Date:         Wed, 26 Apr 2000 23:18:37 EDT
Reply-To:     Kapitan Ray Nemo <Volksiebus@NETSCAPE.NET>
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From:         Kapitan Ray Nemo <Volksiebus@NETSCAPE.NET>
Subject:      Re: Tire Carriers Again
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII

Answering Mark Drillock's post

> Gee, where is YOUR support for THIS? How do you know there were no
> apparent cooling problems? No steam gushing as you went by? 

> 


Right.  Nothing apparent.  Seriously, I live in West by Poverty Virginia and
these are on lots of the old iron.  Had one on an old ambulance I used to

drive.  No cooling problems.    Still see the kits being sold in camper
catalogs and JC Whipme.  Somebody's buying them.  Are they frying there
engines?  I dunno.

I wasn't challenging you personally or suggesting that you cannot voice an
opinion until you've completed scientific research.  (Actually, I'm not even
sure you voiced that original opinion.)  I just figured it had been tried by
someone on this huge list.  As I said, I broached this topic earlier and
received no answers.

> A friend who accompanied me to Baja with one of these V8 setups stopped

> along the way to remove his front spare on a hot day. He said it made a

> big difference but he had a big camper shell and was towing a trailer.
> 


Exactly the kind of anecdote (even though it's non-vanagon) I wanted to hear. 

You have to admit,though, towing in the Baja is pretty extreme.   


I cut out the engine differences comments.  I agree there are fundamental

differences, but I'm not sure they're relevant.  Someone made a fairly strong
argument that the vanagon cooling system is not weak.  I dunno. 


Aerodynamically, I'm not sure how much airflow disturbance we're talking about
here, assuming a tire that's mounted on the bumper (or on a contraption
mounted to the bumper as opposed to right on the nose like my old loaf).  I
would think that a tire mounted a foot or two out front would actually create
a vacuum behind it at speed and not impede the airflow when idling (at least
when the fan isn't on).  'Course, I was a liberal arts major. 


I'll probably eventually get around to trying this, but there's the CV's and
front motor mount to do first.  And those darn lifters.  And......



der Kapitan     IXOYE
Huntington, Westy Virginia
Recovering Sniveling Technophobe Lurker and Co-inventor of the Internet

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