Lets talk about cars/motorsports

That's what happens when you try to build a sports car in Belfast, at a time when the city was a lot like present day Baghdad.

With a much more powerful modern engine and larger wheels, like the article says they're planning to use, maybe it actually would be worthy of being called a sports car.

Are they still gonna be made out of stainless steel?

Is it wrong that I really hope they will be?

They're going to build them from the original stock of parts that they still have in inventory, and that includes the stainless steel body panels.

The original engine was a Renault 6-cylinder, which US emissions standards emasculated to a wimpy 130 hp. They propose to give it an engine producing 300 to 400 hp now. And the original wheels had 14 or 15 inch rims, but nobody makes high-performance tires in those sizes today, so they plan on fitting it with 17 or 18 inchers. Should make quite an improvement.

edited 27th Jan '16 6:35:59 PM by pwiegle

Lol no reason it would be wrong.

And I think they've been doing this for a number of years. I've heard about that same company before.

GOODBYE LAND ROVER DEFENDER - FROM ALL AT LRO

• Not many people know that Land Rover attempted to market a computer. Why did they stop? They couldn’t find a way to get it to smoke and leak oil!
• A Land Rover doesn’t leak oil, it marks its territory.
• Did you hear about the man whose Land Rover didn't leak oil? The factory took it back and worked on it until it did.
• Did you hear the one about the guy that peeked into a Land Rover and asked the owner "How can you tell one switch from another at night? They all look the same." – He replied, "It doesn’t matter which one you use; nothing happens!"

And in a similar vein, some Lucas jokes. (Lucas Electrical was the subcontractor who made electrical equipment for the British automotive industry – and the world’s most unreliable cars. Lucas has been dubbed the Prince of Darkness, and spawned a host of jokes about stuff that doesn’t work.)

• The Lucas motto: "Get home before dark."
• Lucas is the patent holder for the short circuit.
• Lucas – Inventor of the first intermittent wiper.
• Lucas – Inventor of the self-dimming headlamp.
• The three-position Lucas switch: Dim, Flicker, and Off.
• The Original Anti-Theft Device: Lucas Electrics.
• Lucas is an acronym for Loose Unsoldered Connections and Splices
• Lucas systems actually use AC current; it has a random frequency. Not by design, it just turned out that way.
• "I’ve had a Lucas pacemaker for years and have never had any trou – "
• If Lucas made guns, wars would not start.
• A friend of mine told everybody he never had any electric problems with his Lucas equipment. Today he lives in the countryside, in a large candlelit manor with lots of friendly servants around him and an occasional ice-cold bath...
• Back in the 1970s, Lucas decided to diversify its product line and began manufacturing vacuum cleaners. It was the only product they offered which didn’t suck.
• Q: Why do the British drink their beer warm? A: Because Lucas makes refrigerators, too.
• Alexander Graham Bell invented the Telephone. Thomas Edison invented the Light Bulb. Joseph Lucas invented the Short Circuit.
• Recommended procedure before taking on a repair of Lucas equipment: Check the position of the stars, kill a chicken and walk three times clockwise around your car chanting: "Oh mighty Prince of Darkness, protect your unworthy servant..."

edited 30th Jan '16 1:08:54 PM by pwiegle

I just don't get Lucas jokes. I don't.

You don't understand them, or you don't appreciate them?

If the former, maybe it was before your time.

If the latter, I suppose that's the same reason why nobody likes lawyer jokes. Lawyers don't think they're funny, and everybody else thinks they aren't jokes.

A bit of both. Mostly the former, but there is a bit of the latter. One of my family used to work for Lucas in Birmingham, back during that time. Most of the cars I've owned were Rovers.

I'm a little defensive on the matter. On that, the amount of wrong information over the last few days ^note  like calling every Land Rover a Defender!!! about the end of Land Rover Defender production has been stepping on my Berserk Button.

Where did you copy that from?

edited 30th Jan '16 2:00:49 PM by Greenmantle

Lucas was the only organization I've ever run across that could disable a car with a bad tail-lamp. A lot of Lucas' work caused problems because they were almost too innovative. Say you have something such as the radio or electronic ignition, which you need to run at less than the full-strength 12 volts from the battery so it doesn't burn up. To do this, simply put a resistor in the circuit, so the power gets reduced and limited by Ohm's Law doing what it always does. Where do you find a resistor in a car? Well, light bulbs all have resistance, so they can be used as resistors. So, you wire up the ignition in series with a tail-lamp. The module gets the reduced power it needs and is such a low-power thing that it doesn't really affect the light. Wonderful! By using something that's already in the car, you don't need to buy and install a special resistor for it. Well... sooner or later, the tail-lamp will burn out. When this happens, the circuit is open and the ignition system no longer gets power. Car is dead. Sounds totally nutty, but it could (and did) happen.

