One of the skills of a race driver, indeed any driver, years ago was that of changing gear. Being able to change gear quickly and accurately, taking into account the vehicle speed and the ratio being selected, and doing so time after time without any unruly noise or damage to the gears/dog rings was a skill to be proud of - and not only prevented damage to the gearbox but won races too. Indeed, engineers who regularly stripped and maintained the gearboxes of the great but only two-times...
In this month’s article we will take a look at how engine designers arrive at the number of cylinder head bolts in their engine designs and the compromises they need to make in getting there. Looking at a broad range of engines, not just high-performance race engines, one sees a wide variety in the number of cylinder head bolts in the different designs. Look a little further the reasons for this are obvious. Typically, the number of bolts is a consequence of some other,...
Almost 25 years ago, when World Superbike first started, the machinery was pretty much showroom-standard 750 cc four cylinders and 851 cc twins. When 500 cc Grand Prix bikes had 50% more power than a superbike, 120 bhp was very respectable from an exotic four-stroke 750 cc four-cylinder such as a Yamaha OW-01 or a Honda RC30. The latest World Superbikes are still based on production machinery, but are highly specialised, and much closer to Grand Prix machinery in terms of power and lap...
The entire racing powertrain, from the engine, through the clutch to the transmission, is littered with threaded fasteners. Studs and bolts are responsible for holding together everything from the most mundane unstressed cover plate to the most highly stressed cyclically loaded fasteners such as those found on con rods, crankcase main bearing studs and cylinder head studs. For every bolt there is a corresponding female thread, and for every stud there are two female threads. Greater...
It seems strange to think that 30 years ago electronic fuel injection systems as we know and understand them now were really only in their infancy. Computers of course were really only for the ‘nerds’ in our midst, and anyway were generally too large, not sophisticated enough or too slow to handle the information needed to process them. If you can remember back that far, the carburettor was king, and some pretty sophisticated versions were available. But the theory was simple....