The veil of secrecy which has surrounded Formula One’s most successful KERS system was partially lifted recently when Zytek Automotive were unveiled as motor and power electronics supplier for the Formula One KERS system as fitted to the 2.4 litre Mercedes-Benz FO 108W V8 engine.The KERS system was developed and brought up to racing standard in 24 months by Mercedes-Benz High Performance Engines in collaboration with Daimler / Mercedes-Benz Research & Development. Zytek were one of...
For all of its engine bearing needs in NASCAR Camping World Truck Series (CWTS) engines, PME Engines of Mooresville, North Carolina has researched heavily to meet its main and rod end requirements. On a mile-and-a-half oval like Chicagoland Speedway, where the CWTS raced the final weekend of August, PME owner Mark Smith acknowledged that he is “always fighting temperatures because they never lift here. They’re running wide open throttle all the time, so the temperatures are...
If you were to compare an engine of today with one built, say for instance 50 years ago, no doubt much will have changed. Cylinder head layout, block construction, pistons, rods and cranks have all changed in their various ways. But the one component that is outwardly very similar, having changed very little in that time, is the camshaft. That is not to say there has been little development over the years. Hollow cams, smaller cams, bigger cams, even multiple cams per valve have all been...
Whilst DLC seems clearly to be the favourite coating at the moment, there are some applications where it isn’t necessarily favoured, for various reasons. One area where ‘traditional’ DLC coatings have struggled is in applications where temperatures are significant. The DLC coating begins to degrade at quite a low temperature in comparison with other coatings, such as titanium nitride (TiN) for example. Many of the more common and traditional coatings were developed years...
Last month, we started to look at materials which are being used for con rods. The article looked at the use of aluminium, which finds widespread use in drag-racing. This month we shall turn our attention to engines with less than 5000 hp and con rods in another low-density material: titanium. Titanium has long been used as a con rod material for racing, and its benefits have been slowly taken up by road car and motorcycle manufacturers in the last couple of decades, although this has only...