On some late model MGB's there was a rack of relays mounted under the hood. For ease of installation the relays were mounted with the electrical connectors pointing up. Now did I mention that these relays were metal cans that were not weather sealed? First rainstorm and all the relays filled up with water and shorted out.

Lucas electrical systems had a lot of problems, partly due to the British predilection for cotton-insulated wiring - long after American, German, and Japanese carmakers had converted to plastic insulation, the Brits continued to use cotton-fabric insulated wires. This lead to many short circuits on wet days. Another thing: Lucas distributors were extremely complex in design, so that changing the breaker points was an all-day undertaking. I could never understand why they had to be so damn complicated...

Many of the early Lucas electrical systems used a generator rather than an alternator to generate electrical power. Generators contain metal brushes that rub against the rotating coil inside the generator, leading to obvious wear problems. As the brushes wore out, you would lose charging capacity, and hence electrical power. Alternators, on the other hand, contain no rubbing parts.

Lucas systems used a positive ground as opposed to the more common negative ground. Not sure if this in and of itself caused reliability problems, but basically it meant that you could only use Lucas parts for replacement and repair.

Lucas was also fond of using different metals in their contacts. The disparate metals in contact with each other led to corrosion problems in the contacts. Although this was not uncommon in the past, in combination with the less than stellar weatherproofing common in British cars of the era, it led to many fouled electrical contacts.

So, to make a long story short, there's a kernel of truth in every tall tale, and a small problem repeated many times over becomes a major issue. Don't take it personally, no offense was intended.

edited 30th Jan '16 2:33:49 PM by pwiegle

Okay, you caught me. I got that from data-mining online. However, my parents owned a couple of Jaguars back when they were in college, so I've heard lots of stories about them over the years.

My father was studying electrical engineering at the time, and he got lots of practical, hands-on experience tinkering with his old XK-120. Eventually, he tore out the whole wiring harness and redid the entire thing. After that, there were no more issues. The XK-150, on the other hand...

Yes, Lucas Electrics gets a lot of flak, but not undeservedly so. When your parts, workmanship, and customer service are less than stellar for an entire generation, guess what happens?

edited 31st Jan '16 10:57:57 AM by pwiegle

Cross-posted from the US Politics thread:

A right-wing website wants to raise 1 million dollars to get an anti-Hillary themed IndyCar on the grid

The EPA wants to implement new laws that may result in the outlawing of modifications that affect pollution control mechanisms on race cars, and particularly road cars converted for racing purposes.

Ford's going to get rid of its Japanese/Indonesian branches. Only way for peeps to buy a Ford car after this year is to import one.

Critics think TPP policies may have played a role in the slump. At least that's what I got from a website somewhere. I'll go and find it.

I just read something in the newspaper today:

"The car-technology company VoxxHirschmann Corp. is developing a device that could one day adjust a car's settings to match a driver based on eye patterns with a glance at the rearview mirror."

Yeah, and we all know just how reliable computer technology can be, right? Nobody wants a car that "crashes" twice a week, in either sense of the word.

They could have presets saved to a button just as easily.

so anybody watching Le Mans 24 hors?

I was watching up until I went to sleep around midnight circuit time.

Got back on just in time for the Manor LMP 2's splitter to fall off.

I watched the esports version instead.

haven't slept for over 24 hours.

also history can repeat twice over with a Japanese manufacturer winning again and Ford repeating their 1-2-3 1966 win. on Ford GT 40's 50th anniversary win of Le Mans too

edited 19th Jun '16 4:11:05 AM by MABfan11

Looks like they're going to after the Ferrari that was blocking it has gotten dragged into a stop-go on a technicality.

And apparently Toyota decided to throw the win away by having their car stop on the start-finish three minutes from the end.

the last 5 minutes..... HOLY SHIT!?!!!!!!!?????????.....what......5 minutes. 5. FUCKING. MINUTES.........i just what

Of all the places to break down, in front of the grandstand on the penultimate lap has got to hurt.

This sort of auto racing is far more interesting than oval track races, a la Indy or NASCAR. Driving 500 miles in a circle might have been impressive a hundred years ago, but nowadays some people do that every week just driving to work.

Circuits are the norm outside the US, anyhow — it's ovals that are rare here^note  There's only on the UK — Rockingham — the others are circuits, usually based on the perimeter tracks of WW 2 airfields, and even they normally have circuits within them.