I watched Mythbusters last night and kept thinking, "I wonder if the golf ball dimple" effect would work on the salt flats. http://dsc.discovery.com/videos/mythbusters-dirty-vs-clean-car/ Back in the early seventies, Bruce Crower did an Indy car body using some sort of hydro forming technique (place was in Long Beach) and it seemed to me that body panels could be hydro formed over bucks with the dimples. After you wade through the videos, check out the side by side comparison shots of the scale models in the water tank. The model with the golf ball dimples out performed the smooth model! Thinking outside the box is traditional!
Best part -- the difference they measured was not minimal, it was 11%. It would play hell with your sponsors' decals, though.
I wondered if it would help on the top end as well. The test they did was eye openng to say the least. If I remember right the increase in economy was 11%. I am sure there would be some racers that would love to put 11% more power into speed as opposed to pushing air. Seriously, add 22mph to a 200 mph car with the same power. I'm sure there is some funny math in there somewhere.
The thought passed my mind from time to time. For the 1984 LA olympics our cycling federation tried some amazing things for speed. The paint on some of the bicycles had SAND mixed in with it based on the same type of dimple testing. Made for a slipperier frame. They also filled the tires on the track bicycles with nitrogen, a practice that is now common with cars.
Used car salesman; Yes sir it has alot of hail damage, do you know why the dimples are in golf balls.......
Then lets dimple inside the intake and increase air speed and atomization! Dimpling - its the new smooth!
there's a difference between dimples(depressions) & protrusions. The dirty car got 11/2 MPG less than the car got clean.
I actually have an 80s article in one of my magazines where they tested this in NASCAR intakes I believe.
I have a friend who has a Triumph motorcycle motor with dimples in the intake ports. I thought I herd somewhere that louvers may have a similar effect.
they even put these dimples on skies to make them faster... call it snake skin whatever... but it works!!
Saw an enclosed cab Trike contraption that only had dimples on the back side of the fenders. Missed the show last night, but I'd think they'd be on the front.
Hey, go full circle and get Titleist or Dunlop to be your sponsors,a LSR golf ball, who woulda thunk? Bob
Check out KIRK!'s dimpling service! Make your car FASTER! More fuel efficient! For only $500 (plus travel) I'll show up at your house with my ball peen hammer and go at it. Mythbusters is by far my favorite show on TV. It and Dirty Jobs are the only two shows I watch regularly.
If the sand is mixed evenly through the paint it's going to raise the entire surface and have dimples - albiet very small ones - between the grains. I suggest roller application, though. Come to think of it, now you have an excuse to leave that orange peel unsanded. Just say you were going for dimples to streamline the car better -
The thought crossed our minds as well. I suspect that part of the effect is because a golf ball is spherical. No long surfaces. We did give it some discussion for our lakester. Maybe we should re-visit the idea.
Don't ask how I found this site, but there is in fact a nice explanation on it why dimples aren't used on cars... http://ilovebacteria.com/golf.htm
I was reading a wind tunnel article (pretty in depth) and they mentioned the golf ball effect. In the wind tunnel according to the fellas that wrote the article in didn't work out as well as one would think. It made a difference but not as much as tapeing up the seams on an auto body. 200 MPH tape is way more cost effective than dimpleing panels. Of course it wasn't on TV and they could have been wrong.
Good article. I wonder if anyone has actually done it (dimpled a car) though. Hell just build a golfball shaped lakes car.... kidding!!!!
Ever the skeptic of all things, I ask myself "if you can gain such a huge amount of fuel reduction, then: 1. why has no auto manufacturer done it yet? 2. why hasn't boeing, airbus, mcdonald douglas, northrup, bae, and all the other companies who spend billions on research like this built planes with this dimple technology?" Someone at one of these places plays golf... Despite Adam and Jamie's statements that "mythbusters doesn't teach science", they do in fact go about their business in the method of science, that is to base knowlege on observations collected from meaningful experiments. In general, they do not go to any length to precisely control their experiments, or run enough of them to gain any statistically significant data from them, which is how their work differs from science. I have also seen that they assume that all things are directly scalable, such as the experiment they did involving a ship in a whirlpool. Fluid dynamics problems are generally not scalable in a direct manner. A golf ball 100 times the normal size does not enjoy the same benefit from the surface treatment as one in the normal size. To accurately describe what is going on there you need to bust out some serious math, and in fact, this is one of the unsolved frontiers in physics. I didn't catch the episode, and there are only bits and pieces on the website, maybe someone can fill me in.
Back in 91 I was at B'ville and had a conversation with Arias and Crower on this very subject. What they were doing (or not doing) is just leaving the orange peel in the paint vs making them really slick and smooth. The prevailing thought was based on some research regarding surface friction instead of drag (somewhat the same thing but not really). It came up because I had showed up to spectate with a restored Packard 12 and they were impressed with the finish.
The Jalopy Journal
