Snofalls
It breaks down this way
1) Cut and try, start at 1" and keep going till you get
the best combo. (Which is what I used to do.) Usually
means 3 or 4 tries to get it close to optimium.
2) Dig out the high school calculus and research stuff till
you know where to find the info, then calculate to
figure out the best compromise. Usually cuts it down
to 1 or 2 tries. Less work, less time, less money.
I'm no genius but when I started racing I had no money and had to build everything or find a better way to do it for less money than the fast guys. I took the advice of a really smart friend and started to research stuff before trying it and learned alot, when I started working on the aircraft engine project over 10 years ago I wanted to know what the internal engine stresses were so I hit the books and learned how to calculate internal engine pressures, bmep, torque loading and torsional resonances, rather than run it till it blows and see what broke. (ended up doing alot of that anyway, you should see the mess a G13B makes when it lets go at 11,000rpm).
WhenI started on the drive for the Airplane I calculated all the loads etc on the drive unit, and engine mounts to make sure it was safe (everything is designed to load plus 50-100% safety factor).
It's really not that hard once you read it through, like I said I am no genius, just cheap and stubborn.
The neat thing is almost everything you need to work this stuff out is at the Public Library and basic math can do most of it...then add a fudge factor.
Zag
