DeTomaso Mailing List: April 98, Message #262

Yo My People,
At the usual saturday morning Huntington Beach donut shop car-fest I
started to talking to a regular  who has been preparing and driving SCTA
Bonneville cars in Utah every year for about 40 years or so and he told
me some things I thought I would share with the site. This guy remembers
throwing Mike Cook around the pits when Mike was a kid!!!! And also
remembers when Mike ran the Pantera at Bonneville in so he's been around
the block .

Anyway every Saturday morning a sh** load of 100-200  motorheads show up
to bench race, drink coffee and munch on donuts and drool at one
anothers cars here. I've seem some beautiful rides, (race cars, muscle
cars, rods, etc) a celebrity or two and always the Bonneville guys show
up. I love listening to the old Bonneville guys because their walking
history books on the land speed sh**and have a ton  of real-life-data
stored upstairs.

I didn't have the P with me (it's at Dick Drenske's shop getting the
on-board fire system and fuel cell installed), but I told this guy I was
planning to return to SS and move up in speed and I'd appreciate his
sharing what aero mods he had worked on and then taken to Bonneville
over the years. Before I knew it I was in deep discussion with him about
3 other Bonneville good ol'boys.

I told them about our plans to invade SS with a bunch of Pantera's and
they ALL loved that!  I mentioned some of our discussions on line and my
plans to add the air dam and  adding the side skirts of rubber belt or
plastic and modified belly pans under the front A-arms and rear end.

They ALL  basically told me that skirts in just about any form or
material (but espially rubber) on the SS course were a bad idea.  They
said they played with this 20 or so years ago in preparation for
Bonneville and indicated the belt wasn't rigid enough to be effective. .
and any air that escaped under the skirt would now be trapped there as
well!   They also indicated they played with adding a metal reinforcer
and ultimately adding sliders (Ala Jim Hall) but recommended against any
skirts on the SS course due to the uneven road surfaces (hills, dips,
etc). .

Andy, I think these mods might be worthy of consideration at Pocono or
any course where you have a baby butt smooth surfaces. . .They also said
if you get sideways with these skirts you can kiss your ass goodbye
because it's twice as tough to recover when your sailing through the
air! :-]

they all liked the idea of the belly pan and smoothing the air out under
the back of the car. I also told them we ran the car at speed on the San
Juaquin toll road with no rear spoiler by running the rear deck lid
raised  and that I planned to raise the corner stops on the rear deck
lid and secure. I also told them that we've been running the car with
the raised front hood (ala Jr again) and he liked that as well. . . they
all got a kick outta that since as any of you old racers know that idea
has been around since Jack was a kid!! The only negatives I heard this
morning was the side skirts. Opinions people?????

Of interest to me is anyone else (like you Gary) that have any
experience with the side skirts. I have about another one week window to
still make any changes to the cars aero before it's time to throw on new
wheels and tires and complete a new alignment and head for Vegas and
then Ely .
As usaul thanks in advance for the support!
MD