Sudo Echo posted:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OSMCfPASImQ

This is still my favorite video of a Porsche trying to kill a man with balls the size of Jupiter. RUF test drivers are nuts.

Thelonious posted:

I'm lookin at rebuilding the (originally rated 195 horse 2bbl 283) or a 310 horse crate 350 for not too much more. It's a summer every day driver/cruiser. The extra ponies would be appreciated, but not all that much. Especially since in good tune the 283/powerglide combo actually cracked 18mpg at 60-65mph. The 283 would probably do even better with a 200r4 behind it, but...$$.

Sudo Echo posted:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OSMCfPASImQ

This is still my favorite video of a Porsche trying to kill a man with balls the size of Jupiter. RUF test drivers are nuts.

Sudo Echo posted:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OSMCfPASImQ

This is still my favorite video of a Porsche trying to kill a man with balls the size of Jupiter. RUF test drivers are nuts.

TheNakedJimbo posted:

Dunno if this qualifies as awesome or terrible: the vehicle graveyard at Chernobyl, where all the irradiated vehicles used in the cleanup and evacuation were laid to rest.

quote:

The Nissan ZEOD is all about experimental technology, and the 1.5-litre, three-cylinder
engine weighs just 40kg, produces 400bhp, and has pushed all the boundaries

Late in January, Nissan unveiled
the engine that will power the
revolutionary Nissan ZEOD (Zero
Emission on Demand) car at Le
Mans this year. Built at Ray Mallock
Limited (RML) in Wellingborough, UK, the
engine’s design, weight and power have all
been decided by extreme targets befitting of
an experimental machine.

The engine is a 1.5-litre, three-cylinder
direct injection turbo engine that weighs just
40kg, although with the turbo and exhaust
it is 46kg, just over half the 90kg weight
of the engine that powered the lightweight
DeltaWing engine in 2012. Despite the light
weight, the engine is capable of producing
380Nm of torque at 7500rpm, or 400bhp,
although its operating range will be closer to
360Nm of torque for efficiency.

The extreme weight saving extends to
all areas of the engine, from the crankshaft,
the block, the configuration and even the
electronics. Electronic suppliers, for example,
were selected by the weight of the product
rather than their applications.

‘We were given a powertrain target weight,’
says RML’s director of powertrain, Arnaud Martin.
‘Considering that we are carrying two e-motors,
a huge battery, and a gearbox which is capable
of housing all those items, there wasn’t much
weight left for the engine. We needed to design
the lightest possible engine. Secondly, we
wanted some efficiency targets, so what would
give us the most fuel efficiency? After that,
packaging, because there is hardly any room,
so we needed to fit it under the rear bodywork,
and they were the three driving parameters to
define what the engine needed to be, which
was three cylinders, 1.5-litre displacement.
We defined that using 1D simulation, trying to
define what best bore/stroke ratio would allow
us to achieve our power.’

RML’s team worked with precision
engineering firm Capricorn to create the monoblock
engine, which is mounted transversely
and which uses 1.2 bar boost pressure. The
ICE will have to run for 13 laps at Le Mans,
using all the rear braking effect to charge up
the batteries, which will then
power the car for a 14th lap.
This means that the internal
combustion engine will therefore
have to switch off for around four
minutes, plus a minute in the pits.

‘The EV motors and the
controllers are still linked to the
cooling system of the engine,’
says Martin. ‘The target is to
get 50 degrees water in EV
mode, and 80 degrees in ICE
mode. You basically keep your
components warm. You have a
cool down and warm up strategy
while you are out on track and
then you have switch over
strategies between EV and
ICE, which allows you to go to
EV while still cooling down the
ICE until it is cool enough to be
switched off. When you reach the
end of the EV lap you restart it,
warm it, and then at the end of
the lap you switch over.’

The engine uses just 75
litres per minute of water for
cooling all the systems, and
the water is fed through two
radiators. The right-side radiator
cools the battery and the
intercooler, while the left-side
radiator is shared between the
electrical motors, controllers,
internal combustion engine,
and gearbox. RML has reached
an agreement with French oil
manufacturer Total to develop
oils for all aspects of the car,
from grease for the driveshafts
to battery fluids and engine and
gearbox oils, to reduce friction to
improve overall efficiency.

