It's all about timing. If you pull the lever at the exact right moment, the front axle has passed the junction and the rear axle gets diverted. The trolley will derail.

Why is this more auto governing for high wind conditions and yet effective at low wind speeds (and therefore avoidant of overspeeding or stressing the axle/mounting)? Because it's so much more compact? Lower forces over all?

And does the low wind/high wind envelope mean that someone has to be clever somewhere else? Like in forcing a transmission to gear up the speed at low wind speeds?

Sorry, not an engineer.

That is one heck of a pole they hit. Sheared through the front axle, tore through about 2/3 the length of the bus and was stopped by the rear axle and yet the sign appears to be still vertical.

That's some serious cross-axling!

Hilux FTW!

Honestly, I don't know. But the description of the system leads me to believe it might trigger something, since closing the circuit to get the charge is basically what the train's axle setup does.

Don't think this is a Russian only problem. I have seen and heard of plenty of stupid towing stuff here in North America.

You have to attach to the main frame, and nothing else. Not bumpers, not axles, not nose/tail sub-frames. The pros can wheel tow because they have the right equipment and know what they are doing.

My aunt almost had her bumper ripped off when someone tried to pull her out of a snow bank. Another person stopped and checked what they had attached to and told them to move it to the frame.

There is also that classic video of the guy getting his entire rear bumper and trunk ripped off his Cavalier when not only did they attach it wrong, the had slack in the tow cable and just gunned it.

Looks like they cracked the front axle on landing. =)

Weight distribution is just as important too. the beetle has the engine right at the back sot he weight is over the driven wheels. Very little weight up front and the body is relatively tall. That means from the start the rear wheels grip and bite hard, then any weight shift as the car accelerates and the front lifts puts more weight to the rear axle meaning even more grip. Beetles win drag races in the first 20m or so. As you can see in this video the difference in speed in the first second or two is massive. Stop the video at 39 seconds and you'll see in that first launch the beetle has gone twice as far as the mustang. That speed difference that early on is very hard to catch up.

First, about the leaving room part. In most car racing, you don't have to 'leave room', as long as you don't touch. Cutting off another driver's line is part of racing, you don't just LET other cars pass you, normally. Turning into a car's rear axle, that's NEVER OK in racing (except demolition racing).

Secondly, and more to the point, there WAS room. Not much, but definitely enough. If you look really close, at 21-22 seconds is when the contact happens, and the yellow car is at least 1 foot away from the white line, and no where near the 'run out' (red and white striped 'curb') for the corner. He intentionally turns into the rear of the white car, hitting it instead of just keeping it straight and coming in behind. I don't think he even would have used the run out had he just kept it straight, and certainly wouldn't have been off the track. His other option would be to let off the gas, then move right once the car in front is clear, but then he'd be in second. I think he expected the white car to crash, but not take him with it. He certainly should have known what would happen when he turned into the other car at that speed coming out of a turn, and that it would be terrible.

The car behind has the greater duty to avoid an accident on the track. At least, that's how it was when I did off road racing.

Side note...at :46, I'm pretty sure some poo came out of the guy with the blue flag.

I think that at best this would be applicable only to the very lightest of electric vehicles (something in the "motorcycle" weight class, even half a ton is probably too heavy), and I have my doubts about even those, even when completely disregarding the sideways forces.

With a system like this you do not want more than a few cm (about an inch, at a guess) of suspension travel from when the car is lifted in air to the car at rest (= 1G vertical load), just from the weight of the car compressing the springs. If you have more the springs (which the loops naturally are) have to compress a lot with each revolution, which strains them, heats them, isn't good for rolling resistance, etc.

If we assume a 1000 kg car with a 50/50 weight distribution, to get about 2 cm of suspension travel the spring stiffness would be about comparable to a high level GT racing car. Comparing to high level sports cars, the street going Porsche 911 GT3 RS car, which is regarded as a pretty stiff, racy and track oriented vehicle has something in the region of three times that much travel, a normal commuter car can have way over 10 cm due to soft, comfort oriented springs.

So you can't spring a proper car with just these because it'd require it to be too stiff (also I can foresee shock absorption issues). Another problem is the 360 degree springy nature of it. You really don't want car tyres to move much aside from up and down. These have the problem that when you brake, the forces will try to push the axle forwards in relation to the wheel (i.e. the wheel moves backwards while braking), and the reverse when accelerating. You'd be (possibly) drastically changing the wheelbase of the car during acceleration and braking, which could have catastrophic results for handling in extreme situations. Many if not most cars these days are capable of braking at over 1 G, as long as they have decent tyres, so the front-back movement could be bigger than the up-down movement.

