I also believe the dominant wheel, when aligned to ride the rail, will also act as somewhat a shock absorber for joints/bad spots in the rail, whereas a fixed wheel or otherwise would not be as forgiving.PWRookie wrote:Perhaps, and Mr. Pope posits, the alignment and cambering made to intentionally rail ride will make the losses of the dominant wheel less than what the fixed wheel would be (even if the fixed wheel were polished on the inside where the contact would occur)?
Further thoughts or comments?
You also have to remember, the main reason (at least in my opinion) for rail riding was to keep the raised wheel from touching the rail to almost take that wheel out of the friction equation (you still have weight and some spinning involved) and that's a pretty big improvement to beat. Not to mention keeping the heavily weighted rear wheels off of the rail.
You would most likely need 4 spots on the car with nylon or your feeler of choice to keep the car centered and off of the rail, I would think that, that would cancel out any improvement upon riding the rail with just the one wheel.