Sunday, August 15, 2010

Five interesting automotive technologies

Twincharger: Those you drive a turbo charged car (mostly diesels) know how the power band lacks power below and above the turbo range. The same is the case with Supercharged engines. What started as an experiment with Lancia has caught on with various manufacturers trying the concept in various forms. The best implementation can be seen on the Volkswagen Golf MK6 and Scirocco. The 1.4 litre engine makes 170 Brake horses while producing 240nm of torque.


Mazda Renesis: The Wankel engine has a sketchy history. Invented by German engineer Felix Wankel for NSU ( Audi of today, owned by VW). After experiments by Rolls-Royce, Norton (motorcycles), Citroen and Mercedez-Benz the technology got at home at Mazda. Mazda has made complete use of this technology since implementation in the 1967 Cosmo. This pistonless engine has since found place in the heart of Mazda tuners due to the high brake horse power capacity produced from a small capacity engine. A 1300cc Renesis engine in the uber succesful Mazda Rx-7 produced 280 horses.




Ram Air- The result of the intelligence of a genius ,Ram air intake is a simple concept where the blowing air on the vehicle is used to produce more power. Pioneering this technology is Kawasaki resulting in upto 20bhp more power on some motorcycles.



Ford SHO Yamaha: Many have succesfully used car engines to produce powerful motorcycles. But why would one use Motorcycle engines in Cars? Ask Ford and they will show you how Yamaha's high revving engines helped them bring SHO Taurus to life in late 90's. The SHO nameplate has been brought back by FORD on the Taurus line up in 2009.




Michelin Tweel : You invent the product of the century. Others start beating you at your own game. What do you do? 'Reinvent the wheel'. Micheling has just gone ahead and literally followed the saying. Michelin the tyres inventors have now come up with a new technology called Tweel. The tyre uses no air, and therefore cannot burst or become flat. Instead, the Tweel's hub connects to flexible polyurethane spokes which are used to support an outer rim and assume the shock-absorbing role of a traditional tyre's pneumatic properties.


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