I want to move to Swindon, mainly because they have removed all their speed cameras :)

 

Just buy a car registered in a different country and don't slow down for cameras in the first place :p

I like cars. :smiley: Jaguars in British racing green... now those are nice green cars.

Just buy a car registered in a different country and don't slow down for cameras in the first place :p

 

The police have powers to stop those type of cars and march you to a cash point to pay fines now ;)

Yep,so that's out the door.

 

 

Take it too a racetrack david,and keep the streets safe.

What to thruxton (fastest circuit in the UK) and where the British Touring Cars Championship is this weekend and is about 5 minutes away from my house?

Yup,there you go..:dozey:

What to thruxton (fastest circuit in the UK) and where the British Touring Cars Championship is this weekend and is about 5 minutes away from my house?

 

Thruxton and a Yamaha R1:D,if only I had a bike Licence and wasn't short:cry:

Yeah you might look a right tool going there with a 1.9 diesel skoda.

:P

 

Does it's job on a day-to-day basis and is a good motorway/dual carriageway cruiser (which is useful because I've been up and down the A303/M3 to basingstoke a few times in the last week)

I don't know about motorway cruiser...:rolleyes:

is that because you don't have motorways in New Zealand?

 

Also is it true that instead of horsepower, power is measured in sheeppower? ;) (love ya)

:smartass:

 

 

 

You have just lost what little respect i had for you...:lol:

Back to the topic..?

I'm having a brainstorm of sorts.

Thinking about cylinder walls, compression ratios, strength of materials, heat-reflective coatings, etc.

The less heat lost to the walls, the more efficient the engine, and the less cooling issues to deal with - but - what is there that has a small coefficient of expansion (or that expands evenly with the larger wall material, if used as a cylinder liner), and excellent heat-reflective properties, as well as limits the wear and friction?

Tall order to fill - Gold comes to mind as an excellent heat-reflective and high temp metal, but that would be one mighty expensive auto.. graphite = excellent lube and heat properties, but expansion issues, and general softness makes it wear fast.. composites might be the best, and maybe the best approach is to engineer a material at the atomic level, and then make it (from sintered compressed materials), and bombard the surface with certain elements to harden it.) Wear issues and ring seating issues..

Basically, very high compression ratios help a great deal, and the longest power stroke makes best use of the gas expansion. Since the exaust can be neutralized with bases and water, less need to worry about emissions..

Another approach is using lighter materials, regenerative brakes, and less engine, more batteries. But most practical technologists say the engine is here to stay, and it's pretty good with energy-dense liquid fuels, still a mainstay for years to come.. Since roughly 83% eff. is lost right in the engine, this seems the logical startpoint.

The McClaren F1 used gold in it's engine bay

Well, that's all pretty and everything:laugh3: - I suppose, one wouldn't need much of a light then to work on the engine...

What I'm getting at is a problem with thermodynamics - which is at the heart of engine efficiency. Since 30% is a long ways from ideal, there's a lot of space for improvement in this department. Gold is the best heat reflector I know of (hence it's use as a heat shield for spacecraft), and I thought maybe if the cylinder walls were heavily gold plated, then the engine would gain dramatically in efficieny. Trouble is the gold would wear off! Unless it were either hardened (nitride ion bombardment?) or impregnated with graphite. Still, this would require a fair amount of gold, and add to vehicle expense; still, it's just plating, so even heavy plating might run roughly 30 USD - not that much of a price increase. Question is: how long before the plating wears off, and what would be the energy savings??

There was a time when some US auto makers tried hard chrome piston rings, but they were hard to seat, so the idea lost favor.. Not an area I am fully aware of, but it seems to me that if one were to use a gold-chromium alloy & heavy, heavy plating on the cylinder walls, and fairly hard rings, and then machine things to a higher level of precision, the better fit would reduce wear, and the hardness prevent wear, and also reflect heat back into the cylinder where it belongs.. maybe get more lubricant to the top of the bore, so when the cylinder 'fires' then the expanding rings would have a more slippery surface to slide down.. what if the rings were made up of hard outer metal, but filled with a graphite alloy core; maybe a porus alloy, so oil could be soaked up near the bottom of the piston travel, and then used to lubricate near the top?

Perhaps a minor point compared to compression ratio or piston travel for better thermodynamic efficiency..

Chuckly, darling, -please....time to come out of the shed and back into the light.

the future lies with the hybrids which run on batteries but the batteries are charged by a small petrol engine/plugging into the grid.

Perhaps so, but the future may also lay with pure electrics, or with hybrids that employ supercapacitors instead of batteries. And I favor a resurgence in the bicycle myself..:P

Thinking about where the energy goes, hot exhaust manifolds = huge losses in engine efficiency. But also, a lighter vehicle requires less energy to accelerate and less heating of brakes during deceleration. So, to make vehicles both light and safe is the challenge - I think we have the answers, it's the implementing that lags. Auto makers drag their feet because it requires risk (newer designs) and retooling (a big expense), but it's worth it. Honeycomb materials, composites with less environmentally damaging polymer "resins", and smarter cooling for cars is in the works.

Well....we just bought a 2009 Toyota Prius and I love it. I love that it gets 45 mpg. Oh...and it's a sleek black color.

