But if they made an engine to do it, why wouldn't they do it? An F1 team gets what exposure they can - the Honda speed record car for example. I very much doubt they'd go to the trouble of making an engine capable of working upside down in an F1 car, and then take it no further or tell anyone what they are planning. Even F1 teams don't waste money that badly!

Yup im sure theres loads of tunnels capable for it and people willing to drive it! lol

Quote from Goodday :

About doing this in real life, I really don't see someone crazy enough to risk his/her life doing this.

*Raises hand*

Pearcy - I would be very surprised to hear that an F1 team have actually gone ahead and done the work to do this kind of test. I would not be surprised for a manufacturer to do it, though. That being said, BMW, Toyota or even Honda doing it with one of their F1 cars would not surprise me; but I doubt the actual F1 team itself would be involved in such an endeavor.

Hows about we dont worry about the oil leaking into the pistons & the float not floating, since LFS doesnt use that, i would assume it just uses 'force X spins wheels'

If it does actually simulate explosions in the engine in every piston crankshaft butterfly carb and exhaust then I apologise (and respect this game 5000% more )

Quote from tristancliffe :

If you just want answers to the theory, then ask any F1 team what the peak they see during the season is. I'd wager anything it's enough to hold the car on the ceiling.

Very very true, but I mean TEST the theory

this thread made me lawl

tristan?....rofl noob, rofl. moo bloody har

Enfine for aerobatic planes are not heavilly modified from normal plane engine. The main difference is for fuel alimentation, some tweaks for oil and let s go upside down.

Quote from tristancliffe :

But it could be done, if a team (or private individual) wanted to spend (waste) 20 million doing so by designing a car from scratch for the purpose.

cant be that expensive to ask someone working on aerobatic plane engines how to do it and copy his solutions

oh yeah, thats obvious! overlooked that one.

Quote :

GRAVITY AND OTHER FORCES CONSPIRE against conventional flight, but they are positively Machiavellian about inverted flight. Pity the first pilot who rolled inverted and sailed blithely along, only to hear the engine cough and die of fuel starvation when the gas settled in the top of the tank, or have the engine seize when the oil did likewise.

Engineers and designers have conspired in return. Here are a few devices that enable inverted flight and transitional maneuvers, or at least make them less of a struggle.
INVERTED FUEL SYSTEMS

Most aerobatic airplanes with inverted fuel and oil systems use fuel injection rather than a carburetor. When a carburetor is inverted, it can no longer meter fuel, and the float rises and cuts off the incoming supply. A fuel injector, which doesn’t care what attitude it is in, measures airflow and meters the proper ratio of fuel to each cylinder so that each receives a constant flow of the same fuel-air mixture.

To ensure the flow from fuel tank to fuel injector, aerobatic aircraft with the fuel tank in the fuselage have a “flop tube,” a flexible hose with a weight in the free end, plugged into the fuel tank. In normal flight, the weighted end of the hose flops to the bottom of the tank and draws fuel from there. When the airplane rolls inverted, the weighted end flops to the top of the tank, with the fuel. Regardless of the aircraft’s attitude, fuel and flop tube end up in the same spot.

Aerobatic airplanes that have fuel tanks in the wing use a small “header tank,” which is connected to the wing tanks. In normal flight, fuel gravity-feeds down to fill the header tank, which is connected to the suction side of the fuel pump. When the airplane rolls inverted, the header tank is now above the engine, and fuel gravity-feeds from the header tank to the fuel pump. A check valve in the line from the main tank to the header tank stops fuel from draining back into the main tank when the airplane is inverted.
INVERTED OIL SYSTEMS

Engines that use an external oil tank—“dry sump” engines—have a device similar to a flop tube that can reach oil in almost any attitude. In wet sump engines, in which oil is stored internally in a sump at the bottom of the crankcase, an oil pickup line near the top of the engine as well as in the oil sump ensures that oil is available in any attitude. A valve with two steel balls separated by a spring is connected to the top and bottom of the engine; like a flop tube, the balls (and the oil) go where gravity dictates, alternately covering and opening the appropriate oil pickup point.
SYMMETRICAL WINGS

