Ramp ideas

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Reverend Hedgash
Posts: 448
Joined: Wed Oct 19, 2005 2:19 pm
Location: Hobart, Tasmania

Ramp ideas

Post by Reverend Hedgash »

I had an idea about the ramp.

What about using old rolls of carpet? We can pick them up for nothing at carpet installers, are typically 3.6m wide (broad loom) can be rolled out over the lake and up the track quite easily.

They can easily be rolled up and stored between gigs, hell you could even steam clean them!!

This should help stop all the staining of the lake surface and dirt as well as protect the surface a little.

If softness is an issue under the carpet at the edge of the lake, sheets of ply wood could be placed to spread the load of the vehicles passing over sufficiently.

We have quite a few motorcycle guys in the club who have connections in the industry, and motorcycles come typically in plywood containers. That is just one cheap source, of course there are others.

Again small unit size means easy storage after use.

Reverend Hedgash
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David Leikvold
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Location: Brisbane

or you could...

Post by David Leikvold »

At the other extreme, check out the Mabey & Johnson UK website. They do their own version of bailey bridges. The animation of the bridge assembly is fabulous. Obviously we don't need anything that grand but we need something that can get vehicles into the air a bit so we can blow off the red dust before they hit the salt and on the way off we need something to get the salt off too. White on red is just as bad as red on white. At a major building site I frequent they have two cattle grids on the way out (to remove mud) that shake the hell out of every vehicle and would remove a lot of salt very easily. If we had them at each end it might help too. If we made it a decent length we could have good ramp angles both ways too. These are just some preliminary ideas, I like the price of the old carpet and plywood but I like the function of the purpose-built steel ramp.
The only problems with the carpet would be it would have to follow the shape of the dirt underneath which would mean we still have a cut ramp to annoy other visitors when we're not there and if it got wet it would be wheelspin central. Any more thoughts gentlemen?
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Rob
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Location: Richmond, NSW. DLRA #888

Post by Rob »

The blowing off of the cars cold be accomplished with a car yard style ramp or better yet, the old farmyard above ground service "pit". Either of these are easily built in sections for mobility/storage.

Some stuff I've never seen in Australia but was prevalent along with New Guinea and several Pacific islands I lived on was clip together steel matting used for "surfacing" runways. It was originally clled Marsdeb matting and later perforated steel planking. The sheets were 10' by 15" and I believe there are 100,000 surplus ton still for sale in the Phillipines. These days it's mostly used as fencing and was in New Guinea when I was there in the sixties. You can make it out in this pic.

http://www.theaussieaviator.net/gallery ... /gusap.jpg

The US now use aluminium matting I believe.

Could this or something similar prove useful?

Cheers,
Rob
David Leikvold
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bigger

Post by David Leikvold »

We get people turning up with buses and other long and heavy articulated vehicles so we'd need the elevated ramp section to be 40 or 50 feet long and much stronger than a car yard tilter. Maybe we should start a design competition. The winning entry gets....?
Here are a few criteria: Portable, lots of prefab sections so it can be quickly and easily assembled & dismantled with hand tools, no bolts loaded in shear, doesn't need a crane to move anything, rust proof, safe to get under to do the blow off, good grip for tyres wet or dry, able to sit on relatively soft salt without sinking, adjustable to fit different heights between dirt and salt, doesn't require any earthworks other than some minor and discreet levelling, could be made by members (or maybe subbied out to someone in the club, NOT me). Any thoughts?
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Rob
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Post by Rob »

Yep figured that Dave,

I meant the general design principle not so much the actual flip idea. Many of these are two piece to allow for varying vehicle track widths and it wouldn't take much to make 10' level sections to do the same. Salt will of course take it's toll.

Cheers,
Rob
David Leikvold
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"salt will take its toll"

Post by David Leikvold »

On the previous thread I suggested galvanising the whole thing and putting down rubber matting to keep it out of the salt. That would only work if the salt was hard. But I have to wonder this; if the ramp was sitting in damp salt for 9 days a year and was hosed off when we packed up how long would it take for corrosion to become an issue? Perhaps we could use plenty of sacrificial hardwood pieces to space it up several inches as necessary or build it in spans so that is mostly above the salt. The points that were intended to sit on the salt would leave small holes behind but they could easily be filled when we left with some of the salt the Dodge had scraped for the track. I wish I was onsite (don't we all!) so I could visualise this better.
So here's a couple of questions for those lucky enough to have been there in 2006 or earlier. How high is the dropoff from the dirt to the salt at the existing ramp site? How high is it at the alternate site? Does much water gather at the edge of the lake? I seem to remember reading at various times that that seems to happen from time to time even when the race surface is dry and hard.
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hawkwind racing
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please concider

Post by hawkwind racing »

I have been giving this some thought and have come to the conclusion that a holistic approach is needed , the actual mechanics of the ramp are simple ,the cheapest being laying down some heavy duty poly tarp ,which is reasonably cheap ,some research shows it can be purchased in 3.6m X 27m lengths a couple of these joined end to end and placed on a star roller ( think pool cover roller) should do the trick ,then lay down some sheets of formwork ply to distrubute the load , we also need to limit the number of vehicles accesing the lake surface and the amount of times these vehicles access the lake surface , this can be done effectivly thus , allowing only competitors vehicles access to drop off the race cars /bikes at the pits and then either giving the option of leaving the cars on the salt for the duration of the event or commimg off the lake and staying off for the duration of the event or untill they leave to pick up the race vehicle , benifits = least disturbance to the lake edge /surface , greatly reducing the "red on white" stains , Newons happy , DEH happy ,draw backs = inconvenient for the paying racer ,possible parking problems , the inconvenience can be somewhat eleivated by placing the pits close to the access point and as this was going to happen anyway ,makes for a short walk to the pits and a bit further to the starting point . these ideas or similar need to be seriously concidered if we hope to continue racing intio the future
cheers
momec
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Post by momec »

David
Galvinised means nothing on a salt lake. Anything metal would have about a 3 year working life after being ground into the salt I reckon.

The option l like is a concrete boat ramp deal but even the reo mesh would be in trouble if the salt got a sniff.

We will get to a stage where full on race car transporters will be turning up so think heavy.

Hawk, a punters car park at the gate and a coaster bus on the salt.
Tie a two way on the gate post and call the bus if you need a lift? or walk :?

Keep thinkin guys.

Chris
Acme Racing #251
Marty Hicks
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Joined: Wed Oct 12, 2005 9:53 pm
Location: Adelaide

Post by Marty Hicks »

What about a rock ramp similar to the one we constructed last year?

But instead of filling the cracks with sand, made a wet mix of concrete
and tipped that over the top to hold it all together?

Does'nt need to be smooth like a boat ramp, just needs to allow access onto the lake.

And if you used the local rocks and sand in your mix, i'm thinking it
would blend in and be less a bone of contention to other
interested parties....No?
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David Leikvold
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Post by David Leikvold »

Didn't Len remove the last rock ramp because we weren't allowed to build anything permanent in a national park? A permanent concrete ramp would be perfect but...
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