By Jennie Sandoval


Rallying is one of the world's most popular and exciting motor sports, enjoyed by many millions of people worldwide. It involves driving specially modified cars across a range of challenging types of terrain and track, from standard road to muddy woodland track. The cars which are used in the sport are terrific machines, from their rally mud flaps to their steering wheels.

Obviously, there are strict regulations in place which provide detailed specifications as to the kind of set-up that rallying cars can use. These are put in place by the sport's governing body, the Federation Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA). So while the cars you see whizzing past in rallying events resemble the vehicle you might drive to work or to do the shopping, the similarities are only skin deep.

FIA rules clearly state that any vehicle used in a rallying event must have the same outer body shell as a normal road car. For rallying though, this outer husk is rebuilt after being completely stripped down to the metal. All extraneous features, like mounting plates, are removed, as engineers look to keep the weight of the vehicle to an absolute minimum.

A tubular roll cage made from steel is then welded into the shell, making it stronger. This part of the process of preparing a rally car for events takes some 700 hours of work to complete. But the results are highly impressive indeed, with a typical rally car being able to support the weight of 10 ordinary road cars.

The car's air intake is limited by virtue of an FIA regulation which states that the car's air intake must be restricted to 34 milimetres. The heads and cylinder block are just like that of a normal car, which regulations state that they must be. Other parts can be altered though, including things like pistons, camshafts and cylinder linings.

While the turbo boost in a standard road car reaches a figure of around one bar, a rallying car can actually drive four or five bar out of its engine. A further boost to the power that the turbo charger can generate is achieved by the use of anti-lag systems, which can even give the vehicle a massive kick when it drives off from ticking over. The kind of torque produced his huge, with figures of more than 600Nm often being achieved by these vehicles.

All rallying cars have four wheel drive to enable them to cope with the different types of surface and terrain with which they must cope. A clutch is usually in place, but drivers will only tend to use this when moving off from a standing start. Most rallying cars have a sequential gearbox.

There is nothing fancy about the interior of a rallying car either, with painted metal the order of the day. The two seats are made from carbon fibre, and are usually moulded to the individual specifications of the driver and co-driver. It can therefore be seen that everything, from rally mud flaps to the design of seats, is undertaken with speed and power in mind.




About the Author:



0 comments:

Post a Comment

    Blogger news

    Blogroll

    Pages

    About