dculberson wrote:And in the meantime I found that back in the day there were spark plugs with polonium 210 in them!? That is the stuff that was used to assassinate Litvinenko back in 2006. Testing showed that the plugs made a positive difference but only lasted about 30 days due to decay / etc. Radioactive spark plugs. What a crazy world.
Picture of the plugs:
http://www.theodoregray.com/periodictab … x.s12.html
NEAT!
on another neat note, i ran across this the other day: http://www.validate.net/turbine/
i talked to Steve, the guy that built it and got some really good feedback from him. very friendly but he's since sold it and moved so i can't go do some rough dyno tests on it. oh well, the info he gave me is still great since few people have experience with this motor pushing a variable load and being throttled.
the key points he gave me as feedback:
1)the motor throttles a decent load from 60% rpm and up. much wider than initially expected that means it makes enough power to use between 32,000 and 54,000RPM
2)the motor puts out less power than i expected. he did not dyno it, but given the hull and the prop, he says the motor makes about 75hp.
there were other things said, but nothing else that affects the discussion here.
The really good thing to take away is that this power through a snowmobile CVT with a 3.5:1 ratio between hi and low and geared for a maximum speed of 110mph it can start pushing at 19mph. much better than initially expected.
it also means that i can target a lower RPM while doing the initial testing say even as low as 80% to ensure i have a safe system that prevents overspeeding. when i'm sure it all works i can crank it up closer to 100%
the other thing is that 75hp per turbine is about half of the power that i was wanting. i'm going to have to give this some thought if i want a lighter chassis or a slightly bigger pony motor to hit the 10lb/hp target to have a car that can keep up with the front of the Lemons pack between refuelings (it still won't be competitive overall, but it'll be fun to drive).