19 replies to this topic

[Steve Deiters]

This photo showed up on a Can-Am Facebook page. Has to be one of the most famous "failed" racecars ever, but it was still cool to see, at least to this one-time sixteen year old race fan, and it still is today when I'm not sixteen!
 

[TSR]

Trevor Harris, who designed the car, has always been thinking outside of the envelope. Besides some failures like that MK1, Harris has a long track of fantastic successes, with cars he designed, such as the Nissan GTP of the late 1980s. Trevor is still at it today, working for VW on a Baja 1000 truck.

[Steve Deiters]

Speaking of legendary "one off" race cars this photo of the 2J leaving Laguna Seca appeared on the same Can Am Facebook page. It had set the track record the day before and the 427 blew the next day. Can you imagine leaving race track, waiting in line, and this rig pulls up to you with it on it? Talk about an indelible memory........

[NSwanberg]

If Darth Vader ever entered a Can Am race it would have been in that Shadow! That is one bada$$ picture.

[Mike Patterson]

Since that appears to be a recent picture, I'm amazed that the car still exists! Or is it a modern recreation? Anyone know?

 

That car was on the cover of the very first Road & Track magazine I ever bought.

[TSR]

Mike,

It is somewhat real, well, kind of. The body is all what was left of the original car because its tub was chopped and re-used in the smaller go-kart like MK2, also designed by Trevor Harris. The body and assorted parts were sold to Peter Kaus for his Rosso Bianco museum in Germany by Don Nichols, the Shadow principal. Kaus had a new tub made from drawings supplied by Don Nichols from his base in Salinas, California. All the missing bits were remade, but the car had no engine and most of the running gear was missing when it was sold at auction at Bonhams in Carmel, CA about 10 years ago, when Kaus liquidated his museum after an awful accident where he almost died. Someone completed the recreation and it is now demonstrated, and it demonstrates that it is a monster and would never have been competitive.

 

PS: Peter Kaus is my long-time friend and we are still visiting a few times per year.

[SlotStox#53]

Competitive or not that Shadow looks one sweet ride !

[MG Brown]

Apparently there are other Can-Am cars on hand also.

 

[TSR]

And Mick, this is also the replica of the real thing with Hall's blessing. I think that it is so far the sole example of a series that was supposed to be built, but that did not find any takers. Too bad as it would have been great to see a flotilla of such cars in the retro scene...

[MG Brown]

Yes Sir I did read about the pre-production issues and that the 2E reproduction project has been indefinitely shelved.

[Mike Patterson]

Philippe, thank you for that information.

 

What sticks out to me in the Shadow and 2E photos, is how large the driver appears in relation to the car. Those things were SMALL!

[Gator Bob]

 

What sticks out to me in the Shadow and 2E photos, is how large the driver appears in relation to the car. Those things were SMALL!

 

ditto.

[Gator Bob]

What year is that Shadow ?

 

I would like to have a discussion on the theory of staggered length injector tubes (stacks) to broaden the torque curve.

 

Snowmobile engines on a Thingie, gotta love it ....

I would have put "Keep Back 300 Feet" on the spoiler to 'limit liability' ... lol

[ShootinSparks]

What sticks out to me in the Shadow and 2E photos, is how large the driver appears in relation to the car. Those things were SMALL!

 

Another iconic race car from that era that is much smaller than you'd think is the 917.

 

[Gator Bob]

John, Wow ... that is dramatic .... they look like 1:1.5 scale.

 

The only SCCA Can-Am race I ever went to the size of the cars didn't seem so drastic ... look at them compared to the pace car.

[TSR]

In 1980, the revived Can-Am used modified mid-1970's single-seaters Lola T330 F5000 chassis and derivate, clad with huge bodies to create massive down force. Those cars had nothing in common with the early Can-Am cars of the 1960s.

The reason why earlier Can-Am and sports prototypes such as the Porsche 917 were so small is quite simple: aerodynamics were an afterthought, and few really understood the concept of down force despite the efforts of earlier evidence, first by Michael May in the 1950s, then of Smokey Yunnick in the early 1960s, then of GM and Jim Hall in the mid and late 1960s.

So the cars were tiny because minimum frontal area was pretty much all what the engineers were concerned with, but when more powerful engines were fitted to Can-Am cars in the late 1960s, they began to fly... so slowly and surely, wings sprouted to keep them down, some.

In endurance racing, Porsche designed their 917 for maximum top speed, and they were dreadfully dangerous to drive, so the Gulf-Wyer team began applying wedge shapes to keep the car down. It really did not provide much down force but it was enough to keep the car from taking off. Most road cars today have zero lift, but also no down force, to minimize fuel consumption. The 917K ("Kurt" for short tail) was successful only because their nemesis, the Ferrari 512M and S, were too bulky, but they were so much safer to drive and their drivers needed no change of underwear after their stints.

 

As far as the staggered intakes on the Chevy engines, it was simply that they provided much more instantaneous response to throttle input, but interestingly the Shadow MK1 never had such an engine during its track tests at Riverside. It never raced in that form anyway, the project was abandoned after the initial tests and the MK2 "go-kart" was devised from that original tub.

[proptop]

What year is that Shadow ?

 

I would like to have a discussion on the theory of staggered length injector tubes (stacks) to broaden the torque curve.

 

Snowmobile engines on a Thingie, gotta love it ....

I would have put "Keep Back 300 Feet" on the spoiler to 'limit liability' ... lol

 

 

I recall reading about the reason for the "Calliope" injector stacks...

 

The Mk. IV Big Block Chevy has Siamesed Intake ports...

The Exhaust ports, and the chambers / valves are arranged symetrically...the valves are I-E , I-E, I-E, I-E, but with the Siamesed intake ports, it makes for 2 different length (in the head casting) intake runners...2 long ones and 2 shorter ones.

The 2 different length injector stacks are an attempt to equalize the over-all lengths of the runners from bell mouth to intake valve.

[Gator Bob]

Perfect answer !!! Thank you.

 

So after my misconception of trying to broaden up the torque curve .... It really was an attempt to 'narrow up' the power band due to the mismatched intake runner lengths.

 

 

 

 

 

As a result of this arrangement, each siamesed pair of intake runners features non-symmetrical left-hand and right-hand ports. The port on the right side of each pair (as you face the intake flange surface) is longer and directs the inlet charge more to the center of the chamber, and is referred to as the “good” port; the one of the left, obviously referred to as the “bad” port, dumps the air/fuel mix toward the cylinder wall and usually doesn’t flow as well as the right port.

 

 

 

[beardogracing]

Philippe, thank you for that information.

 

What sticks out to me in the Shadow and 2E photos, is how large the driver appears in relation to the car. Those things were SMALL!

Those cars were the right size, it's the race cars now-a-days that have it wrong, they're far too big, get rid of all air control devices and ban Indy cars.

[Gator Bob]

Yeah.. OK ... sure.

 

And go back to rollbars shorter then the drivers head too.