Some pics of the car

Interesting wheels. Can you give any more info about them?

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Originally posted by GeorgeT:
Interesting wheels. Can you give any more info about them?

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i can tell your that they are the first full carbon wheels that we know of anywhere in the world. we've been doing plenty of testing and are in the process of obtaining a patent.

Sorry Ashley,
Those are not the first full carbon wheels by a long shot. Our Viking 21 had 100% carbon fiber wheels in the early 90's. They were made here for the crazy dual tire system that car features. There may have been other all carbon fiber wheels before that but I haven't ever looked. Viking 21 is one of our "full size" CNG/Electric hybrid cars.





This bit is from the VRI website.

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http://vri.etec.wwu.edu/history.htm
A unique feature of Viking 21 are wheels that mount two tires on a single rim much like a dual truck tire assembly. The two tires will be very different however, as the inner tire will have a hard compound rubber and round section giving a very small contact patch. The outer tire will have a wider tread patch and use very soft high grip rubber. The wheels will normally run at negative camber so the outer tire does not quite touch the road. During cornering normal chassis roll causes the outer wheel to become perpendicular to the road surface, the outer tire now grips the road securely allowing higher cornering power. When the brakes are applied a micro switch sends a signal to a solenoid high pressure valve which allow high pressure from the air pump to pressurize a central pneumatic system. Slave cylinder mounted at the outer end of each wishbone cause all four wheels to become perpendicular to the road greatly increasing traction when stopping. This system is currently being patented and a tire manufacturer is interested in the system.

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I would like to know some more about your wheels. They look great. Can you share any more information or pictures?

By the way, you guys have a great car. I put a picture of your car up on the computer's desktop in the shop today and everyone that saw it thought it was pretty sweet (even the Mini-Baja guys).

hi james,

we did a few searches and failed to come up with any other full carbon wheels on the guess we were wrong! haha.....thanks for the info....that tyre system sounds quite interesting!

the wheels were a wet layup all in one go.they took 1.5 hours each to layup and about teh same to cure. the ones on the car in the pics weigh about 1.5 kg we hope to optimise the layup further and get them down to just on 1kg with a new centre design.

havnt got many detailed pics here that i can post. i'll see if we can arrange something.