If the ECU can somehow be considered as the brain of the engine then I guess the wiring harness is roughly equivalent to the rest of the nervous system. In humans and other animals, receptors in the skin send impulses to the brain via dendrites and the nerves. These impulses are then reconfigured and sent back to the muscles to produce some form of movement. And while great care is taken to ensure that the body's nervous system is not overstressed or abused, likewise shouldn't we...
Isn't it strange to think that what we regard today as being 'obvious' wasn't quite so obvious in the early days of race engine design. Take the head gasket, for instance. Today's young engineers are almost conditioned to think in terms of separate castings for the combustion chamber and valves, and that of the cylinder-supporting structure. But in days gone by, the very idea of having separate components bolted together with apertures where engine coolant, oil and...
It's an obvious thing to say, perhaps, but while an engine has to contain lots of moving components in order to function properly, it also contains many parts that are not intended to move at all. For example, cylinder heads and crankcases are not intended to move, but they are still in motion. In this article, 'motion' means that by introducing loads to the structure of these components, continuous deformation will take place, depending on the magnitude of that loading. Where...
You've just reached the midpoint of the season, your engine is a little 'tired' and so you send it back for a general rebuild to tide you through to the end of the year. As a 'spec' engine, identical to others in the formula, the builder will no doubt strip it and check it for wear on the valve seats and tappets before rebuilding with new bearings and gaskets. But what does he do about the piston rings and cylinder bore? The engine may be slightly down on a cylinder...
Although using engines that, in the words of TRD's Lee White are "rooted in 1960's architecture", much about NASCAR is right up to date, employing modern design trends and manufacturing methods. NASCAR appeals to a specific audience, who are perhaps less technically motivated than those who follow MotoGP or Formula One, yet it attracts and retains a lot of the very best engineers in racing - precisely because of the technical challenges that the pushrod V8 engines present....