Latest Articles
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Technobabble: Help Us Help You Avoid Tetanus!
by Dave Coleman
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Technobabble - Rotard Heaven
by Dave Coleman
For about a decade, the rotary engine looked ready to take over the world. Dozens of companies were developing the powerplants in an effort to exorcise the rotary's demons and realize the potential of its simple concept and compact proportions. Almost all of them failed, and the whole exercise was relegated to a historical footnote.
Here, in a small museum about an hour south of Frankfurt, is a glimpse into just how big and complex that footnote should be.
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by Dave Coleman
How the Irvine company, the Emperor of Japan, and your bumpstop-thumping street machine blew up my girlfriend’s Sil80.
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by Dave Coleman
Electric cars are commuting appliances. With limited range and excruciating re-charge times, they are good for little more than your soul-crushing drive to and from work. Sure, commuting to work may be all you ever do, but that's not the point. You want to imagine that you'll actually decide to go somewhere fun, and gasoline enables this fantasy life. But in MIT's magical fantasy world (which they say they can deliver in less than 5 years), electric cars can do that too. Drive 100 miles, stop, plug in, take a leak, and keep going.
Not enough to get you excited? Try this: How about a turbocharged engine that runs on 87 octane swill, has 13:1 compression, and runs 20 psi of boost. The merry nerds from Massachusetts are working on that, too. It's almost enough to make you want to go to school. Almost... | | 
By Dave Coleman
In August, when the car first started mysteriously losing coolant and fouling spark plugs, I had a rally coming up. I only had two months, at that point to get it done. By the book hours most repair shops use to charge labor, 2 months is plenty of time. But if I changed the headgasket, I'd have to pull the cams to get to the head bolts, remove the front cover, pull the head, see what was warped and fix it, clean things off, and put everything back together in the right order. I'd have to actually get a service manual. And find my torque wrench. And clean my workbench.
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The epidemic of bad driving in America starts with your mom, or whomever it was who napped through the critical job of teaching you how to drive. I've been shocked by the kinds of people I catch downshifting with a lurching clutch drag. Hard-core car enthusiasts, drag racers, auto executives, automotive journalists… the guilty are all around us. |
 
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