The easiest route into motorsport is to use what already exists and then re-use it – for decades the use of a lightly modified production car or motorcycle has been a traditional way to start racing. In motorcycle road racing in particular there has been a shift away from bespoke racing machinery in recent years: where thoroughbred machines filled the paddocks of many race meetings in years past, now production-based racers are the norm. The use of production machinery has not,...
As a power unit engineer intent on extracting the maximum amount of power and fuel efficiency from a given volume of fossil fuel, without wishing to contradict Newton’s Second Law of Thermodynamics, the fact that any heat rejected is an admission of personal failure. In thermodynamic-speak, ‘heat’ equates to ‘work’, and in rejecting it to the coolant or exhaust gas the opportunity for more ‘work’ (and for that substitute ‘power’) is lost....
In 2010 I wrote a RET-Monitor article on assembled or ‘split’ crankshafts. In it I mentioned some of the applications of this type of crankshaft assembly, and discussed some of the advantages and disadvantages. There was a brief mention of the use of welding in the assembly of such crankshafts, but no further explanation. Although somewhat late in doing so, I’d like to explain more about the reasons for welding. The 2010 article mentioned that welding is sometimes used to...
I can’t think of anything more annoying than those little intermittent electrical faults. You know the type, the ones that cut the engine out halfway around the first lap of practice and then mysteriously disappear when you get the car back to the pit lane afterwards. At this point the older hands among us resign ourselves to a long day ahead. With modern diagnostics systems, problems with engine management, wiring or sensors are generally easy to diagnose, even when they’re...
In engine design sometimes parts cannot be made out of a single piece, which unfortunately means that seals and gaskets are necessary to keep the several fluids and air inside the engine, and keep dust, debris and water on the outside. I say ‘unfortunately’ because every gasket or seal is a weak spot in the engine. Seals are always made from a material with lower mechanical properties then the base block or head material, and the two mating surfaces always carry some risk of...