Neat!!:) I wish I had one too - someday something like it. 45 is pretty good, but you can get even better with an added solar panel (I have seen one or two after-market units that attach to the roof).

I'm still thinking all auto engines need redesigning, though. At 25% thermal efficiency, there's room to double or even triple the efficiency. A thought had occurred to me - with proper balancing and all, why not just use a large single-cylinder engine, and eliminate the complexity and added friction of a multi-cylinder power plant, if it's used for charging storage devices? What was wrong with single cylinder engines used in cars was the lack of uniform power output, so the cars would kinda chug & 'lurch', they needed big flywheels, and since the engines were small and low-compression, didn't offer much power. Seems that if it's hooked to a generator, and balanced properly, a really big single cylinder engine would be advantageous, and with today's balancing and engine vibration-absorbing systems, not a problem. Power pulses could be timed with the generator's power output, and then rectified for a smooth output electronically. Maybe combustion gasses wouldn't be uniformly mixed in a large single-cylinder?? Hmm.. an interesting idea, and no doubt someone else has already thought of it..

I like the idea of a reciprocating generator free piston engine as well - less linkages, and direct power generation, but perhaps tricky to regulate..:thinking:

Well....we just bought a 2009 Toyota Prius and I love it. I love that it gets 45 mpg. Oh...and it's a sleek black color.

 

Your a planet murderer.

It's not really green, but I dislike those cars where the drivers have fitted after-market high-intensity bulbs to cars not designed for them, so when they follow you as the car goes up and down over the various bumps in the road the lights flash up and down as well.

 

*goes off grumbling*

Do you prefer a car with a 'classic' automatic box, a manual box or one of those semi-automatic boxes?

I prefer an infinitely variable transmission - friction disk with drive wheel.. I think while standard designs are nice, it's good to look ahead - a small, efficient, power plant and large battery and capacitor storage, plus an electric with a computer/solenoid shifting transmission for efficiency makes sense.

But the engine; for long distance, the engine will be with us - and that's where the big wheel of cheese is!:P Perhaps one cylinder makes balancing difficult, even though it can be done - less moving parts is always better for wear and reliability, but perhaps two cylinders opposed offers perfect balance if the crankshaft and push rods fit neatly like a boot in a stirrup. Still some counterweights required to get it just right, but close to perfect.

Power pulses - the whole reason we went to the multi-cylinder engines was to get the smoother power output, and quickly increase engine power - 1900 thinking. But if the engine is dedicated as a generator, then who cares if the mechanical power output is "smooth"? Electronics obsoletes this requirement.

The other questions are with stronger cylinder walls and pistons, where higher compression makes heads hotter and pressures soar. The reason we go with cast iron is the graphite lubrication provided; aluminum is soft enough to seat the rings as well. But it seems to me that this whole business of "seating" is really a "fitting" by wearing one metal object into another (rings into cylinder walls), and if the cylinders, pistons, and rings were very, very close tolerances (perfect round and cylindrical), then very hard, smooth materials would be ideal. And I still think gold plating, especially the head, upper cylinder walls, and piston top would add enough to recoup the cost quickly. A few microns of gold is miniscule, but being the best heat-reflective metal, worth the effort. Combining all the advantages of these things, plus full expansion travel, and the engine could be upwards of 60% efficient, while outputting the same power. Since acceleration and top speed are related more to vehicle weight and instantaneous power, capacitor boosted motors and lower drag/profile issues should get the car to outperform current sports models (except for the ones in the bathing suits.:P).

One of the biggest challenges is to get the change to happen more naturally, which I think can be done if a very well designed and well executed machine goes into production that really changes attitudes about our automoblies. The Prius, Insight, Focus, Impact, Volt, Aptera, and Tesla are doing that, but if there was more of a combining of the best designs, perhaps public acceptance would shift dramatically. What's really slowing the adopting of the new technologies??

The other issue is the need for Diesels. Not the way we think of Diesels - smelly engines that burn fuel oil, but rather Diesels as engines that burn alcohol or bio-diesel, and have newer designs for injectors. I'm thinking of an injector design that allows the injector to be at the normal pressure of the cylinder, so less energy is expended in trying to inject fuel into a cylinder at high pressure. Something of a side-saddle solenoid driven injector, where a "charge" of fuel is loaded into an injector at low pressure (piston at lowest point of travel), and then normalized with the cylinder's internal pressure, to be injected by a solenoid pump where the internal pressure surrounds the pump, thus allowing for less power consumption by the injector pump (and less wear).

Diesels smell because of the "cold spots" in the swirling combustion gasses - maybe a more uniform injection manifold built into the engine head would help? Also, with high compression comes the production of nitrous oxides - which can be easily neutralized, and carried away with water. Diesels also make a bit of a rattle when they run - the sound of the actual burning fuel charge as I am told - which is really not all that unpleasant a noise, but sounds like an engine with unadjusted lifters. Perhaps engine noise dampers can reduce this to inaudible? I'm just trying to make the Diesel actually appeal more, as it is the future engine; it offers near-perfect combustion timing, and has the highest efficiency potential for a piston internal combustion engine...