Thread: CARPC and HDD life in a drag car????

dude, how bad can the vibration's be with a 9 second car... vibrations are easy to isolate, mounted in a box on fluid mounts the vibrations shouldn't be so much of an issue, I think I'd worry more about the g forces of the launch, but even so, I ran a national in the 9's with 1.29 short times with the laptop for the dfi on the passengers floor,car launched like it was rearended by a semi... no issues or glitches in datalogging at all....

I think your making this more of an issue than it needs to be, you shouldn't have any problems unless you directly bolt it to the floor directly over the header exit..., isolate it even a little & you'll be fine, & use a laptop drive rather than a 3.5".. now if you told me your running a top fuel car or something, then maybe theres more concern, but you should be fine...

more car pics

Thanks all for your advice, got some info on logging size and it isnt too big, think i will go solid state root, XPe on CF and 2gb or similar thumbstick for the logs. If he really gets bored then he can take the thumbstick home and weigh up the logs.
Ok a lapotop drive will be far more robust than standard, i agree though i live many miles away and dont fancy travelling to fix his hdd IF it fails. Wouldn't be very good if he's on the final and the damn thing wont boot. Ok we have all had scenarios: "mine survived three crashes and two rolls, one of which off a bridge" then we get "CARPC= dead, after hitting a curb my HDD failed!" making it more of and issue than it needs to be?! i dont think so, i want something that will last.

How did you VNC the car? wifi reception is restrictive.

Originally Posted by turbocad6

dude, how bad can the vibration's be with a 9 second car... vibrations are easy to isolate, mounted in a box on fluid mounts the vibrations shouldn't be so much of an issue, I think I'd worry more about the g forces of the launch, but even so, I ran a national in the 9's with 1.29 short times with the laptop for the dfi on the passengers floor,car launched like it was rearended by a semi... no issues or glitches in datalogging at all....

I think your making this more of an issue than it needs to be, you shouldn't have any problems unless you directly bolt it to the floor directly over the header exit..., isolate it even a little & you'll be fine, & use a laptop drive rather than a 3.5".. now if you told me your running a top fuel car or something, then maybe theres more concern, but you should be fine...

My drag car bounces quarters out of the cup holders and it only runs low 10s. It just depends on the cam lope. a Tubo car obviously will run a lot smoother, but most fast RX7s have a V8 conversion.

What are the 60 foots? If it is a turbo car then the shock will be much less and a normal HDD will probably hold up fine. If it is a LS1 conversion or something with a 1.4-1.5 60 foot...then I really don't know. Next time use a G force measurement tool and compare the Gs with what the drive is rated for. Also, have him make a pass with a running laptop in the car, if that works with out hainging then so should the CarPC.

The reason you hear about drives surviving crashes is newer drives have a new technology that locks the head in place when G forces are suddenly increased (i.e. being dropped, or hitting a bridge at 150)

it sounds to me like he has been using a laptop in his car for sometime now, how is a CarPC laptop drive going to be any different?

No he has never used a laptop on this car on actuall drag runs, he remaps on the road under hard 5th, 6th gear accelerations. i mentioned earlier about him using a power FC controller to MAP, he uses this for the actuall drag runs. Still runs the rotary engine, see pic.

Think i will stick to the CF drive idea. though will run a HDD with it as a slave for storage, can see how it stands up to the punishment, it probs will be ok but like i said, i want to be sure...

...guess the only way is to test

You know they make special equipment just for this, I would look into that. CarPCs jsut have to many bugs, and when you are at the staging lights you have no time to mess with them.

BTW, tell him I'm really impressed with his setup...if he is in the Texas area I would love to run him sometime.

Originally Posted by DaVa

How did you VNC the car? wifi reception is restrictive.

External antennas on both cards. Certainly it will go the 1/4 mile of a drag strip, no problem.

Michael

Originally Posted by Wiredwrx

External antennas on both cards. Certainly it will go the 1/4 mile of a drag strip, no problem.

Michael

I think using a wireless KVM terminal would be the best bet...that way you would have no software, and no harddrive of any kind in the car.