This implies that you find a Subaru emitting LFS sounds funny. I guess it would be funny if didn't live in a country where dumbasses already drive around with outrageously loud fake blowoff valve sounds emanating from their plastic fantasies.
I take dumbasses doing stupid things to their daily drivers pretty seriously. They endanger my hobby by creating public pressure for legislation to curtail automotive modification. Here in the US we currently enjoy almost unlimited freedom to modify our automobiles without government interference.
In the US, any student like myself can afford to build something like my 280whp turbocharged Mazda and legally register, inspect, and insure it. Dumb twats with speakers blaring noise from the undercarriage of Mom's Subaru endanger all of that.
Broken, but that isn't the interesting thing about the picture. That photo was taken in the very short period where wings were attached to the car in a sensible fashion: feeding the load directly into the suspension uprights. Check it out, at least that broken rear wing in that photo. Today we can only imagine cars where the wheel rate requirements for mechanical grip are independent of the loads the aerodynamics feed into the chassis.
Is East Germany to Germany as Florida is to America? In other words, where in Germany would be the most likely place to find Mike Judge's Idiocracy playing out fifty years from now?
Where do you live?
I'd like to know so I can drop by your junior high and kick you really hard in the jewels. Can't let you reproduce; sorry mate.
Here is an idea: take this enthusiasm you have for absurd ideas and apply it to something that might actually be neat. Build an ECU and learn about fuel injection. Build an exhaust and learn about welding. Build a cool bonfire in the woods and get laid. FFS.
The rules require a relatively small restrictor, but allow quite a bit of freedom to maximize the flow through that orifice. Definitely not for show.
Hah. JPM use a teammate as a late braking technique? Never saw that one coming...
I feel bad for Scott Pruett...what a waste.
I feel bad for Scott Pruett...what a waste.
I live in....
New Mexico.
I'm sorry to hear that two dollars a pint is too rich for your blood.
One might think that at some point, someone in that restaurant would have thought "Gee, this beer can has something in it, maybe it says something about that on the package."
Not in the South.
By the way: Its Negra Modelo, you illiterate twat.
Sounds fun. Let me know if your Mom beats your Dad in the rasslin' match.
You do have a very valid point, and in actuality the average fuel economy of the US fleet fell considerably between the middle of the 1980s and the first half of this decade. Its sad, you point out that old American cars are heavy lumps of metal, but so are new American cars. The Japanese manufacturers wised up and built plants and design studios here to build super-sized lumps of blah specifically for the US market. Honda started selling the Jazz/Fit here, and most Americans see it as comically tiny...and Honda stuffed a bigger motor in it just for the US.
The smog forming pollutant emissions of the newer cars are dramatically lower than those of just ten or fifteen years ago. Most Americans are a long way from accepting that greenhouse gases are more than a news story, so the fact that our new cars spew more C02 than those of the 80's is largely irrelevant to most people. You are certainly correct that the life cycle costs to the environment in churning out new cars are high. But this is America, and outside of the Northeast and Pacific Northwest, no one recycles anything other than cars, so at least its good to see that cars get recycled pretty well.
I don't think incentives to extend the product life cycle are terribly wise in any case: Take a gander at the General Aviation fleet and consider the almost imperceptible pace of progress in that industry which has every incentive to extend product life and massive disincentives to innovate and improve. All brand new light aircraft come with crankcases that vent oil directly to the atmosphere, eschewing the dead-reliable and cheap PCV systems we've had for forty years improving engine durability and rather dramatically reducing emissions in automobiles. These ancient aircraft cost more in inflation adjusted currency than they did decades ago. In that time period automobiles have improved in astounding ways and gotten no more expensive.
Personally, I do adhere to the idea of making good use of something rather than tossing it away. My van is a 1994 with 200k miles, my MX6 is a 1993 with ~140k miles (and forced induction of my own manufacture) and while new cars are in some ways dramatically better, I don't want to trade stuff that works for much more expensive new products...I get most of the important benefits of technology a decade late at a tiny fraction of the cost. Bought the Mazda for $800 only 10 years old.
I suppose your 9.99 30 pack of Keystone Light should be served ice cold, so as to numb the tongue.
