By Dave Coleman
The typical new tire introduction goes like this: The new Pazoosy Jaberwoky XR 745 Ultra R Super Star uses triple-inverted diagonal ply Inconel belts and a directional, asymmetrical tread pattern to optimize wet and dry grip, minimize road noise, increase your fuel economy and magnify your sex appeal. The sad truth is that neither the author, nor the PR team that fed him that line of technospew has any idea what triple-inverted diagonal ply Inconel belts are or what they do.
By Mike Kojima
During my trip to Germany to the 24 hours of Nurburgring last week I hung out with D Sport Magazine's publisher Mike Ferarra who was also traveling with us. Mike holds the same ideas about the green revolution as I do, perhaps even more extremely, hence last months "Green Sucks" issue of D Sport. Sharing rants, I realized that I forgot to finish my thoughts about being green here.
In parts one, two and three of our series of the inner workings of clutches, we covered how the three main parts of the clutch, the pressure plate, the disc and the friction material work. Now that you probably have more than enough information about how basic clutch systems work, we will go on and explain the workings of some of the more exotic clutches and delve into the world of flywheels a bit. Finally we will talk about a little bit of clutch trouble shooting.
By Sarah Forst
Hi there,
I have a problem with my car and I'm too embarrassed to ask my friends. My problem is that I usually over-torque bolts/nuts on my car and I need your help. One of my strut tower nuts is over-torqued and when I tried to remove that nut, it started to round pretty bad. I even went to Sears to buy a socket set that removes rounded bolts/nuts but with no success. The nut looks pretty bad. What can I do? Thank you for any help.
“Y.T.”
Got a difficult tech question? Email Sarah at asksarah@motoiq.com
By Mike Kojima, photos by Jeff Naeyaert
Thanks to our friends at Volk Wheels, the technical staff at MotoIQ had a special opportunity to get a close insider's look at BMW's uber-trick factory works BMW M3's that Rahal-Letterman racing campaign in ALMS's GT class. If you do a google search on these cars, you will not find much information on them because until now, no one that cares has gotten a really close look at these amazing machines. Most reports have pretty pictures of the cars and stuff about the "Story of Joy" marketing campaign that the cars are promoting but in typical MotoIQ form, we will take you inside like no one else has before.
Check out this sweet video of our Project Scion shot at the Long Beach Grand Prix. Great in car camera shots show exactly how hard it is to drive on a street course. Looking at how little the driver can see to aid in positioning the car and even work in traffic will give you reasons to respect what Dan Gardner and Robert Stout do! This video is a must see. If there is interest we can post some more raw in car video at a later date.
AEM gave us their latest version of a water methanol injection system and we agreed to install it on Project EVO IX. The AEM system uses a powerful high pressure, 6amp, 72 watt 150 psi pump. This is important because on a turbo car, the water system has to work against the boost pressure so a 20 psi windshield washer pump will actually not pump any water at all at 20 psi of boost unless the water tank is boost referenced. The pump also features chemical resistant fluroelastomer EDPM seals and a santoprene diaphragm so as not to be phased by ethanol or methanol in any concentration.
When we last worked on Project EVO X we installed a very comprehensive yet very streetable suspension system from KW and Whiteline. In continuing our theme for building the ultimate EVO X without compromising its daily driveabilty, we now turn our attention to the brakes, wheels and tires.
For more on Project EVO X Click Here!
By Martin Gonzales & Steve Rockwood
Last time you saw our G20 we were pounding the final nails on the coffin of its daily driven days with the addition of a roll cage. This time around we'll be going over a number of safety improvements to our cage and will also get into the final prep and finish of the interior.
Although Nissan hyped up the Sentra Spec-V as a performance sedan in its marketing campaign, in truth the car was a little more than a piece of basic transportation with a few performance enhancing bells and whistles. The car was cursed with a crude beam axle rear suspension and a McPherson strut front suspension whose geometry was designed around efficient packaging and relentless understeer rather than performance. Because of this, the Sentra is at a significant disadvantage in the handling department when compared to its FWD rivals, mainly Hondas, the Scion TC and even the Infiniti G20. Despite of all this, we at MotoIQ are always up to an engineering challenge and we set about to rework the SE-R's suspension to attempt to make it a little more competitive.
To read more about Project Spec-V click here!
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