I think it was British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan who is claimed to have first coined the phase, “You’ve never had it so good.” In a speech at a Conservative party rally the phrase referred to the fact that after 15 years of shortages and rationing, the post war economy was now looking rosy again. But for anyone involved in cam design the phrase may be as true in 2009 for him/her, as it was back in 1957 for the people of Britain. Today, with powerful user-friendly...
There are a very wide range of coatings which are employed in motorsport engines nowadays, and Formula One has been at the forefront of this development for many years. The moot point of excessive budgets is the reason that Formula One has been able in many cases to be a guinea-pig for these exciting technologies and, owing to this development coatings such as DLC are now finding widespread use on series production cars. The aim in these production car applications is to decrease friction...
There are several types of materials which are currently used for con rods – some for reasons of manufacturing, some for reasons of quality, but most have been specifically chosen owing to their particular combination of mechanical properties. This month we shall begin to look at con rod materials and, in those cases where they are chosen for reasons of properties alone, what makes each suitable for the particular application. In terms of circuit racing, the main types of materials...
In the previous article, we looked at the first stages of heat-treatment in the manufacture of crankshafts. Certainly in Formula One, the most popular heat treatment that will be mentioned will be nitriding. Nitriding, as most of you will know, is a surface treatment which, if specified correctly, should have no effect on the bulk of the material, often referred to as the core. When we specify the material for the crankshaft, we need to be careful not only to specify the composition of the...
This may mark me as some kind of ancient relic but at one time the height of engine sophistication was the part-throttle weakening device. Designed to improve fuel economy by running the engine lean when the carburettor throttle plate was away from wide-open throttle, this ingenious instrument was perhaps the pinnacle of engine management technology in its time. Injection systems were around but were predominantly mechanical in nature, very temperamental and gave very poor air fuel ratio...