Jerry Wilson, the fellow who was going to loan me the dyno, has a problem. The dyno hadn't been used for a couple of years and it's frozen. We've both tried to free it up without totally disassembling the water portion of the brake. Time is running short and if the dyno required parts this would not be in the budget. So, no dyno test will be conducted. I realize that I'm reniging on my promise that I wouldn't take Black Lightning to the salt again without proper dyno testing, but it's just not in the cards guys, so that's that.

Today I fiddled around for a couple of hours working on a reasonable solution to the dyno delimma. I affixed a bar one foot long from the center of the output sprocket on the transmission. I then bolted a makeshift plate to the bottom two frame tubes, which extended out about a foot on the left hand side. A scale was placed on the plate platform, and a porta power was then placed on the scale and located on the affixed bar one foot distant from the center of the sprocket. The porta power was pumped, and a reading was taken on the scale when the back tire started to break loose. This was the only mean that I had to go by when testing the clutch for lockup. If you recall, the tire would churn at 2500 engine rpm. This was the mean used. The test showed that the engines were making 375 foot pounds of torque at 2500 rpm. The estimated maximum torque will be at around 4500 rpm, which should produce 475 to 500 foot pounds of torque. The torque will probably sustain from 4500 to 5500 rpm and then drop off. We'll be turning the engines at 6500 rpm, which will give us around 650 hp in Wichita. This will be very close to the horsepower available. As Wichita, Kansas is around 1800 feet altitude, and Bonneville on a good day is about 4 to 5000 feet altitude, it would be a good guess to subtract about 150 hp from the 650, which will give us 500 hp. Some low speed aerodynamics were performed on the streamliner about 10 years ago. I had it done by a fellow in Florida, and the results were, with Black Lightning's configuration, frontal area and so on, it would require 385 to 425 hp to reach a speed of 425 mph. Since that time an actual wind tunnel test was performed in Vancouver, Canada by a couple of college students who took the test on as a term project. This was all put together by Dan Smith and his Vibrac team, and was very helpful to me when I redesigned the body of the liner in 2003 and 2004, using all of the information contained in the test.

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THERE IS NO DOUBT THAT BLACK LIGHTNING WILL BE COMPETITIVE IN THE QUEST FOR THE CROWN

"THE WORLD'S FASTEST"

September 5-9 Bonneville Salt Flats, Utah, USA