Most airfoils are cambered, or curved, on top but flat on the bottom. As a result, they fly better upright than inverted. Symmetrical airfoils, which have the same curvature on both surfaces, perform exactly the same upright or inverted, and so are favored by aerobatic pilots. In order to fly at all, however, a symmetrical airfoil must be positioned at a slight positive angle—leading edge high—with respect to the flight path; otherwise the airflow around the upper and lower surfaces would be the same, and no lift would be created.
AILERON SPADES

These shovel-shaped surfaces, rigidly mounted on arms forward of the ailerons, provide “aerodynamic balance,” reducing the effort needed to roll the airplane. Aerobatic airplanes need aerodynamic balances because their control surfaces are large and their speeds are sometimes high. When the ailerons are neutral, the spades are aligned with the airstream and do nothing. But when an aileron is deflected upward, for example, its spade tips downward. Air presses against it, helping the aileron along, just as the weight of a small person on one end of a teeter-totter helps a larger person at the other end push off the ground. The farther the aileron is deflected, the larger the force supplied by the spade. Aerobatic pilots describe spades as akin to power steering.

“Spade design is a black art,” says airshow pilot Patty Wagstaff. “You see all kinds of shapes and all sizes, depending on the airplane. Akro pilots are always tweaking them to get the control feel just right—not too light and not too heavy. I’ve flown without spades, and it was like driving a Mack truck.”
AEROBATIC PROPELLERS

An aerobatic airplane has either a fixed-pitch or constant-speed propeller. The pitch of the blades is the angle at which they “bite” into the air. On airplanes with a fixed-pitch propeller, engine rpm (revolutions per minute) is the primary power gauge. Advancing the throttle increases combustion, which spins the driveshaft faster and increases rpm. When airspeed increases, the relative airflow from the airplane’s forward motion reduces the angle of attack for a given pitch of the propeller blade, which reduces drag and lets the propeller spin faster. Too much airspeed can result in engine overspeed, so the pilot must keep an eye on the tachometer to make sure engine rpm does not exceed redline.

On a constant-speed propeller, which has been likened to a car’s automatic transmission, blade pitch is adjusted by a governor, an engine-driven pump that monitors engine rpm and uses oil pressure to vary the pitch of the blades to maintain that rpm, regardless of changes in airspeed or power settings.

At high rpm, the blade pitch is low—taking a smaller bite of the air and decreasing angle of attack—and the prop wants to spin faster. To reduce rpm, the governor moves the blades to high pitch so they increase angle of attack, take bigger bites of the air, and slow the engine down.

If there is a loss of oil pressure in the governor, a constant-speed propeller will go to low or “flat” pitch (knife edge to the airflow), the blades will encounter no air resistance, and the engine will consequently overspeed.

An aerobatic constant-speed propeller has a large counterweight on each blade root. If engine oil pressure to the governor is lost in zero-G or negative-G manuevers, the centrifugal force of the counterweight drives the blade to high pitch—the maximum surface area is presented to the airflow—and the engine “underspeeds,” which prevents any overspeed damage. Throughout an airshow performance, you will hear a howl from the propeller as the blades shift.

hum
ok, here are my 2c

in normal orientation, the car uses some of the downforce to aid the tyres in keeping the car going forward. remember it takes quite a bit more power to overcome wind resistance the faster you go.

if a car goes with the speed that gives it downforce equal to its weight, then the moment it starts going left and up the ramp it will start wheelspinning, i think. could be wrong tho. going faster, you have more downforce but also more wind resistance... you need higher speed to get more downforce but you also need more power delivered at the wheels to overcome the greater wind resistance

Quote from tristancliffe :

Would it? Why have the F1 teams designed their engines to be capable of negative-g? Why bother with scavenge pumps in the cylinder head, and oil tanks designed to separate air/oil when inverted if they never are.

