AMT '65 Grand Prix, odd parts

[Roadrunner]

After owning this particular kit for quite a while now, but just opening it last night (looking for good tires for a '29 Ford pickup I'm currently working on), I noticed a huge rubber tire and correspondingly huge chrome wheel to use with it. Any idea at all what that's all about?

[sfhess]

The bicycle wheel?  Part of the "road test" equipment included in the kit.  It's called a 5th wheel.  Connected to an electronic recorder, it measured acceleration, speed and distance.

[Fat Brian]

Yep, before they had accelerometers and g-force meters and load cells a bicycle wheel and a rev counter was how they took performance data.

[Roadrunner]

26 minutes ago, sfhess said:

The bicycle wheel?  Part of the "road test" equipment included in the kit.  It's called a 5th wheel.  Connected to an electronic recorder, it measured acceleration, speed and distance.

OK, now that makes sense. Odd that there's no mention of that in the instructions, nor anywhere on the box. Thanks for the info, I appreciate it.

[Roadrunner]

2 minutes ago, Fat Brian said:

Yep, before they had accelerometers and g-force meters and load cells a bicycle wheel and a rev counter was how they took performance data.

That makes perfect sense. There's also what looks like a tape deck (reel to reel) included in the kit, along with some nice safety cones that I highly approve of. All part of the same testing stuff, I imagine. Thanks a bunch. You should have seen me sitting here scratching my head last night.

[Mark]

The flat box issue mentions those parts in the instructions.  That issue has extra clear parts including a fuel container, that aren't in the regular box kit.

[Roadrunner]

7 hours ago, Mark said:

The flat box issue mentions those parts in the instructions.  That issue has extra clear parts including a fuel container, that aren't in the regular box kit.

Cool. Thanks for that.