The packaging of the engine
is dictated by the space available
in the engine bay, and even the
design has the same influences.
The engine is tilted backwards
by five degrees and the plenum
chamber specially crafted to fit
around the bulkhead of the car,
and even then it leads to a 4mm
gap between the two.

‘There is nothing from the
DeltaWing engine because if
you took the same concept, you
would not be light enough,’ says
Martin. ‘We worked at something
new, something extreme to
hit the 40kg of weight. As a
result, everything has been
re-engineered, and re-thought.
The crank is totally different
– there is no flange at the end
to attach the flywheels. It is all
done on the diameter of the pins,
because as soon as you put on a
flange, the weight increases.

‘There are a lot of things that
we have never thought about
using before, and as a result of
this you could bore through the
centre of the crank and remove all
the material, and you are left with
a hole, so at that point you do
need to stop the oil coming out.
But it can be done with aluminium
or plastic bungs. Technically, if
you remove those bungs you can
see right through the engine.

‘The crank, with tungsten
balance weight, is 5.8kg
compared to the DeltaWing which
was 8.3kg. It is shorter, but you
could take any engine from four
to three, if you cut a middle
cylinder – that saves you 17 per
cent of weight. Even with the
new crank concept we have saved
30 per cent, and it has been the
same for the entire design.

‘The detail in which we have
gone to remove weight is mad.
I had an engineer spend three
days trying to remove a golf
ball size of material from the
cylinder head, just to be able
to hit the target of 7kg.

‘We have implemented a way
of removing lots of material from
the side of the head and then
we literally have 1mm of carbon
covering it all and keeping the
oil in. The plenum is as light as
possible, so is mainly carbon. It is
small in volume just to be able to
fit it in the car, and it has a weird
shape to be able to put it in the car.
There was no other place to put it,
which is why the throttle body is
above everything. You have to be
uncompromising and you finish up
with nothing unnecessary!’

One of the key problems with
the three-cylinder engine is the
vibration. By the nature of its
design, the engine vibrates from
side to side, and with its light
weight, the effect of the vibrating
force is felt all the more. ‘It is quite
violent, because the heavier the
part, the less you feel the vibration
as it is absorbed by the momentum
of the powertrain,’ says Martin. ‘It
is vibrating rather a lot. It doesn’t
seem to be such an issue. So far, it
seems to have withstood the test.
The battery is vibration insulated,
so it is not rigidly mounted in the
chassis – it is able to isolate itself
from the vibration.

The engine is mounted
transversely due to the packaging
issue. ‘In a confined space, we
managed to fit the engine, gear
cluster, differential, throttle body,
clutch and two e-motors are
housed,’ adds Martin. The turbo
sits between the differential and
the emotors, creating an extremely
hot environment. RML has created
its own heat shielding which it
believes works well.

The electronics for the entire
car are serviced by a single ECU,
provided by MoTeC but with
software written in-house at
RML by a code-writing specialist
brought in for the project. This
single ECU controls the DRS
system, differential locking, the
engine, and the automatic brake
balance and the EV systems
(e-motor controller and battery).

While brake-by-wire systems,
used in Formula 1 this year, are
not allowed, there is an electronic
element to the braking system.
By regulation, there has to be
a hard link between the pedal
and the brakes themselves,
but with such a large amount
of regeneration possible in the
entire car, braking is proving to be
a particular problem.

‘When you do regenerative
braking, there is a point where
you cannot recover any more
energy,’ says Martin. ‘This is
because the battery is full or
you need to reduce the pressure
because of a driver request in
these conditions, – you need to
be able to shift the brake balance.
We do that by a brake-by-wire
system, which allows you to
reduce the pressure on the
rear brake without changing the
pedal feel for the driver.’

With all of this in mind,
there is also the issue of
running the car on EV alone
throughout the lap. The first
tests of the new technology
were difficult for the team,
but testing is now well under
way and the team has made
great strides in preparation for
the car’s debut at the Le Mans
test day on 1 June.