Most good beers should be served considerably warmer than ice cold. Some should be served even warmer.
Wow. You absolutely must be from some hole in the South. Apparently none of you can read. Either the can or the package it comes in has instructions on it.
http://home.howstuffworks.com/question446.htm
You might as well stick to piss beer though.
ugh. So sad to see someone waste their money on piss. Might as well buy a good mass produced American Lager and save your money. Not to say there aren't good beers from Mexico; I'm just 100% sure you aren't drinking them.
[off to one of my local breweries, where I'll have a couple tasty pints and some delicious nachos]
What is your point? NYS has some of the most restrictive firearms laws in the country. Our urban centers consistently enjoy less gun crime than say, Florida's. In fact, most of the crime guns used in NY come from VA, GA, AL, MS, and the Carolinas.
I absolutely do not suggest that we ban things that are dangerous. I suggest we ban things that are dangerous to others who can't reasonably avoid the risk presented to them. The spinners aren't that dangerous to the mouth-breather using them. Nor are the stupid wings the EU has banned.
Newsflash: every tire you purchase has met minimum federal standards for performance in the rain, amongst other requirements. Newsflash2: performance cat-back exhausts don't effect emissions. Headers and the like that haven't been certified by the manufacturer are already challenged in many places, and illegal for road use everywhere.
Right, and that is just fine for enthusiasts in my book. The average American is far too lazy to drive a forty year old automobile just to avoid an emissions standard. Most cars that can't meet emissions standards reliably get recycled quickly. Good for our economy, and a good incentive for people to buy newer and less dirty vehicles.
Of course, you could have just turned a wrench and fixed your truck yourself...jeebus, its a truck, and its a simple emissions test. Not that hard.
Someone else's poor taste has reduced your margins of safety, and there is very little you can reasonably do about it other than legislate their idiocy into a small corner. These things don't belong anywhere other than cheesy music videos and the vacuous town they come from.
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wah, wah, wah.
Yeah, its NY. We have a gazillion stupid laws, but we also have a gazillion laws that make living in NY a lot nicer when the SHTF compared to say, Louisiana.
Spinners are unsafe for other road users. Driver education texts worldwide suggest watching front wheels of vehicles approaching intersections to gain visual clues as to their intention to stop. These visual clues are very effective and spinners can cause a driver to do something unwise like stop short of an intersection when they are concerned about the confusing clues spinners present.
Spinners are universally heavier than the OEM wheel and tire combinations. This reduces all aspects of performance, possibly to levels below federal standards. If someone wants to install 24 inch wheels on a vehicle, they should be required to demonstrate the suitability of the non standard parts. You may not know this from wherever the hell it is that you live, but in much of America there is no requirement for cars to pass any sort of continuing safety standard like MOT. In the places where there is a PMVSI program, it is typically far less stringent.
I support plenty of unpopular legislation to force people to drive safer vehicles. Driving is where a majority of my risk exposure comes from, so I take this seriously.
Oh, yeah, spinners are ugliness defined.
I'm no prude, but posting stuff with T and A might be offensive to certain people, especially (and I didn't see what you posted) if the vid is just of the gratuitous NSFW sort.
This, on the other hand, is harsh reality. Censoring something like this from a discussion amongst adults would be truly disturbing.
Threads about this topic are conspicuously absent on several US centric forums I frequent.
As the Ford link points out, the Nextel Cup cylinder heads are very much for sale, very much in production, and are very likely to be found at a circle track near you. Well, maybe not you, but we've got hundreds of the things.
No, none of the major manufacturers build and sell tube frame racecars to the public.....what does this have to with them all being "the same" eh?
And on another note, if you don't think a small block can be shoved into "real cars" I suggest you get out more. Jeebus, I could more easily list the vehicles I haven't seen a small block chevy in....
Oh, the Monte Carlo is available with a SBC, as is the Impala. And the Charger. No, none of them share anything other than headlights (headlight stickers) but no, none of them are the same.
Yeah, OK.
Its a motorsport, but its certainly a more entertainment/spectacle driven version than the other world class series. Of course, that does make it more fun to watch, and it does make it a lot more successful financially.