So yeah, doesn't really sound like a workable solution as the ONLY spring system on a car. Having some springiness in the tyres (either in the wheel itself of just having larger profile tyres, like we used to back in the day) can be helpful for comfort and even handling in some cases, but springing the car only via the wheels isn't a good idea, you really want to be able to control the wheels better than that.

According to his description on YouTube it's 3mm PVC Komacel :

"Here is a video of me building a Dodge M37 body from scratch. Edited down to 17 minutes from 3 hours of footage from 60 hours of build time. I hope it can entertain and inspire folks to be creative and make things. The body is made mostly with 3mm thick PVC sheet called Komacel, glued with CA glue. Driver is pine wood, bumper is aluminum. Rides on a GCM 4ten leafed chassis and tcase, rc4wd K44 axles, axial trans, tekin esc and motor."

"esc" in his quote = electronic speed control.

His build of a 77 Ford is equally impressive.

According to EMC, it wasn't as bad as it looks, they say it

cracked couple of the axles and busted the oil pan but was actually drive-able after! The go-pros under the trailer survived impact - in behind scenes you can see the F1 pass underneath and then the shower of sparks from the oil pan impact

Not at all. Just watch any monster truck freestyle competition and you'll see clearly that even with the best equipment and engineers, they break nearly every time...except for the trucks that score less than 10 out of 30 points. If you aren't breaking some stuff, you aren't flying high enough or hitting that wall of cars hard enough. Simple as that. True enough, they often leave the big jump(s) for right at the end of their time, or even after time's up, knowing it may end with them driving a tricycle or worse....and then again, sometimes that doesn't slow them down much. It all depends on the truck's design and the driver.
When I did off road racing, I always put the sentiment another way. "If you aren't bleeding, you aren't really trying." I had my rear tire/wheel pass me numerous times after a hard jump. It just happens. Even chromemoly is only a little stronger than regular steel, and stub axles only come so big. It's one of those things where you just have to make the weak point an easy fix, because there's always going to be a weak point.

...but if you were talking about his 4x4 truck, not monster trucks....never mind! :-)

Thanks

If you're interested, the results are availble here - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1939_German_Grand_Prix

Only 7 cars were classified as finishing:

1 Rudolf Caracciola (DEU),Daimler-Benz AG/Mercedes-Benz W154, 22 laps 4:08:41.8 (!)
2 Hermann Paul Müller (DEU),Auto Union/Auto Union D,22 laps +57.8
3 Paul Pietsch (DEU),Officine A. Maserati/Maserati 8CTF,21 laps +1 Lap
4 René Dreyfus (FRA),Ecurie Lucy O'Reilly Schell/Delahaye 145,20 laps +2 Laps
5 "Raph" (FRA),Ecurie Lucy O'Reilly Schell/Delahaye 145,19 laps +3 Laps
6 Robert Mazaud (FRA),Private entry/Delahaye T135CS,19 laps +3 Laps
7 Leonhard Joa (DEU),Süddeutsche Renngemeinschaft/Maserati 4CM,19 laps,+3 Laps

The rest were retirements except for one disqualification:

Ret Tazio Nuvolari (ITA),Auto Union/Auto Union D, lap 19 (Engine)
Ret Rudolf Hasse (DEU),Auto Union/Auto Union D,lap 12 (Accident)
Ret Georg Meier (DEU),Auto Union/Auto Union D,lap 11 (Broken front stub axle)
DSQ Adolfo Mandirola (CHE),Private entry/Maserati 6CM,lap 10 (Disqualified)
Ret Luigi Villoresi (ITA),Officine A. Maserati/Maserati 8CTF,lap 7 (Fuel tank)
Ret Manfred von Brauchitsch (DEU),Daimler-Benz AG/Mercedes-Benz W154,lap 6 (Leaking tank)
Ret Heinz Brendel (DEU),Daimler-Benz AG/Mercedes-Benz W154,lap 4 (Accident)
Ret Hermann Lang (DEU),Daimler-Benz AG/Mercedes-Benz W154,lap 3 (Engine)
Ret Raymond Sommer (FRA),Private entry/Alfa Romeo Tipo 308, lap 1,(Engine)
Ret Hans Stuck (DEU),Auto Union/Auto Union D,lap 1 (Fuel pipe)

There was no way that was going to go well...you simply don't winch from the side. The best they could hope for was to tip it on it's side in the mud (not sure how that would help).
This is what happens when you don't attach your roll cage to the frame, it can rip right off the frame (with or without the body going with it). I actually expected it to roll over, ripping off the suspension, leaving the axles stuck in the mud and the rest of the Jeep upside down.