twin engines?.......

[veryoldfart]

watched a tv prog t'other day, "Gurton hill climb" and watched a guy in a single seater obviously starting up a jet engine, however it wasnt for propulsion, but "to charge the cars engine 100% of the time....."

i bet theres nothing in the FIA/RAC rule book about THAT!

[veryoldfart]

ahhhh

its a certain nic mann, whose name rings a bell

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=ee9H93uvYRo

[Bowler]

And there's me sat here thinking that this is a Drag Racing forum

Edited by Bowler on Friday 22 August 22:02

[BB-Q]

Bowler said:

And there's me sat here thinking that this is a Drag Racing forum

Edited by Bowler on Friday 22 August 22:02

[tenuous] Well, Nic Mann did race at Santa Pod in his famous Moggy Minor.[/tenuous]

[Lee@LA]

Nic Mann took the street racer championship a York Raceway, I think more than once. The Moggy was the car to beat at the time.

I am sure Des the chief starter from York can add to this.

[veryoldfart]

Bowler said:

And there's me sat here thinking that this is a Drag Racing forum

Edited by Bowler on Friday 22 August 22:02

tunnel vison....


nic mann was/is well known in drag racing and hot rodding, and his turbine-charged petrol engined car is a totally novel concept.

think about it, no turbo lag, no engine power required, just loads of lovely boost....all the time


it was the engineering aspect that caught my eye, unless you think drag racing is only pre-50's V8 engines?

Edited by veryoldfart on Saturday 23 August 10:03

[liner33]

using a gas turbine to eliminate lag , british engineering at its best!!

[v8 jago]

What a genius this guy is. I liked the minor he built and this machine is obviously a good with a lot of thought time and effort gone into it. Best of british Nice one nick...

[veryoldfart]

i wonder if the turbine-charged car has been timed over the standing quarter?

[veryoldfart]

The Latest unit of interest is the MANIC BEATTIE, an extremely innovative 4 wheel drive CLUBMANS type chassis designed by NIC MANN of the famous ROVER V8 TURBO MOGGY fame. We designed a special 1700 BDT unit with special cylinder head, bronze gas sealing rings and other trick bits, to produce at the moment around 400bhp.This unit is blown with an HELICOPTER TURBINE, which is mounted in the car and uses it’s own fuel system to produce boost which remains at a constant pressure at all times, is then fed into the BDT, permanent boost! NO LAG. This unit was mapped on our dyno using a RACE TECH DEVELOPMENTS ecu with a 6 layer mapping facility with fantastic results.

Nic Mann’s quest for that one, perfect run dates back to the mid-1970s. Having just graduated from Aston University with an engineering degree and found work at Rolls Royce aero engines in Bristol, he took up sprinting. The car he used was his mother’s Morris Minor 1000, complete with 948 cc ‘A’ Series engine. Over a period of 15 years this was progressively modified. At one point it featured a turbocharged B series unit and, eventually, a turbocharged and intercooled Rover V8 with nitrous injection giving something in the region of 550 bhp.
To cope with the increased power the vehicle initially had a Ford live rear axle and, finally, a Jaguar XJ6 rear driveline.“Throughout this period it was fully road legal and was driven to and from meetings with the racing wheels and tyres strapped to the roof!” recalls Mann. In 1990, having reached a plateau in the car’s engineering development, together with the arrival of a new family, the car was sold to drag racer Bill Sherratt. It still competes in that category today.


Eventually help in the form of respected engine tuner John Beattie came to hand with the arrival of a 1700 cc Cosworth BDT. Canted over at only 25 degrees to the horizontal towards the intake side, this satisfied the requirement of minimum centre of gravity and minimised the frontal area and yet still left room for the driveline forward. “With 400 bhp the initial aim, it was evident that a move to a larger turbocharger and quite a large amount of boost would be necessary,” says Mann. “This would result in the dreaded turbocharger lag and while anti-lag or ‘bang-bang’ systems were considered, it was quickly decided to move to a much more radical solution.” Mann’s background in aerospace led him to a solution involving a helicopter gas turbine APU or auxiliary power unit. Supplied by Turbine Technologies Ltd of Carmarthenshire in South Wales, the unit is based on a helicopter emergency air start unit used to fire the main gas turbine engine on the ground.

Running separately from the main engine, initially on diesel fuel, the unit delivers air to the engine at a constant pressure independent of the main engine speed and hence totally eliminates the throttle lag normally associated with high boost turbocharged systems. Currently set at a very “modest” 25 psi gauge boost, the engine delivers something in the region of the initial target of 400 bhp at 7500 rpm. The torque curve is particularly impressive: from 2500-7500 rpm this doesn’t vary by more than 20% from the peak value. It is transmitted to the gearbox by a somewhat elderly AP Racing 7.25-inch triple plate, sintered clutch hidden within the radically modified Ford bellhousing. From the outset the car was designed around a Ford Sierra 4x4 MT75 gearbox, which at the second-hand going rate of about £300 each fitted nicely with the budget. However, as Mann was to find out later, this has been a major stumbling block to development.

[Benni]

I think there was another thread running about THE Nic Mann Minor,
but could not find it, so thought it would be fitting to put it here.
Especially when you see that the black Ford Pop that is
"the first car to beat the Champion for years" is actually
Andy Carter, now 3 times Top Fuel FIA Champion.
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=VUu5eJPEigw&feat...

I love Nic´s sentence in the interview :
"The car and I were together long before I met her (his wife)......."
Surely a true PistonHead, and a fine engineer,
now running his Ford with turbine-driven turbo successful up the hills.

With that V8 Turbo concept on the quartermile, he was years before his time,
I wonder if a young lad from Wolverhampton ever read about/saw him ?

Regards,
Benni

[veryoldfart]

Benni said:

I think there was another thread running about THE Nic Mann Minor,
but could not find it, so thought it would be fitting to put it here.
Especially when you see that the black Ford Pop that is
"the first car to beat the Champion for years" is actually
Andy Carter, now 3 times Top Fuel FIA Champion.
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=VUu5eJPEigw&feat...

I love Nic´s sentence in the interview :
"The car and I were together long before I met her (his wife)......."
Surely a true PistonHead, and a fine engineer,
now running his Ford with turbine-driven turbo successful up the hills.

With that V8 Turbo concept on the quartermile, he was years before his time,
I wonder if a young lad from Wolverhampton ever read about/saw him ?

Regards,
Benni

if he had.....he woulda been richer now if he hadnt.......lol

Edited by veryoldfart on Wednesday 24th December 21:50