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nakkecil22
I know Ferdinand Porsche used it on a GP car in 1932, but did he use it in the early 356? Or the early 911? Because I found that the Facel Vega HK500 had LSD.
I've wondered now, all of a sudden, since I thought LSD was new.
Answer
The main reason why manufacturers, to this day, have poured millions into auto racing is that it really is a testing ground for the production car industry; quantum leaps such as disc brakes would have taken decades more to hit the streets if Jaguar had not evaluated them on it's successful C-Type race car.
Getting power from the engine to the wheels of an automobile has provided a seemingly endless challenge for rear-wheel-drive, front-wheel-drive, 4-wheel-drive, front-engine, rear-engine, and mid-engine cars, longitudinal, transverse, vertical, slant, and flat engines, plus an amazing array of hardware in between. George Selden's notorious 1877 patent was for a front-drive carriage with a transverse 3-cylinder engine, anticipating the Chevy/Suzuki Sprint by over a century. When it comes to car designs, there are very few new ideas, just progressively successful adaptations of old concepts.
The heart of the drivetrain is the transmission. Because gasoline engines develop their torque over a very narrow speed range, several gears are needed to reach useful road speeds. (Steam engines and electric motors can be used in cars with no transmissions.)
The modern transmission was introduced by a pair of Frenchmen -- Louis-Rene Panhard and Emile Levassor -- in 1894. The engineers had invited the press to a demonstration of "the most revolutionary advancement to date in the brief history of the motor car industry." Unfortunately, the engine in their demo vehicle died, and they were reduced to giving a chalk talk on multi-geared transmission theory to a bored press corps.
One 19th-century newsman reported their invention as "more hocus-pocus from charlatans trying to cash in on the public's fascination with the new motor car." Maybe the inventors should have skipped the tech talk and just used the description later attributed to Panhard: "It's brutal, but it works!"
Cars of the time transmitted engine power to the wheels in a simple fashion that was easy for non-engineers to visualize. The engine drove a set of bevel reduction gears that drove a shaft and pulley. Leather belts extended between the pulley and geared wheels on an axle. One wheel, the small one, got the car going by meshing with a ring gear on one of the driving wheels. The big wheel then took over to get the car to hustle along at a top speed of 20 mph. If the car encountered a hill that it did not have the power to climb, the driver would come to a dead stop so he could engage the small wheel.
Thus did British auto pioneer F. W. Lanchester describe the transmissions in his cars: "One belt-driven HIGH gear that will go over everything and one bel-driven LOW gear in case the car had to climb a tree."
It was not until a year after their disastrous news conference that Panhard and Levassor regained their reputations. At this time, they had their first car ready for the press to drive. With it, they changed a lot of minds.
That 1895 Panhard-Levassor was revolutionary -- not the transmission alone, but the whole drivetrain layout. In fact, it has served as the prototype for most vehicles built in the 90 years since then. Unlike other cars of that day, it possessed a vertically mounted engine in the front of the vehicle that drove the rear wheels through a clutch, 3-speed sliding gear transmission and chain-driven axle. The only modern features missing from the setup were a differential rear axle and driveshaft. These came along three years later, in 1898, when millionaire-turned-auto-hobbyist Louis Renault connected a vertical engine with transmission to a "live" rear axle by means of a metal shaft.
The live rear axle -- which Renault adapted from an idea developed in 1893 by an American, C. E. Duryea -- was called the differential rear axle. It used a number of gears to overcome the problem of rapid tire wear, which resulted on turns with the "dead" axles used by all other carmakers. "Differential" referred to the ability of the unit to turn the outer driving wheel faster than the inner driving wheel, eliminating tire scuffing in turns.
By 1904, the Panhard-Levassor sliding gear manual transmission had been adopted by most carmakers. In one form or another, it has remained in use until recent times. Obviously, there have been improvements, the most significant being the invention of a synchronizing system that permits drive and driven gears to be brought into mesh with each other smoothly without gear clashing. This system allows both sets of gears to reach the same speed before they are engaged. The first of these synchromesh transmissions was introduced by Cadillac in 1928. An improvement to the design patented by Porsche is widely used today.
Between the time the sliding gear-transmission was introduced and the perfection of the synchromesh, there were other attempts at making it easier for the driver to shift gears. One was the planetary transmission in the 1908 Model T Ford. It had a central gear, called the "sun" gea
The main reason why manufacturers, to this day, have poured millions into auto racing is that it really is a testing ground for the production car industry; quantum leaps such as disc brakes would have taken decades more to hit the streets if Jaguar had not evaluated them on it's successful C-Type race car.