The answer is: No, the engines, fuel system and transmission would need to be heavily modified to make them work (amongst other things).

Tristan is, as is the usual when it comes to questions on mechanics, right here. I remember seeing a discussion about this experiment, where it was said that the reason why it had never been tested was that the engine would not work upside-down.

However, you should be able to, with some modifications, turn the engine around and have the car start on some sort of support-platform, already upside-down from the beginning. Then when the car has built up sufficient speed, release it and see what happens.

Or you could just test a full-scale model upside-down in a windtunnel.

All that is needed is a large, underground tunnel. You put a guide way at the top, and put force sensors into the small wheels that are inside the guide way. Instead of having a regular engine, there is an electric motor instead, powered buy metal rails on the ceiling of the tunnel (since apparently most internal combustion engines don't like being upside down). Then you just take force readings from the sensors, and then calculate how much force would be required for the tires to have adequate grip.

Quote from wheel4hummer :

All that is needed is a large, underground tunnel. You put a guide way at the top, and put force sensors into the small wheels that are inside the guide way. Instead of having a regular engine, there is an electric motor instead, powered buy metal rails on the ceiling of the tunnel (since apparently most internal combustion engines don't like being upside down). Then you just take force readings from the sensors, and then calculate how much force would be required for the tires to have adequate grip.

That would achieve the exact same thing as getting values with the car right side up. Still doesn't, visually, prove the theory.

Quite frankly, I don't think the theory needs to be proven. I don't see any reason, at all, why it wouldn't work. Anyone claiming it won't obviously is either extremely ignorant or just simple does not understand aerodynamics.

why not reverse the wings instead and see if it can take off?

there is litttle doubt that they will, in fact, not only take off, but go into orbit.

Quote from wildwilly :

why not reverse the wings instead and see if it can take off?

Haha, would be a laugh.

But that's just asking for another Le-mans

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v ... Dzedk&feature=related

Quote from wildwilly :

why not reverse the wings instead and see if it can take off?

As soon as it takes off, it has no traction anymore, so it will lose speed and land again immediately.

i seem to recall reading in one of the serious motoring mags that a certain f1 team were going to prove this once and for all with one of this years cars after the engine's become obsolete. apparently they feel that for a short period of time the modds to run inverted won't be too expensive to achieve but they can't do it at the moment in case the FIA decide it contraveens the development freeze on engines !!!

the mag didn't name the team but did state that they have a recent history of the FIA enforcing the rules very strictly when dealing with them so take a guess. i'd guess it's the same team that investigated entering the americas cup as a design challenge and have done preliminary work on breaking the 1000 mph barrier with a land speed record bid

Quote from wildwilly :

why not reverse the wings instead and see if it can take off?

apart from slowing down, even with ground effects allegedly being banned, a lot of the downforce relies on the relationship between the car, the ground and the airflow between

Quote from tinvek :

i seem to recall reading in one of the serious motoring mags that a certain f1 team were going to prove this once and for all with one of this years cars after the engine's become obsolete. apparently they feel that for a short period of time the modds to run inverted won't be too expensive to achieve but they can't do it at the moment in case the FIA decide it contraveens the development freeze on engines !!!

the mag didn't name the team but did state that they have a recent history of the FIA enforcing the rules very strictly when dealing with them so take a guess. i'd guess it's the same team that investigated entering the americas cup as a design challenge and have done preliminary work on breaking the 1000 mph barrier with a land speed record bid

sounds like mclaren :P

To join the debate about engines working upside-sown... Aren't F1 engines of the day flat V8 engines (@180°) ? If they are I don't think it would be much of a problem to get it working on the ceiling.

I'm pretty sure they're all 90-degree V8s.

if they really wanted to show this off why not mount the motor upside down then if it works upside down it can take off and get up to speed and when it flips over the motor will be right side up and wont have to worry about a problem

Quick, someone call Mythbusters!

Quote from Gnomie :

Quick, someone call Mythbusters!

Awesome idea!!