Boaz MacPhereson posted:

Four hundred loving horsepower.

West SAAB Story posted:

Rassokha? Yeah. Well, at least we're working on another blanket cover for it (Chernobyl), but instead of a cheesecloth metal cover that should last 20 years, we're working on one that should last 100. Or, so it is said. Oh, yes, this has been in talks since the Clinton era. Has anything been done? Not really.

TheNakedJimbo posted:

The thing that kills me about this video is that if you watch his hands, you see him frantically sawing back and forth at the steering wheel like a possessed toddler, but if you watch out the windshield and ignore the rest of what's going on, it just looks as smooth as could be.

Unreal.

A3th3r posted:

modified Ferarri FXX

TheNakedJimbo posted:

The thing that kills me about this video is that if you watch his hands, you see him frantically sawing back and forth at the steering wheel like a possessed toddler, but if you watch out the windshield and ignore the rest of what's going on, it just looks as smooth as could be.

Unreal.

Dunno if this qualifies as awesome or terrible: the vehicle graveyard at Chernobyl, where all the irradiated vehicles used in the cleanup and evacuation were laid to rest.

Seat Safety Switch posted:

Holy poo poo, that thing is something else. I wonder what the pistons themselves look like.

Boaz MacPhereson posted:

Four hundred loving horsepower.

GentlemanofLeisure posted:

Pretty sure that's just a 458 Italia given the Liberty Walk treatment. The look's not for everyone.

TheNakedJimbo posted:

The thing that kills me about this video is that if you watch his hands, you see him frantically sawing back and forth at the steering wheel like a possessed toddler, but if you watch out the windshield and ignore the rest of what's going on, it just looks as smooth as could be.

BraveUlysses posted:

This will always be the undisputed best 'ring video of all time.

Sudo Echo posted:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OSMCfPASImQ

This is still my favorite video of a Porsche trying to kill a man with balls the size of Jupiter. RUF test drivers are nuts.

Fart Pipe posted:

Fire breathing dragon

Ghost Farts posted:

May I present a video of a Citroën AX diesel laying down a sub-10 minute time on the ring? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mBFjHjm0O5M

The thing is mostly stock, too. It's insane.

e: Dude is not wearing a helmet, either. I can only assume it's to save weight. He had been working on that time for years, too, regularly driving to the Ring from France, carrying replacement engines and a sleeping bag in the car. Talk about dedication.

Motronic posted:

That's what "smooth" looks like when you're driving to the limit.

And nothing in there is "frantic". It's entirely calculated and correcting for what's going on. That dude knows how to drive. 99.9% of the population would have swapped ends on an 80s 911 trying to push it even half that hard (I sure have).

Slavvy posted:

Pretty sure a ZX14 engine with a turbo on it would make the same power:weight, if you included the gearbox of the car. It isn't that amazing. Cool crankshaft though!

Ghost Farts posted:

I have no idea what this feature does, but I am going to assume that it displays a fedora being tipped on the screen while mumbling "M'lady".

Fayez Butts posted:

It fingers your butthole

j3rkstore posted:

Rev. Dr. Moses P. Lester posted:

I dunno, I'd bet a ZX14 engine would weigh a lot more than 100lb. And I'd bet it's not too reliable with a turbo.

I'm confused about the vibration thing though, I thought that triples were actually quite balanced.

GentlemanofLeisure posted:

Pretty sure that's just a 458 Italia given the Liberty Walk treatment. The look's not for everyone.

dreesemonkey posted:

To keep with the current theme, a guy I follow on facebook is in the middle of a sweet 1970 bronco project





Dude's awesome garage build at garage journal (his "pet project" outgrew his personal garage and it's becoming a full fledged business)
http://www.garagejournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=147690

A3th3r posted:

Yeah you're right, few cars look good that way... that's one of a half dozen ferarris like that.


Supposedly these Mercs can do 300hp relatively comfortably... euro muscle car! When I lived in Helsinki my plan was to eventually do that. I saw a couple of 'Mersus' done up like that, pretty cool imo.

Slavvy posted:

It's a 599, you can see the gap between the c pillar and the glasshouse. IIRC only the Fiorano has that.