Getting power from the engine to the wheels of an automobile has provided a seemingly endless challenge for rear-wheel-drive, front-wheel-drive, 4-wheel-drive, front-engine, rear-engine, and mid-engine cars, longitudinal, transverse, vertical, slant, and flat engines, plus an amazing array of hardware in between. George Selden's notorious 1877 patent was for a front-drive carriage with a transverse 3-cylinder engine, anticipating the Chevy/Suzuki Sprint by over a century. When it comes to car designs, there are very few new ideas, just progressively successful adaptations of old concepts.
The heart of the drivetrain is the transmission. Because gasoline engines develop their torque over a very narrow speed range, several gears are needed to reach useful road speeds. (Steam engines and electric motors can be used in cars with no transmissions.)
The modern transmission was introduced by a pair of Frenchmen -- Louis-Rene Panhard and Emile Levassor -- in 1894. The engineers had invited the press to a demonstration of "the most revolutionary advancement to date in the brief history of the motor car industry." Unfortunately, the engine in their demo vehicle died, and they were reduced to giving a chalk talk on multi-geared transmission theory to a bored press corps.
One 19th-century newsman reported their invention as "more hocus-pocus from charlatans trying to cash in on the public's fascination with the new motor car." Maybe the inventors should have skipped the tech talk and just used the description later attributed to Panhard: "It's brutal, but it works!"
Cars of the time transmitted engine power to the wheels in a simple fashion that was easy for non-engineers to visualize. The engine drove a set of bevel reduction gears that drove a shaft and pulley. Leather belts extended between the pulley and geared wheels on an axle. One wheel, the small one, got the car going by meshing with a ring gear on one of the driving wheels. The big wheel then took over to get the car to hustle along at a top speed of 20 mph. If the car encountered a hill that it did not have the power to climb, the driver would come to a dead stop so he could engage the small wheel.
Thus did British auto pioneer F. W. Lanchester describe the transmissions in his cars: "One belt-driven HIGH gear that will go over everything and one bel-driven LOW gear in case the car had to climb a tree."
It was not until a year after their disastrous news conference that Panhard and Levassor regained their reputations. At this time, they had their first car ready for the press to drive. With it, they changed a lot of minds.
That 1895 Panhard-Levassor was revolutionary -- not the transmission alone, but the whole drivetrain layout. In fact, it has served as the prototype for most vehicles built in the 90 years since then. Unlike other cars of that day, it possessed a vertically mounted engine in the front of the vehicle that drove the rear wheels through a clutch, 3-speed sliding gear transmission and chain-driven axle. The only modern features missing from the setup were a differential rear axle and driveshaft. These came along three years later, in 1898, when millionaire-turned-auto-hobbyist Louis Renault connected a vertical engine with transmission to a "live" rear axle by means of a metal shaft.
The live rear axle -- which Renault adapted from an idea developed in 1893 by an American, C. E. Duryea -- was called the differential rear axle. It used a number of gears to overcome the problem of rapid tire wear, which resulted on turns with the "dead" axles used by all other carmakers. "Differential" referred to the ability of the unit to turn the outer driving wheel faster than the inner driving wheel, eliminating tire scuffing in turns.
By 1904, the Panhard-Levassor sliding gear manual transmission had been adopted by most carmakers. In one form or another, it has remained in use until recent times. Obviously, there have been improvements, the most significant being the invention of a synchronizing system that permits drive and driven gears to be brought into mesh with each other smoothly without gear clashing. This system allows both sets of gears to reach the same speed before they are engaged. The first of these synchromesh transmissions was introduced by Cadillac in 1928. An improvement to the design patented by Porsche is widely used today.
Between the time the sliding gear-transmission was introduced and the perfection of the synchromesh, there were other attempts at making it easier for the driver to shift gears. One was the planetary transmission in the 1908 Model T Ford. It had a central gear, called the "sun" gea
Can someone give me some good news about the whole global warming crisis?
metalgears
What's some latest breakthroughs or technologies that are helping us combat global warming. Whatever happened with the whole hybrid car thing. When the hell are they going to catch on?
