Very interesting. And another excellent shot by the way. On Sep 19, 2006, at 5:19 PM, John Francis wrote:
> On Tue, Sep 19, 2006 at 12:00:42PM -0700, Brendan MacRae wrote: >> >> --- John Francis <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >> >>> As a matter of fact, those aren't fumes - it's >>> clear-air turbulence caused by the heat rising >>> from the engines. >>> >> >> Ahh, gotcha. Like heat rising from asphalt on a hot >> day. I was thrown by the guy refuling the car. > > It's an extremely common mistake. But the last thing > you want around a hot engine (and I mean really hot - > there's a wonderful photograph of a Cosworth F1 engine > on a test stand, with the exhaust pipes glowing orange) > is fuel, or fuel vapour. That's particularly true of > Champ Cars, which are fuelled with Methanol - it burns > with a totally invisible flame (except at night time, > when you can see a bit of a blue tinge to the flame). > Gasoline fires are bad, but at least you can see them. > So the fuel nozzles not only deliver fuel, they also > exhaust the air displaced by the fuel - nothing gets > out into the vicinity of the car. As a final precaution > the teams also spray a splash of water onto the car at > the end of refuelling, just in case a drop or two of > fuel drips out of the end of the nozzle when it is > removed from the refuelling port - methanol is miscible > with water, so you can extinguish methanol fires using > nothing more sophisticated than a bucket of water. > > You can see the water spray here: > > http://panix.com/~johnf/temp/GoGoGo.jpg > > That's Alex Zanardi leaving the pits after his final pit > stop (in 1997, the first year he won the championship). > Note that the rear wheels are spinning, but the front > wheels are still stationary. > > > -- > PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List > [email protected] > http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net