I think the last time there was a Cup race without a lead change was 2000 in that weird restrictor race at Loudon. NASCAR certainly does make things interesting.
No, they aren't.
The "engine components" must all fit within a stringent set of rules, but they are certainly anything but "exactly the same."
The suspension components are likewise not "exactly the same" nor are the chassis. They must also comply with a stringent and limiting set of rules, but there are differences that would be obvious to a naked eyed layman like yourself between car 43 on the grid and car 1.
The Ford NASCAR motor is very much specific to Fords and is very much distinguishable from a Chevy NASCAR motor.
The fact that the motors share little with any current production motors does not imply that they are "the same" from brand to brand. They aren't.
You should really read more and disagree with people less. Its a "Camry", and the Toyota NASCAR motor was designed from scratch to be competitive with the current stuff without having any large unfair advantage due to new design. The basic motor design in NASCAR is always what you could call homologated by the manufacturer, and the details traditionally fall to the teams. The pole car may have ~100hp advantage on the guy picking up the 43rd spot even if they are using heads and blocks from the same manufacturer.
It may be stupid and a large waste of time and money that ends up requiring questionable rule changes to keep things competitive. It is not a "facade". There are very real differences between the different manufacturers' packages.
You've already convinced yourself there isn't, so this is sort of like talking to a brick wall. I'm not going to waste my time digging up the relevant history and data, you can do the research yourself if you decide to stop being thick.
It should be obvious that race shops in North Carolina didn't push the pushrod motor to 800hp plus without OEM assistance. It should be obvious that without manufacturer competition, the engine packages would be more reliable and less powerful, as is common in spec engine series.
http://media.ford.com/article_display.cfm?article_id=17425
There is a reason why Nextel Cup is one of the only forms of motorsport on earth that any sane person would call profitable. And really its because it isn't a motorsport at all; its a spectacle for entertainment of observers.
I'm not about to complain about how much it sucks from a sporting perspective; its immensely successful and therefore one of my best job prospects re: getting a motorsports engineering job down the road.
Ford and GM share the problem of awful dependency ratios in the North American theater.
This is because no one listened to the socialist union organizers who pointed out that the pension benefits were risks that would best be spread beyond one company by a government program.
Toyota supposedly has less than a dozen retirees in North America.
This is because no one listened to the socialist union organizers who pointed out that the pension benefits were risks that would best be spread beyond one company by a government program.
Toyota supposedly has less than a dozen retirees in North America.
Wow, that isn't true at all.
I guarantee you that the cars are different from team to team and manufacturer to manufacturer.
No, thats just a not the way it is.
They have derived most of their (little) profitability from pickup sales. Slower pickup sales have shown up on the bottom line in a big way. This does not mean that pickups aren't still the most profitable machines they sell in volume.
Without strong pickup sales, I don't think there has been one year in the last five that Ford would have posted a profit. They've gone from Taurus slingers to being thoroughly owned by the superior competition.
Are you kidding?
Thats one of the only aspects of their business that is profitable...
Because the temperature of the gears is variable and therefore the size is as well, you better design the thing with some lash or else you might have something unpretty happen when it all gets hot. So involute profile and all, they still make plenty of noise.
Consider how much lighter a gearbox can be made when it doesn't have large axial loads on the shafts.
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Foundry methods are still at least part art, and much of the information is proprietary to that industry. Sort of like tires.
http://www.casting-source.com/casting-chart.htm
The ugly tubular header on my Jeep was almost certainly cast using one of the sand casting methods. When you look at something much prettier like the pic you posted its probably produced using some fancier methods.
Check out this page describing the design, prototyping, and production of a turbo exhaust manifold:
http://www.flyinmiata.com/projects/new_turbos.php
Last edited by skiingman, .
Header and tubular exhaust manifold are in my experience two different things as referenced in the US.
My Jeep came with a cast tubular exhaust manifold that like most examples failed in short order. I replaced it with a header made by Borla from drawn over mandrel stainless tubing mandrel bent and welded together. Good headers for street cars are made from something like 321 "stainless". Later in the exhaust path (like cat back) 304 stainless is adequate. Fancy race cars use pure unobtanium, or something barely obtanium like Inconel.
