flip that bad boy over take it to a belt sander race. "Um, do you guys have a 4000amp connection available?"

That is super crazy... I would be terribly worried that *gasp* the belt would break or get out of sync with the car's speed.....

the mind boggles with questions...

why's it, like, 30 feet in the air?
where's all the smooth sided tunnel for the air to flow through?
1mm thick steel? Won't that wear out pretty quick?
what happens if that belt snaps?
is the car actually driven on the belt?
This is really the 1st rolling road wind tunnel in the US?
How many are there in Europe/Japan?
what keeps the car from rolling off - front/back/sides?

that's all for now. my mind can't boggle any more...

All that and Forney's comment blows mine waaaay outta the water... sigh...

Wow...that is wild. Huge.

Based on what I've seen the Toyota people should rent out that rolling road asap.

Haas-CNC is crewed by Booty Barker who appears on SPEED Channel quite often. A degreed Mechanical Engineer and in spite of his handicap (due to a car accident), a very sharp racing mind.

Where's the fricking video!!!????

Talk about the most dangerous desk job ever!? I would not want to be sitting there.

Very, very sexy baby.

Retiree - that's definitely pics of the rig in the assembly shop. i'm sure it will be integrated into a proper wind tunnel in good time. I would imagine that the car gets strapped down much like on a dyno but with thin cables instead of nylon straps - better aero signature.

1mm thick - get out a ruler and think about that - now compare it to what's on a band saw and see how effective that is. As far as failure goes there are ways to monitor the harmonics of an active system to check for out of control situations. Plus I'm sure the whole thing would be inspected for cracks/tears/early indications of failure on a regular basis.

I don't get it. With a 180mph wind blowing through there, that guy and his desk are gonna be on the back wall stuck to the exhaust vent. Are they just doing some pre-installation testing on the rolling works before putting it in the actual tunnel?

Also, they should have made it wider to test the aerodynamic qualities of two cars rubbin' at 180mph.

In the pictuers, especially the top one, you can see two cables from the rig to the rocker panels holding the car in place.

All I know is that, I want one.

Will they be running the engine at full throttle too? I always thought that the aerodynamics of the air cooling the engine, and all the vents, would play a huge part in the overall aerodynamics of the car as well, yet they always seem to block the vents when testing cars in wind tunnels...

PS-We just got done testing a mini model of the Rocketeer in thermal fluids lab (the assignment was print something on the 3d printer, and analyze it in a wind tunnel). Here are some pics:

http://www.totalinsanity.net/rocketeer/

And according to our data, he could actually fly perfectly horizontal, without wings, at only 200 mph... crazy. We couldn't extrapolate any drag data though, so who knows what the rockets need to put out to hold that speed (or even get to that speed...) but it's still interesting.

PPS-We also did the millennium falcon for fun (hey, sometimes it flew in real atmospheres!) Pics at the same url.

Finally, a treadmill big enough for Rosie O'Donnell and her huge head.

Thats the most dangerous thing I've seen all day.

Dangerous? Bah, I was just standing next to a 2 ton cap fanuc robot hurling 15 pound conrods through space at an alarming rate on beta software. (yes, you read that right, 15 pound conrods - diesel engines baby - woo hoo!)

The real question is, if you stretched this thing out a bit, put a plane on it & spun up the jets, would it take off?

i wonder if the treadmill i run on goes up to 200 mph??? i'll have to check when i run today. i like a challenge, and 8 mph just isn't doing it for me.

According to the dimensions and my visual estimation and SOLID WORKS:

Thats about 150 lbs of steel spinning around those rollers.

while not as much as I anticipated I still wonder what kind of carnage would ensue in the event of a break. Bandsaw blades just stop dead as they instantly release tension from the drive wheels. In this case youll have a Stocker at full gallop still pushing band.

id call that a ginsu burnout from hell.

Wasn't Mr. Haas in some hot water with the feds not that long ago? Wonder if this is where most of that tainted dinero went...

Just the same, why waste such an über-awesome piece of hardware on a NASCAR car when you could, say, see if a DAF could theoretically hit 200 mph in reverse?

You all should have posted this as a poll: What the hell is up with this? Then revealed the story after a vote.

But yeah, this looks friggin' dangerous a setup as I've ever seen. It appears that the only thing strapping that car down is a pair of lashings on either side. God forbid OSHA does an inspection....

Dollars to doughnuts! Those pictures are awesome photochops!

I doubt they'll even run the car.

With the guywires, they just put it in neutral and move the road past it, the tires will roll right along.

I'm sure the 1mm road belt runs on good rollers that take the weight. The belt is just there to provide a surface to create laminar airflow. It should be a long time before it wears out.

@HDC:
OSHA? It'll be in a wind tunnel with 180mph air. No one is going to be standing by it when it's running.

Hell, use video cameras and no one even has to be in the building.

Why are people getting all weird here?

this is a waste of money... with the implementation of the car of tommorow over the next few years, there will be no room for tweaking the body panels for any kind of aero advantage anymore...

Waitwaitwaitwaitwaitwaitwaitwait a minute...

Ed Iskenderian sent you a friggin tip?

OK, I could be totally wrong here, but in the top pic it looks like the wheels are spinning... the lettering on the tires is blurred. The bottom photo shows the wheels are stationary. They're actually using this thing???!!! In any event, you wouldn't catch my happy ass sitting at that desk!

@SteveR: Ed Iskenderian called on the phone, and gave me the "scoop". I went down and had lunch with him and the rest of the guys at the Fabulous Burger in Gardena and got the whole story.

Isky is the man. I kind of forgot that you guys are connected. Might be cool to interview him if he's up for it.

Shouldn't that ss belt be covered in concrete or asphalt to make this thing even more real life?

I wonder if Acme Labs uses this rig to test "Rocket Powered Roller Skates"...

Actually, it is not the first rolling-road wind tunnel in the US. NASA has at least one, as does AAR, and many others. It may however be the first full-size (rather than model scale) rolling-road facility.

In answer to Retiree, there are several of these in Europe. Most of the F1 teams have a full-size tunnel now, and several regular car manufacturers do too (although they often have a 5-belt system).

As to the use of one of these, the engine does not run - the movement of the belt turns the wheels. The front wheels are locked in position, after carefully setting the toe so that the car runs straight and is not generating lots of side-force on the belt. Side force from sticky racing tires can push the belt off sideways at speed. But the safety systems in these rolling roads can stop it dead amazingly quickly.

Boneheaded...

This is right out of a Warner Brothers' cartoon...

"Let's put the cafeteria table with the two Dells right here..."

"Don't worry! If ANYTHING goes wrong, push the big red button on the desk, then MOVE AWAY FROM THE FALLING CAR!"

All your questions can be answered on their website:
[www.windshearinc.com]

Check it out!!!

Kerri