I think it was the great Liverpool F. C. manager Bill Shankly who once professed that football wasn’t a matter of life and death – it was more important than that. But strangely enough, the words – ‘football’, ‘life’, and ‘oils’ have all come together recently making substantial improvements to gearbox durability especially those with sequential changes.Transmission oils are similar, in many ways, to your typical engine crankcase product;...
Love them or hate them, the two-stroke engine is in many ways far superior to its 4-stroke rival. Specific power, specific weight, manoeuvrability, cost of manufacture, ease of maintenance, durability, NOx emissions and even fuel consumption in the case of smaller engines, can be far superior to its less controversial 4-stroke brother, but why then don’t we see more of these engines in competition? With one strike for power and one to wear it out as opposed to one of power and three...
Today, we are told, is the beginning of the Low Carbon Age. The Stone Age, the Bronze Age and the Iron Age have come and gone while the Fossil Fuel Age, if you believe many of the pundits, is slowly to be phased out. Ahead of us, or so it would appear, lies the future of maintenance-free electric motors and expensive failing batteries. Setting aside the practicalities of how we actually generate this low carbon electricity, I would just like to point out that even as I write there is one...
The subject of fuel additives is always a thorny subject in motorsport. As a competitor, there are always concerns associated with the ‘unfair’ advantage but if the vehicle is a historic one and designed to run on fuels that are no longer available, then the issues can run even deeper. All gasoline fuels contain additives. Whether this is to reduce oxidation in the form of inhibitors or metal deactivators to minimise corrosion, these are added in small amounts to ensure that the...
There is increasing evidence to suggest that the real fuel of the future, especially for motor sports, is methanol. Forget all this business about electric vehicles, these, in my opinion have no real place in mainstream motorsport. Alright, electric motors can pack a mean punch and I’m sure one could derive some kind of capricious pleasure out of racing these types of machines but for raw driving experience, not forgetting spectator appeal you simply cannot beat the sound and spectacle...