's all the tire changer has to do- take off a nut, take off a wheel, put on a wheel, put the nut back on. then they are done.
the NASCAR tire changers have 5 lug nuts on each wheel that they have to deal with, and they have to do it twice in 14 seconds on a 4 tire change. yet they rarely miss even a single lug nut.
Large diameter nuts are harder to get started.
NASCAR uses sweet bullet-nosed studs (at least a full diameter has no threads) and similarly shaped lug nuts, and they stick the lug nuts to the wheel. Zip the old wheel off (let lugs nuts go flying, who cares) throw the new wheel on and tighten them down. It's next to impossible to get them started wrong.
The socket they use is NOT a hex socket, incidentally. It's more like a bunch of teeth. That way they don't have to wait for the socket to mate with the hex of the lug nut - just keep the gun on full bore and crank it down.
Also incidentally, every time I do a wheel bearing on a newer GM 3/4 ton, I save the studs for my own nefarious purposes. They're long, beefy 14x1.5 with a nice bullet-nose.
Indy probably uses some fancy titanium crap and they have to be gentle with it, or something.
Here's a NASCAR lug nut socket. I was given this by the Terry Labonte team back in 1994. We went to their shop one night after a race, where they were unloading the wrecked car from that day. They let us walk all through the shop, unattended, and do whatever we wanted. This was back before all the new shops were built that had special fan zones.
They addressed this specific issue two week ago during the Monaco GP. When the cars come into the pits, that single large wheel nut is so hot that it can expand enough to make it difficult to get the socket on.
Woody wrote:They addressed this specific issue two week ago during the Monaco GP. When the cars come into the pits, that single large wheel nut is so hot that it can expand enough to make it difficult to get the socket on.
so they should make the socket a little larger- or put on a new nut with the new wheel. those guys are smart, i'd think they could figure something out. the rednecks of NASCAR figured out how to make 5 lug nuts stick to the wheel using regular glue from the hardware store and slip right over the studs, i'd think maybe the Indycar guys could figure out how to make one nut go on easier. or do they have some sort of rule about that?
I wouldn't classify NASCAR as "redneck". Some of the fans, perhaps, but there's been a lot of engineering in those things for decades.
Sippy-truck racing, now THAT is redneck.
so what happens to the lugnuts that go flying? do they get picked up, thrown around by the tires, slipped on, stuck in the slicks and flung off when they get up to speed, or what? seems a bit silly to leave lugnuts all over the pit area.
patgizz wrote:so what happens to the lugnuts that go flying? do they get picked up, thrown around by the tires, slipped on, stuck in the slicks and flung off when they get up to speed, or what? seems a bit silly to leave lugnuts all over the pit area.
swept up by the pit crew after the rush.
Knurled wrote:.
Sippy-truck racing, now THAT is redneck.
You mean swamp buggies? Those things are cool.
John Brown wrote:patgizz wrote:so what happens to the lugnuts that go flying? do they get picked up, thrown around by the tires, slipped on, stuck in the slicks and flung off when they get up to speed, or what? seems a bit silly to leave lugnuts all over the pit area.
swept up by the pit crew after the rush.
Same idea, but I think they use magnets.
I've crewed on an IRLcar on one occassion and my brother in law has crewed for several years....his last year he did the left front wheel. He's also crewed for stock cars with similar duty. He says the one lug is a complete pain in the arse sometimes. I would say they(IRL) don't get a ton of time to practice the pit stops as much as one might think a professional crew might. Therefore experience is a big factor many times. Many events you'll have last minute crew substitutions etc adding to the mayhem. Heck the time I crewed I was just going to the race to watch, and my bro-in-was doing the fuel. One methanol fire later and several of the crew were on the sidelines. Then I get the cell phone call....."you haven't started drinking yet have you?" Next thing I knew I was in a crew suit behind the wall doing stuff.
One of my friends has an authentic 2L E30 M3 german touring car with single bolt wheels (and super trick air jacks).
They are a huge PIA to change wheels on. They are difficult to start even when cold and the gun is 750ft/lbs... if you get it wrong you ruin the mega-$$$ hub spindle or... the wheel falls off and you wreck the car. They work themselves loose if you don't check them after every heat cycle too so you can't just slap 'em on and forget them.
Not recommended unless you have a team, spares and a racing series to win. Def not for the lone guy at a Historic event changing his own tires between run groups.
"Not recommended unless you have a team, spares and a racing series to win. Def not for the lone guy at a Historic event changing his own tires between run groups"
there is always safety wire.
F1 cars have pins that lock them in place (if the crew gets them on right). The socket must release the pin when put over the nut.
Appleseed wrote:Knurled wrote:.
Sippy-truck racing, now THAT is redneck.
You mean swamp buggies? Those things are cool.
