Solar Freaks

After having a hard time finding quality wheels for my test car, i decided to get some made up. The setup cost was around $600 for the first wheel, and around $5 for every wheel after that. So i decided to have 100 of them manufactured to minimize the cost per wheel.

Box of wheels shown below.






These wheels are 54mm Diameter, have an internal diameter of 7mm, 6mm width at the center and 3mm wide at the perimeter.

Designed to take two 7mm Flanged bearings on each side as shown. Thus, two bearings are required per wheel.

These wheels run extremely true and balanced (best ive seen so far). They also weight half as much as the R&I wheels all the Victorian teams use.

Interesting..

These should sell like hotcakes tony.

firefly wrote:Interesting..

These should sell like hotcakes tony.

Well im assuming they would be in some sort of demand as they are basically identical to the wheels your using .... Except slightly thinner, lighter and truer.

BTW the wheels are made from high strength, low friction Polyacetal.

TonyB wrote:BTW the wheels are made from high strength, low friction Polyacetal.

Is there a precise co-efficient of friction reading for these wheels? 0.15-0.25?

firefly wrote:Is there a precise co-efficient of friction reading for these wheels? 0.15-0.25?

Dont know what it is. I just asked for the low friction stuff. Ill ask and see.

More Pics below:

Looks lovely.

referring back to "thicker lighter and truer" - the thickness and lightness is the same i'm sure.

Tony, Almost as good as the wheels I turned up. No, not really. I wished mine turned out like that!

firefly wrote:Looks lovely.

Only the best for my test car.

jhg wrote:Tony, Almost as good as the wheels I turned up. No, not really. I wished mine turned out like that!

Haha if i had any machining skills i would of saved my money and turned my own too, but these things came out better than expected.

They are fully CNC machined, no human input at whatsoever.

TonyB wrote:Only the best for my test car.

I sense a storm brewing..
I can claim that our car has finished even before it started - the previous prediction said it can do -13 seconds
Only joking.

Your car should be fast, i'm sure.

My car is either going to fail miserably, or be very fast. Its based on a new unproven concept. Have you seen it yet?? I know Steven So has, he seemed to like it.

TonyB wrote:My car is either going to fail miserably, or be very fast. Its based on a new unproven concept. Have you seen it yet?? I know Steven So has, he seemed to like it.

I haven't seen pictures, no.

Spin time = 2mins and 55sec.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WIzihkOTDj0

Nice. I dig the tunes.

Im glad you like it.
The music is - tiesto vs diplo 'cmon'.

Haha. Nothing like getting a few tunes going at like 3am while finishing off a uni report. The ABC news theme remix is always a good one.

I may be wrong, but isn't spin time more closely related to the bearings it's on than the wheel?

Yes, I must agree! How long the wheel spins in dependent on the bearings? How much were they each? $10+? The R&I ones are crap! They don't even spin any good and if they do not more than 20seconds max.

unussapiens wrote:I may be wrong, but isn't spin time more closely related to the bearings it's on than the wheel?

I think that considering bearing quality goes without saying. Although the low bearing friction is a contributor to extending the spin time, the actual kinetic or rotational energy stored in the wheel itself from the get go and also a few other things are just as important. The energy retained in a wheel is dependent on both its angular velocity and moment of inertia which, in turn, is related to the mass and mass distribution of the wheel itself. A lighter and smaller wheel will therefore not spin as long simply due to the fact that it does not possess as much energy.
Air drag of the spinning wheel is also something that should be considered. Wheels with holes in them to help reduce weight will have greater air drag losses. Wheels that are not spinning true (and therefore wobble) will also be considerably down on efficiency and spin time.

I think Tony is simply demonstrating how true and balanced the wheels are running (hence the positioning of the pen in the video) as well as how well they can be made to run with some decent, cleaned out and WD40-lubricated bearings.

jhg wrote:Yes, I must agree! How long the wheel spins in dependent on the bearings? How much were they each? $10+? The R&I ones are crap! They don't even spin any good and if they do not more than 20seconds max.

Jun, I don't think there's anything wrong with the RI bearings if they have been cleaned out properly. I have a couple of RI wheels with bearings and they seem to do alright.

Marc

If you have a wobbly or unbalanced wheel, it wont spin for long periods as it dissipates energy in the vibrations.
The main point here is to show how good you can get your wheels to spin if they, are balanced, run true, and have good clean bearings. If your serious about winning, they need to spin this good.