So, I finally got the camera back from my wife so I could pull the pictures off it. If anyone wants pictures of giant asphalt plants from Michigan, I have those too. I could even transcribe the excited narration. But we're looking at a place with no pavement at all right now. The moon. I mean the Bonneville Salt Flats.
I just took pictures of whatever I felt like taking pictures of. The photos reflect what I found interesting. There's no rhyme nor reason here, but I did only capture perhaps 1% of the rat rods in attendance. There were many cooler things to see.
First, hot rods. This one caught my eye because it's real, aged steel. That's bare metal on display. It would be interesting to know what it looks like this week after all that salt! But it was a stark contrast to both the fibreglass rods and the rusty junkers. He probably should fix that door latch.
This is what happens when you buy your own louver press. Love the flames.
The required rat rod shot. I like this one because it shows the amount of salt that gets thrown up on everything. Bonus points for cool door signage.
One seriously mutated bug. Corvair engine, flip-up windshield, great stance and wheel choice. There are some nutbars in the VW community, here is one of them. Licence plate said KDF, from 1948 in Ohio. Cute.
One of the weirder engine bays on what I think is a drag-oriented hot rod. If I've figured it out right, that's a supercharger driven right off the front of the crankshaft. And is that mechanical fuel injection pre-blower?
The car to which the engine belongs. Janel looked at this and exclaimed "We need a trailer like this!" Those are gullwing doors on the car, the driver is sitting on the rear axle.
My favorite vehicle of the whole week. A slingshot bike (quadricycle?).
Okay, now the race stuff. Who says you can't be fast and beautiful?
This one's for Tom Heath, as I seem to recall he has a need for VW Caddys. If memory serves (it was one of the first teams we talked to), this is a turbocharged 2.0 and it was aiming for some very quick speeds. More details than that, I have lost. Sorry.
An oddball from the Triplettes de Bonneville pit, which was full of oddballs. A streamliner powered by compressed air. Those tanks are 125 L in size and have a service pressure of 3600 psi.
Another oddball from the same pit - a 50cc motorcycle. Sorta. It's probably not the quickest vehicle in the competition, but I'll bet it feels very fast.
Since we're on bikes. I have nothing to explain about this one. If I read the Triplettes site correctly, it has a turbo.
Someone is seriously unhinged. That little pad visible on the, umm, rear bulkhead? That's for the driver's helmet. Wow, this thing is nuts.
Hard to believe, but that is a land speed gullwing. Complete with both Mille Miglia numberplate and a Moon Eyes sticker. This one's for the purists, obviously. At the time I took the picture, they were looking for a welder.
Wanna build your own streamliner? "F4 Fantom" tanks for sale, $600 each.
As you can see, access to the cars was very difficult. Janel's checking out a streamliner that I think might have been 4wd although I didn't figure out all the packaging. This was early in the day, before we figured out that anybody would answer any question.
I dunno, that sure looks like a differential and ring/pinion unit to me. Note the narrow track, wide for a streamliner. How these streamliners don't just fall over every time the driver shifts from one cheek to the other, I have no idea.
Fastest car of the event, apparently. Around 360 mph, which is just shy of the world record for a gasoline powered wheel driven car. There's a Caddy 500 buried in there somewhere.
I managed to avoid taking any overall shots of this car, but it was a fresh pro built Barracuda. Check out that plumbing! This was an extremely friendly team who would answer any question, even the unspoken ones as you look at details. I'm surprised they didn't offer to let us sit in the car, although if Janel had spent any longer looking at it they probably would have. If the fluids are set up like the other car in the team, the intercooler tank gets dry ice while the radiator gets ice.
Everything was clearly labeled, right down to the oil capacities on the dry sump. And I have to say, that's some pretty good handwriting with a brush for a quickie label! Most people would have just grabbed a Sharpie.
The engine room of the Cuda. Good for 3000 hp according to one of the builders, but they were running it at low boost and around 1200 (or was it 1800?) hp to shake the car down. I don't know how it eventually did, they were still sorting out a problem with the location of the EGT sender when we were there. The engine reportedly has a six-digit price tag.
And because you have to take pictures of your own car on the flats, here you go. This might give you an idea of the scale of the place, it's a little unnerving.
I have more pictures of all of these cars, so if there's a particular one you want to see more of let me know. I might throw some more shots up later.