What is Inside a Streamliner?

Here is an example of a Streamliner

I took these pictures when I was at Bonneville. The pit area arm band cost $5.00 and is well worth the money. You can go talk to the teams and see everything they are doing. If you are a car nut like I am, you can spend a week there.

These streamliners at Bonneville have are all out custom land speed car. They are restricted to meeting the minimum safety requirements such as having a proper roll cage, safety harness, fire extinguisher, and parachute. The vehicle must have 4 wheels and at least two of the wheels must be covered. That is pretty much it to be a streamliner. Race teams get to do whatever they want to break new records.

There are many different classes such as engine size, engine type, and fuel type to choose from. Some streamliners are designed to switch engines out quickly. The Speed Demon for instance replaced the engine about 10 times in one week to target different class records.

This car is a perfect example. The frame is a custom tube chassis. The wheels are almost always inside the car to prevent drag. The rules don’t require that the wheels need to be in a specific location, so the cars often times have two wheels in line with each other. This car has it’s rear wheels in line which allows the stream liner to be much narrower. Many cars choose to be front wheel drive which puts the traction where the weight is at. This also helps to prevent a loss of control from spinout where the rear of the car tries to go past the front of the car.

When building these cars the rule of thumb is to have the center of gravity forward of the center of pressure. What does this mean? The center of gravity is the location where the front half and the back half are balanced. If you put the car on a block at this point, it would balance on the block. The center of pressure is similar, but relates to wind pressure. Think of an arrow. It naturally wants to point in one direction when it goes through the air. There is a point along the arrow at which the center of pressure is equal. When the arrow is held at that point the wind doesn’t turn the arrow in a specific direction. It will be at balance. With an arrow, the center of gravity is way forward with a metal tip and the center of pressure is way back with the feathers at the tail. Build a streamliner like this and you will fly straight as an arrow. It is amazing that some car designers don’t get this right and their vehicle always “spin out”.