The big problem with cast tubular exhaust manifolds is that cast parts with relatively thin walls and long tubes are bound to crack. The Jeep manifold is about three feet long, and the weight of all six exhaust tubes, the collectors, and the downtube to the cat is suspended from one flange. On newer engine designs they make more sense, like a 4 cylinder with a close coupled catalytic converter.
Oh hell no. Any aluminum based alloy would be a puddle on the ground.
Probably what Vain said, a "stainless" alloy of sorts. There is a process by which the austentitic stainless steels turn gold after heat cycling, but I can't remember exactly how it works. One of the alloying elements migrates towards the surface. This is why when you buy shiny silvery stainless exhaust headers they turn gold in short order when exposed to hot exhaust gases.
Here in the US at least we generally refer to "chromemoly steel" when talking about alloys like 4130 and 4340 or 300M. 4130 is what you build high performance tubular steel structures from, but I've never heard of anyone using it in an exhaust. 300M/4340 are the alloys people build things with really high levels of reversing stresses of, like halfshafts. 4340 has some nickel, but practically none compared to say 321 which also has niobium/titanium as a stabilizer. The chromemoly alloys probably aren't used because the "stainless" alloys maintain greater corrosion resistance and strength at very high temperatures.
Last edited by skiingman, .
I think they do use the throttle for gross adjustments.
The problem with using the throttle exclusively is that it is sort of a blunt instrument and the response time will be a lot slower than spark retard/cut. My understanding suggests the response time is longer in large part because of wall wetting. You can't really reduce throttle without reducing injector duration as well, so when you reduce throttle the trumpet walls dry up. IIRC, this is an even bigger issue in F1 than road cars because they purposely use as much wetted area in the intake trumpet as they can, whereas road cars shoot the fuel right at the back of the valve. Then when you need more power you reapply injector duration but the fuel flow to the combustion chamber is substantially less while the walls wet up again. This need for acceleration enrichment in transients must make the transient response somewhat slower, but I've no idea how much. There is also the issue that at peak power the injectors are very likely saturated...they do have to size the injectors so the thing will sorta idle...so maybe they don't have enough duration to get enough enrichment near the end of a corner exit without relying on spark cut to keep the fuel flowing.
One thing I would love to know is how much fuel they scavenge out the exhaust port using all that spark cut. Getting an extra lap on a fuel load could be very important strategically, so I wonder if a few kilos go overboard during a race.
Anyway, here is a 2000 Ford Patent that goes way beyond a single time constant model like X-Tau enrichment and actually takes into account the various fractions in the fuel. Neat stuff.
http://www.freepatentsonline.com/6067965.html
As I understand it, it was a practical decision. If you allow ECUs, you must hire someone to carefully inspect all the codebase for an ECU to ensure they haven't found a clever way to implement a form of traction control...and some ways I can think of would be very subtle. The teams each have half a dozen or more people working on the ECU code full-time.....it would cost the FIA a mint to hire enough people to inspect all that code thoroughly.
I'm studying to be an engineer...the first time I heard F1 TC in person I couldn't believe my ears. The exhaust valves in those engines must be made from pure unobtanium with magic sorcery heat treatments.
The way to make nice sounding TC would be with electromechanical valve lift control. If you can control lift cycle to cycle, you don't need to keep pumping fuel and retarding/dropping spark. Although the transient response might still not match spark drop with indirect injection because of the X-Tau port wetting functions. It doesn't appear that all the high CG weight that would entail amongst other problems is worth it at the moment...
In the meantime, I continue to be awed that they can get away with such brutal spark retard/suppression without breaking or melting things.
When road car clutches are modified to improve their peak torque capacity, they almost always get less civilized in the process. Allowing the user to make the clutch unrealistically nice is not simulation or fair racing. Its much like allowing ridiculous steering angles.
The race cars will have low MOI multidisc clutches. In the real world, powerful road cars being thrashed hard on tracks will have clutches that are anything but smooth and linear.
FGED GREDG RDFGDR GSFDG