I loved the swamp buggy races when they had the sippy hole. Last time I watched the race on the tube the sippy hole was gone. My favorite named buggy years ago was Shagnasty.
shagnasty....I remember that!!! I think the sippy hole is still there, they just all glide over it now. Were those races on TBS on the weekends? I can't remember where I use to see them, but they were fun to watch.
the swamp buggies were on TNN (now Spike) as part of a full weekend (every weekend) of motorsports awesomeness. this was in the late 80's and early 90's.
sachilles wrote:shagnasty....I remember that!!! I think the sippy hole is still there, they just all glide over it now. Were those races on TBS on the weekends? I can't remember where I use to see them, but they were fun to watch.
RIP, Steve Evans.
sachilles wrote:I've crewed on an IRLcar on one occassion and my brother in law has crewed for several years....his last year he did the left front wheel. He's also crewed for stock cars with similar duty. He says the one lug is a complete pain in the arse sometimes. I would say they(IRL) don't get a ton of time to practice the pit stops as much as one might think a professional crew might. Therefore experience is a big factor many times. Many events you'll have last minute crew substitutions etc adding to the mayhem. Heck the time I crewed I was just going to the race to watch, and my bro-in-was doing the fuel. One methanol fire later and several of the crew were on the sidelines. Then I get the cell phone call....."you haven't started drinking yet have you?" Next thing I knew I was in a crew suit behind the wall doing stuff.
+1 on the IRL crews not being dedicated pit crew guys. A Ganassi engineer gave me a tour of their shop, and he explained this to me. They are normally the every day guys in the shop putting the cars together, and don't practice much. NASCAR teams hire guys just to do pit stops, and that's it. Their jackman doesn't do anything but jack the car up, and maybe swing the BFH to beat out body work when needed.
i'd think that the IRL teams would set aside an hour or two every day for the pit crew to practice- i'm sure the bigger teams like Penske or Ganassi that also have NASCAR teams do that.
or maybe someone could find a better way to hold the wheels on like maybe going to a 5 lug bolt pattern that uses regular lug nuts and studs or something like that.
taking 12 seconds to change 4 tires on an open wheel car with 4 guys that have only one lug nut each to deal with just seems kinda sad when NASCAR teams do 4 tires with 2 guys that have to remove and tighten 5 lug nuts per wheel in under 14 seconds on a full bodied car with the wheelwell barely bigger than the tire with mistakes being few and far between. i think the NASCAR wheel/tire combos are in the area of 70 pounds on the speedway tires with inner liners. how much does an IRL wheel/tire weigh with the aluminum or magnesium or whatever wheels they run?
even the low dollar NASCAR teams pull off low 14 second pit stops with guys that pull double duty in the shop and at the track.
i know it's harder than it looks, and that as a spectator it's easy to second guess this, but this is one of the things that keeps people like me from really getting into the open wheel racing. NASCAR might have a lot of problems, but they do some pretty spectacular things when they come in for 4 tires and 20 gallons of gas from a pair of gravity fed 11 gallon gas cans in under 14 seconds.
the car is jacked up with a floor jack- a lightweight high tech floor jack, but still a floor jack- and the lugnuts are taken off by impact wrenches- again, highly refined impact wrenches, but still impact wrenches. then they run around to the other side of the car and do it again, with total times that are shorter than how long it took me to peck out this sentence.
It isn't the extra 8 seconds at a pit stop that bores me, it is the 5 hours of going in a circle that does it.
F1 is doing the same stop in 4 seconds, but they have $$ to train the people.
Seems odd to not like INDY because the pit crews aren't fast enough for you...
Besides, if all the pit crews take around the same amount of time, it doesn't really make a difference in the race does it?
NASCAR/INDY - Different cars, different hardware, different specs, different organizations. Seems like apples and oranges to me.
Cone_Junky wrote:Seems odd to not like INDY because the pit crews aren't fast enough for you...
Besides, if all the pit crews take around the same amount of time, it doesn't really make a difference in the race does it?
NASCAR/INDY - Different cars, different hardware, different specs, different organizations. Seems like apples and oranges to me.
it's not the only reason i can't get into open wheel racing. it's one of many. Indycar and F1 fans always complain that people in the USA don't love their favored form of racing as much as the rest of the world does, and they like to make a lot of jokes about NASCAR fans and how they just drive around in circles.
for a comparison, i watched few F1 and Indy car pit stops on Youtube today- i counted 25 people over the wall on an F1 stop. they all just kind of stood out there in formation for about a minute before the car showed up. that seems like as incredibly wasteful use of manpower to me. i don't think NASCAR teams are allowed to have that many people total at the track during a race, let alone standing out on pit road.
Indycar stops were better with 6 people, but they all did only one thing and then the car took off.
watch a NASCAR stop, with 7 people total over the wall, and every one of them except for the gas man is running around like a maniac the whole time- and even the gas man has to do chassis adjustments and things like that, too. and before the car can take off, all the tires and tools need to be back over by the wall or the car has to come back in for a pass-thru penalty.
it just seems like the people are put to better use and leaves more room for things to go wrong and affect the race on the track. but things rarely go wrong, and when they do it's usually the driver going too fast down pit road or something like that.
yeah i know- to each their own. open wheel racing just doesn't work as well in the USA marketplace as it does elsewhere. just like soccer and British comedians.
