Alf James Rudolph Lysholm appears to be the least known engineer who developed a piece of kit that can now be found in many different applications: planes, trains, automobiles - even refrigeration units! In fact, by far the majority of web sites that discuss Lysholm have simply cut and paste a very small item from Wikipedia. His life though, was far more than just a couple of … [Read more...]
IFR Aspid Supersport
I first heard about the IFR Aspid Supersport back when Motoring Weekly was in version 1 and formatted as a podcast through iTunes during 2009. The car was designed and built in Spain by a team lead by an ex rally engineer whose resume includes Prodrive and the Mitsubishi World Rally team. The Supersport was the first development car that the company built and was kind of a … [Read more...]
Volvo Polestar
A few months ago, Volvo announced it was to acquire Polestar, a tuning company. Many other marques have gone down this path in the past, the notable ones being Mercedes-Benz who bought AMG, FIAT who bought Abarth and Renault who bought Alpine. Volvo being the odd one out because their tuner starts with a "P"! Other manufacturers have created their own performance lines: BMW … [Read more...]
Turbochargers
The full name of the turbo is "turbo-supercharging" and uses the same concepts as a supercharger – the main difference is the use of exhaust gases to turn a turbine rather than the crankshaft. The turbine is connected directly to a compressor impeller providing the motion to build the boost. Clearly as the engine increases the rpm, the volume of gases increases which in turn … [Read more...]
Superchargers
This technical topic is about the supercharger designed for maximum power from an internal combustion engine, not the "superchargers" that Elon Musk is building to provide fast charging for his Tesla cars. Like many technologies that are in use today, supercharging an internal combustion engine has been around for over 100 years! The concept is quite simple: take an engine … [Read more...]