Slippery Waxs

[trikesrule]

I'm using Zymol Aerowax on my Full face helmet and on my Gravity Racers. Found good speed gains too. Anybody else tried something slippery? I'm a expensive car detailer here in Tasmania Aust. I use Zymol Wax(s) everyday and it's slippery stuff. Is there anything better / slipperier I wonder?.............trikes

[terence]

Originally Posted by trikesrule

I'm using Zymol Aerowax on my Full face helmet and on my Gravity Racers. Found good speed gains too. Anybody else tried something slippery? I'm a expensive car detailer here in Tasmania Aust. I use Zymol Wax(s) everyday and it's slippery stuff. Is there anything better / slipperier I wonder?.............trikes

Dont think many people would admit to this kind of activity

[Al Weyman]

Its not April 1st already is it?

[terence]

Originally Posted by Al Weyman

Its not April 1st already is it?

Dont think Tasmania is that far in front Al,

[trikesrule]

Well guys it's not that Tassie is THAT far in front. Most of the Australian V8 Supercars have Zymol on them. The Porsche Cup cars went testing Aerowax last season with pleasing results. Improvements per lap in the range of 1/2 second+. It makes sense that a super smooth slippery surface could improve a machines Reynolds Number. I tested Aerowax on my Gravity Racer and found 1 kmh. I then put it on my Arai Full face which I sometimes wear on my Gravity Bike and found 1.4kmh. Cheap Easy Speed. Ignore this stuff at your own peril because your opposition will go faster and their machine will look awsome as well. For more speed I picture just outside the box...........trikes

[Al Weyman]

Yeah but when you race a car with the aerodynamics of a house brick I can't see it helping much, whats a Gravity Racer, sounds like something out of Star Wars?

[terence]

Originally Posted by trikesrule

Well guys it's not that Tassie is THAT far in front. Most of the Australian V8 Supercars have Zymol on them. The Porsche Cup cars went testing Aerowax last season with pleasing results. Improvements per lap in the range of 1/2 second+. It makes sense that a super smooth slippery surface could improve a machines Reynolds Number. I tested Aerowax on my Gravity Racer and found 1 kmh. I then put it on my Arai Full face which I sometimes wear on my Gravity Bike and found 1.4kmh. Cheap Easy Speed. Ignore this stuff at your own peril because your opposition will go faster and their machine will look awsome as well. For more speed I picture just outside the box...........trikes

I remember a few years back where an American Team did back to back testing on this very subject,one car highly polished the other in Matt Black,both cars were totally identicle ,quess what? the black car was the fastest!.Road and Track did the artical,I,m sorry I can,t rememberwhen this was though .

[Locost47]

Bearing in mind that viscous drag accounts for around 10% of the total drag on a saloon/sedan type car, there is some scope for a benefit from a shiny surface, though the effect isn't going to be massive. 1/2 second per lap sounds a bit far-fetched to me.

Getting a benefit from putting it on your helmet is surprising too - given the size of a helmet i'd have thought you'd be better off roughening it up to try and get the boundary layer to stick for longer around the curvature at the back (like the golf ball dimple trick).

[JamesH]

Rob (Locost47) can probably explain this better than I, but when I was racing dinghies competitively, we always went for a matt surface (very fine wet and dry all over hull) as this appeared to reduce hull friction, which is ALL of the drag on a dinghy. Our light wind performance was spectacular.

Same reason I prefer a matt finish in a flowed cylinder head rather than very shiny.

James

[Al Weyman]

Hey is this stuff made by the same people who make the Turbonator

[Locost47]

Whether you want a surface finish to be rough or smooth depends on a few things but is primarily used as a means of either reducing skin friction by keeping the boundary layer laminar for as long as possible or deliberately tripping it into turbulent flow which willkeep it attached to the surface for longer around corners and in adverse pressure gradients.

There's a well-known sportswear manufacturer that goes to a huge amount of effort to do this. They use different directions and size of weave in the fabric at different locations around, say, a swimsuit, in order to manage the boundary layer development around things like your shoulders and backside. The shark's skin thing was a bit of an empty marketing gimmick but they do actually achieve what was claimed through clever tailoring instead.