Answer
Although many (but not as many as you might think) call me green and liberal, I actually quite like bike, cars and the technology that goes into them. I have also followed the developments in these for many years like the failed Vectrix motorbike and the Toyota Prius, While I don't agree with a lot of Jeremy Clarkson's (from Top Gear) ideas on many things, I do agree with him on the Prius it just doesn't work as an idea, it's to expensive, is not that green and has fuel economy (for all that cost) that is not as good a similarly sized European diesel car. But this is still new technology as an exercise in getting people used to the idea of electric (albeit partially electric) vehicles the Prius did have an effect. But now we are starting to see more serious vehicles like the Volt, were the Prius could cover only about 1km in fully electric mode, the Volt can cover more like 40 miles, kick in the small engine used to recharge the battery and it can cover more ground for less fuel than any diesel. Still expensive but not as much pound for pound as the Prius.
Both Mitsubishi & Nissan have now launched fully electric small cars, charged from the grid, such vehicles emit (even if the power is coal based) ~25% of the emissions of running a car directly on petrol to cover the same driving distance, a 75% reduction in Co2 emissions, If the power source is something greener like hydro or wind than the emissions are far far less.
A move away from coal to wind and solar is going to have other flow on effects, improved air quality, better quality of life for those with asthma or respiratory problems.
Deniers rather boring and repetitive claim is that "alarmists" want us to live the way we did in the old west or even cavemen days, when in fact it's is improved technology that will aid us in fighting the problem of AGW. Car for instance made of carbon fiber, make the car lighter, 50-60% lighter and even with a petrol engine the fuel saving are great, as a lighter car needs a smaller engine to travel at the same speed, a lighter car needs less breaking to stop, lighter suspension, a smaller fuel tank all are benefits of reducing the mass and a car with a smaller engine and fuel tank could have the interior space of a large car thanks to these size reductions, a car made of much lighter (but stronger) materials like carbon would also make a better electric car, as under it's skin the Prius is the same steel construction of the decades of cars that have gone before it, the Rocky Mountain Institute have already built such a car, the technology is not new and it works, but car companies are quite conservative and don't want to change and it take to economy of scale that major manufacturers get through building by the 100's of thousands to bring prices down. If you look at the cost of the motor car before ford introduced the production line. When cars where still hand built, such cars cost several times the average salary of the time, scale that to today and a Toyota Corolla would cost several hundred thousand dollars.
http://move.rmi.org/markets-in-motion/case-studies/automotive/hypercar.html
Although many (but not as many as you might think) call me green and liberal, I actually quite like bike, cars and the technology that goes into them. I have also followed the developments in these for many years like the failed Vectrix motorbike and the Toyota Prius, While I don't agree with a lot of Jeremy Clarkson's (from Top Gear) ideas on many things, I do agree with him on the Prius it just doesn't work as an idea, it's to expensive, is not that green and has fuel economy (for all that cost) that is not as good a similarly sized European diesel car. But this is still new technology as an exercise in getting people used to the idea of electric (albeit partially electric) vehicles the Prius did have an effect. But now we are starting to see more serious vehicles like the Volt, were the Prius could cover only about 1km in fully electric mode, the Volt can cover more like 40 miles, kick in the small engine used to recharge the battery and it can cover more ground for less fuel than any diesel. Still expensive but not as much pound for pound as the Prius.
Both Mitsubishi & Nissan have now launched fully electric small cars, charged from the grid, such vehicles emit (even if the power is coal based) ~25% of the emissions of running a car directly on petrol to cover the same driving distance, a 75% reduction in Co2 emissions, If the power source is something greener like hydro or wind than the emissions are far far less.
A move away from coal to wind and solar is going to have other flow on effects, improved air quality, better quality of life for those with asthma or respiratory problems.
Deniers rather boring and repetitive claim is that "alarmists" want us to live the way we did in the old west or even cavemen days, when in fact it's is improved technology that will aid us in fighting the problem of AGW. Car for instance made of carbon fiber, make the car lighter, 50-60% lighter and even with a petrol engine the fuel saving are great, as a lighter car needs a smaller engine to travel at the same speed, a lighter car needs less breaking to stop, lighter suspension, a smaller fuel tank all are benefits of reducing the mass and a car with a smaller engine and fuel tank could have the interior space of a large car thanks to these size reductions, a car made of much lighter (but stronger) materials like carbon would also make a better electric car, as under it's skin the Prius is the same steel construction of the decades of cars that have gone before it, the Rocky Mountain Institute have already built such a car, the technology is not new and it works, but car companies are quite conservative and don't want to change and it take to economy of scale that major manufacturers get through building by the 100's of thousands to bring prices down. If you look at the cost of the motor car before ford introduced the production line. When cars where still hand built, such cars cost several times the average salary of the time, scale that to today and a Toyota Corolla would cost several hundred thousand dollars.
http://move.rmi.org/markets-in-motion/case-studies/automotive/hypercar.html
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