Thrusting back the frontiers when only the best will do

To beat the world land speed record and travel at supersonic speeds, Richard Noble put together the best design team, the best support team, the best driver and the best on-board systems.

ThrustSSC holds the World Land Speed Record, set on 15 October 1997, when it achieved a speed of 1,228 km/h (763 mph) and became the first car to officially break the sound barrier. ThrustSSC relied on Holroyd to monitor wheel bearing performance at land speeds beyond the sound barrier.

The car was driven by Royal Air Force fighter pilot Wing Commander Andy Green in the Black Rock Desert in Nevada, United States. It was powered by two afterburning Rolls-Royce Spey turbofan engines, as used in British F-4 Phantom II jet fighters. It is 16.5 m (54 ft) long, 3.7 m (12 ft) wide and weighs 10.5 tons (10.7 t). The strain on the wheels and bearings was what would normally be considered excessive and in need of careful attention - that was certainly the view of the pilot.

Holroyd Instruments is proud to have worked with the Thrust SSC team from the drawing board through to its successful runs and supplied AE sensors and AE signal processing to monitor the condition of its wheel bearings. At 1228 km/h or 763 mph over stone strewn desert under full acceleration from two huge aviation turbines, the safety of Flt. Lt. Andy Green relied upon fault free wheel bearings.

Continuous on-board monitoring was essential;