[terence]

Maybe the skin of a shark explains why they are so efficent in the water then?You could use it as a nail file!!As for Helmet polishing------

[trikesrule]

Well Terance and Al. So just what is your problem. This Wax is on most F1 cars and if it makes them faster.... they wouldn't use it if it didn't. Listen I don't sling anything at other catorgories so where do u get off. I'm a serious racer heavily involved Speedway and Gravity Racing. Won the State Speedway Title at first attempt and I've been the Tasmanian Open Gravity Racing Champion for the last seven years in a row. Infact I've never lost a race. My daughter and her brother are winners too. And the list goes on and on and on with other familly members and friends. I've got over three hundred first place trophies for Water Ski Racing. Represented two states of Australia in two sports. I'm sure I've forgotten something........... where did I put that World Record. U were saying Al and Terence - Oh thats right you're stuck amongst the tall popies. You know, I'm prepared to share technology. Obviously you two have it all worked out. Pardon me for breathing..........trikes

[Locost47]

I don't think anyone really meant any offence, just that this sort of thing comes up from time to time but normally doesn't prove too valuable when tested. I appreciate that you've done some trials yourself and seen a benefit and that is very useful. From my point of view we've done tests with this sort of thing in the wind tunnel and it makes next to no difference on a car. 3M did some work on a special 'micro-riblet' coating, back in the 80's, i think, and it did work but the difference was small and interest faded so they stopped making it.

There could be measurable benefits from the F1 guys using low-friction surface coatings on their wing sections but it really is a very small effect on normal bodywork. At typical race car speeds you can't keep the boundary layer laminar for more than about 50mm on a surface anyway because of the other factors determining the effective Reynolds Number.

Every last bit of performance is worth having though, especially if it just means the price of a tin of wax and some elbow grease! To be honest i suspect the F1 guys probably use the wax more as a way of making their mobile billboards look better for the sake of keeping their sponsors happy - or maybe a bit of both?

[Al Weyman]

Still curious just what is a Gravity Racer? Just googled and all the reference I can find is to push bike racing???? and sorry if I am seen as being offencive but I cannot for the life of me see how polish on a pushbike with maximum speeds under 50mph can make a jot of differnce, sorry. Oh for what its worth I do polish my cars and when I have been seen doing so in the Paddock by other racers I usually get the comical but good hearted comment 'That won't make it go any faster' its sort of a standard joke overhere.

[greenamex2]

Originally Posted by Al Weyman

Still curious just what is a Gravity Racer? Just googled and all the reference I can find is to push bike racing???? and sorry if I am seen as being offencive but I cannot for the life of me see how polish on a pushbike with maximum speeds under 50mph can make a jot of differnce, sorry. Oh for what its worth I do polish my cars and when I have been seen doing so in the Paddock by other racers I usually get the comical but good hearted comment 'That won't make it go any faster' its sort of a standard joke overhere.

Box cart.

My Dad regularly washes and waxes my car which makes it go faster because it means he is not fiddling with something else!

[JohnD]

I knew I'd heard of this before.

WW2 Spitfires, the fastest UK fighter, could deal with the V1 doodlebug flying bombs, either by shooting them down, or more economically, matching their speed and tipping them over with a wing tip! But they flew as fast or faster than even the later Spitfires and pilots who had this task would have their planes highly polished to get the last mph out of them.

See: http://www.mikekemble.com/ww2/spitfire.html about half way down the page.

John

[Al Weyman]

Oh a trolley we used to call them when I was a kid, a pair of pram axles and wheels, a scaffold board, a wooden box, a few nails and we was away.

John you are talking a big lump flying at speeds in excess of 450mph, not a box cart!

[phoenix]

I believe I read somewhere that the American Starfighter (the one that dropped out of the sky a lot) was left in polished aluminium (or aluminum - it was American) because this improved top speed through reduced drag. I also read that American Airlines planes - which are largely polished alloy with very little paint - get better fuel economy than painted versions of the same planes - again because of less drag. Maybe it's because they carry a load less weight because the paint on a large plane must weigh quite a bit.

[Ali Rushforth]

Isn't a gravity racer a sort of larger skateboard that you lay on, racing down hills?

I'm sure I've seen them on sky in some sort of "X-treme" sports thing.

I've got a feeling they even run the "gravity games" which is for these skateboard things and roller blades!!

[Locost47]

We're talking about very different things here. Aircraft are much more 'streamlined' than cars and have largely attached flow everywhere. They're also much longer and have a bigger ratio of plan area to frontal area. Viscous drag is therefore a much larger percentage of the whole and so methods of maintaining laminar flow for as long as possible do make a significant reduction in overall drag.

That's why they've been trying all sorts of active boundary layer control technologies such as porous wing surfaces with air being either sucked away or blown in. I read somewhree that they've even tried electrifying the wing to create a plasma very close to the surface which also reduces drag. Unfortunately the power required to work any of these systems is greater than what they save from the drag reduction. D'oh!

[terence]

And the length of wire needed outweid any advantage Trike, its just that we thought this was a wind up,sorry if you took offence.One question,why is the Space Shuttle not gloss?The artical I refered to from Road and Track claimed that by using a Matt Black finish the heat soak ,therefore heat radiation was in effect creating a barrier ,much the same as an electric field, thus letting the air slip over the surface as opposed to dragging over. This test was held under very strict controls. Al, did you only use nail,s ??

[trikesrule]

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[trikesrule]

trikes

[terence]

Trikes,do you use a synthetic grease in your hub,s ?