This a motor that I didn’t know existed until late last year - and is a great use of an engine designed for other purposes. Motoring Weekly recently wrote about Coventry Climax racing engines and they repurposed water pump engines that went into cars! Late last year I was looking at Karting New South Wales with a view to joining their board. Sadly I didn’t get on it, however … [Read more...]
Flying Cars
I recently commented on the Chinese automaker, Geely, buying Lotus and a company called Terrafugia who make “flying cars” and I wondered if we would see an electric version. The idea of a flying car has been around for decades and is a logical connection to road transport considering that the aero and auto industries were born at the same time and share materials and … [Read more...]
Boxer & Flat Engines
Like the W formation engine discussed recently, the flat engine has been around since the very early years, in fact Karl Benz used a boxer engine in his first car! There is actually a subtle difference between a flat engine and a boxer engine: both are flat however a boxer engine uses horizontally opposed cylinders where the corresponding pistons on each side reach top dead … [Read more...]
Continuously Variable Transmissions
The Continuously Variable Transmission (CVT) was first patented in Europe in 1886 and a US patent was taken out in 1935. Automotive Engineering Online is quoted as saying that Leonardo Da Vinci drew a sketch of a CVT in 1490 and a rudimentary version appeared on the Clyno (a British car) of 1923. The concept of CVT is to make an infinite number of gear speeds by using a … [Read more...]
Four Wheel Steering
The concept of all 4 wheels steering has been around for many years. I first heard about it on an early model Honda Prelude, where the rear wheels would turn as well as the fronts. At slow speeds, the rear wheels are turned in the opposite direction of the front wheels. This can lessen the turning radius by approximately 20%. At faster speeds on the highway, the rear wheels … [Read more...]