Industrial Birmingham

[Phil]

Judith


The last amount of money that was collected and donated toward the renovation of the Golden Lion including a grant from the Council was spent on the renovation of the Victorian bandstand just across the way from the Golden Lion.

[JudithM]

Judith


The last amount of money that was collected and donated toward the renovation of the Golden Lion including a grant from the Council was spent on the renovation of the Victorian bandstand just across the way from the Golden Lion.

I dread to think about all the money that has been raised that has been spent on something else.  Shame people can't claim their money back from the council.  I think their handling of the whole thing has been shocking.

[Peg Monkey]

Skinny v wide wheels: coming soon, The Science.
Peg.

[Peg Monkey]

Skinny v wide wheels: Attachment 2 depicts the "kitchen" version of the experiment which formed part of my engineering course at Erdington Tech 1965-67 and demonstrates that the co-efficient of friction (the relationship between the weight of an object and the force needed to pull it along a given surface) does not depend on the area in contact, this fundamental principle is why wide wheels do not grip better than narrow ones.
Not keen on tinned tomos? No problem experiment will still be valid with baked beans or maccy c as long as you use the same tin for both parts of the experiment.
So why do F1 teams spend a fortune on wide wheels? - outside the scope of this post, I'll cover that later.
Peg.

[JudithM]

Why do race cars & high performance cars have super wide wheels then?  Is it more to do with handling & balance at high speed than grip?

[frederick]

I would say that the more surface area on the road covered the better the grip.

[Ian Dalziel]

I've forgotten most of my Physics, but common sense tells me that a wide tyre with a rubber compound that has a high coefficient of friction, is going to brake and corner more efficiently than a narrow tyre. However, I am willing to be proved wrong.

[Spud]

Wider tyres tyres provide greater traction than a narrow tyre although increased tyre pressure can also improve traction. However wider tyres can be less cost effective having greater traction can make them less cost effective by having a poorer fuel consumption. In wet conditions wider tyres having a bigger contact area tend to disperse water more efficiently. And as Ian rightly says Wider tyres provide more stability when cornering and better Braking distances and steering.

[Peg Monkey]

Why do race cars & high performance cars have super wide wheels then?  Is it more to do with handling & balance at high speed than grip?

Good question, Judy    I think it was 1966 (England's World Cup Year) when I covered the Laws of Friction as part of my Mechanical Engineering Technicians Part I Course at Erdington Tech, many decades have passed since that time and I can't remember the lecturer's name, but I guess he was about aged 35, which makes him about 88 now - if you are out there, sir, why not join the debate?
Peg.

[Peg Monkey]

Why do race cars & high performance cars have super wide wheels then?  Is it more to do with handling & balance at high speed than grip?

Hi Judy, wide wheels have not always been fitted (men of a certain age will remember the legendary racing driver Stirling Moss whose cars were shod with, by today's standards, what look like narrow space-saver wheels). The main thing that determines tyre grip is the grade of rubber, together with pattern geometry to disperse rain from beneath the tyre in wet weather, which is why legally we must have a minimum tread depth.
From my own observations, I've had Escorts with standard and wide wheels a could detect no difference in road holding, what I did observe, however, not suprisingly, is that wide tyres last longer than narrow on the same car.
Peg.

[frederick]

With today's potholes, while part of the tyre is over the pothole the rest of the tyre mite be on solid road surface saving the damaging drop into a pothole.