Our 2010 Land Speed Record Efforts a with Denzel Powered 1959 Karmann Ghia

2010 Achievements
About our machine
- Platform (the Karmann Ghia itself)
- Engine and its subsystems
- Transaxle
Our new Emblem!
Preparations
Day-By-Day

If you haven't already, we recommend you read the materials about our first year's efforts, found in the "about our machine" links above. In particular, many have reported enjoying the various sections that describe specific parts of the machine and then going through the (photographically illustrated) "blog" section as the narration there gives the back story and carries you through the process. (One reader opined, "Rivetting!!!!! Like a great novel, I couldn't put it down and wish I had been there to help.")

After achieving our goal as first Karmann Ghia to enter The One Club, we are now focused on entering The One Thirty Club!

2010 Achievements:

Speed Records

We retained all our claims to "fastest" from 2009 and merely pushed our numbers up; our new speed was 105.777. (No one managed to beat our 2009 numbers, by the way.)

Fastest Karmann Ghia campaigned as a part of the 36hp Challenge.

Fastest Karmann Ghia in the DSS class of the 36hp Challenge.

Fastest Karmann Ghia in The One Club.

Fastest Denzel powered vehicle to participate in a 36hp Challenge event.

Fastest known Denzel powered vehicle (with certified timing slip from a sanctioned event)

Other Achievement

Fastest speed in any 36hp Challenge event, for 2010 - we got a special trophy for our effort.
According to Burly Burlile, chairman of the 36hp Challenge, our speed ranks our 2010 effort as the third fastest of any naturally aspirated 36hp based engine powered vehicle of any kind at any point in history, 36hp Challenge event or otherwise. The two faster were Ferdinand Porsche's Berlin-Rome race car built for the Berlin-Rome-Berlin race in 1939 (which never occurred because of the war), and Peter Mueler in 1949. (See Burlie Burlile for more details.

Our Bonneville Ghia Emblem

Britt Grannis made up three of these emblems and gave one to us and one to Craig Smith - Our machines wear them proudly!

Preparations

During the off season we didn't do very much to the vehicle.

However, Britt Grannis and Richard took the engine out. The first task was to tear it down enough to be able to "spot face" (a machining operation) the spot on the case where the full-flow oil return line enters the case as that's where our leak had been from the previous year's runs. We determined the threaded bore wasn't perpendicular to the flat sealing surface, so we set about making it perpendicular, and this is NOT an easy operation to do with existing threads! But we somehow pulled it off. Here it is following basic reassembly:

Richard then mounted it on our Dynamometer and thus began a many days effort to tune it. Britt wasn't living nearby so didn't participate much in that except over the phone, but Richard spent a lot of time tuning it - time we didn't have the previous summer. He tried to pick some low-pressure days which would be more like what we'd experience at Bonneville, which is at much higher altitude. And, with a few such data points, we projected based on conditions the previous year what the optimal jetting might need to be and set ourselves out a few sets of jets we'd be using based on conditions we find at the time. ...Richard owns a combination barometer, hydrometer and temperature gauge set, so this both provided accurate data during our tuning runs and would let us pick jetting throughout the days at Bonneville as conditions changed.

Arrival: September 12, 2010

Just as we pulled off the Interstate at our exit, we realized we had a flat tire on the race car!

We pulled into the Salt Flats Cafe and changed the tire:

We then headed to the Bend In The Road and waited for Dawn.

September 13, 2010

As the first V-Dubber on the salt, well before dawn, we picked out the best spot for the pit area for (hopefully) all the VWers - and we got as much space for us as we could! Here it was at setup - that's Babe, our Blue Ox pickup truck and the end of the tarp in the distance with those tires are what we put out to mark the end of the space we were reserving.

Above is north, below is south.

September 14, 2010

We got ourselves through tech and were the very first car teched that day. It was a breeze!

September 15, 2010

The first two images below are Craig Smith and his entry.

These next two are Britt Grannis with our 1500cc Okrasa engine in his vehicle - he planned to run two different engines in his vehicle...

Note also that the badges on the rear say, "Okrasa", "1500", and "Bonneville Ghia".

Unfortunately, we had taken the heads off to bump the compression ratio a little and didn't use new rings, the rings old in our engine didn't re-seat promptly. Yes, we made a mistake!

September 16, 2010

On this day we did our very best run to date. We were the first to run that day, and it was on that run we did 105.777.

Note the red Miata ahead of us. The lady who was the driver of that car realized she wasn't ready to run, and pulled out of line well before the race officials even showed up!