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Archive for January, 2016

Race Ready

Ever since the motor vehicle has been chugging on the road they have been raced.  One of the first races ever was the Paris-Rouen in 1894.  The cars had to travel 126 km between two French cities.  Simply put; as motorcars developed, so did racing.  However, particularly in modern times, you could also say that as motor racing developed, so did the motor car.  I enjoy a bit of motor racing, and have occasionally enjoyed watching it trackside.  One of the joys of watching the cars race around the circuit is that you can recognise the makes and models of the race cars and associate them with their everyday, road-legal versions.  So what’s the difference between the road-going version and its racing cousin?  Let’s take a closer look.

A mass-produced road car needs to have its set-up catered toward keeping its occupants comfortable, safe and relaxed on a journey.  So, you’ll see the majority of features like a comfortable ride, air-conditioning, premium audio sound, a standard engine geared for economy and leather upholstery inside a mass-produced road car.  The race car is usually stripped right back to the bare shell, and therefore lacks all these comfort features to ensure that the race-car remains as light as possible.

Rally cars have to cope with a wide range of road surfaces, and some of the surfaces can be extremely rough.  The rally car must be specially prepared with this challenge in mind.  All non-essential items are removed from the interior of a rally car.  Two seats, a gear lever and a roll cage are the necessary bits you’ll find inside the rally car interior.  When it comes to the chassis, the car’s ride height has actually been increased to travel over uneven surfaces more easily.  Larger tyres with button studs absorb impact and provide greater grip on loose surfaces.  The suspension has been stiffened, and the engine usually has been increased in size to gain greater power at the expense of low fuel economy.  Exterior panels are usually steel and alloys in a road-going version, however in the race car these are replaced with fibreglass to reduce weight.  All windows are plastic, except for the front windscreen which remains glass – reduction in weight being the reason for this.  The Volkswagen Polo R has been the most successful WRC rally car in 2015, so too has the Hyundai and Citroen variants.

If you are into drifting, then the changes made to a car prepared for drifting include: lowering the suspension height to reduce body roll, stiffened anti roll bars, massive power – especially to the rear wheels, very quick steering and tyres that can last big slides for lengthy periods.

Obviously, with endurance racing like Le Mans, the cars are extremely aerodynamic, they have quick release wheels, quick to remove bumpers – in case they get damaged, slick tyres, bigger brakes and huge power for high speeds – often well over 320 km/h.  A Le Mans car has to travel at high speed for 24 hours with minimal stops for refuelling and tyre changes.

Motor racing is a hugely lucrative business for car manufacturers because the models of road-going cars that are transformed to a race car are shown off on the race track to a huge proportion of car enthusiasts.  If a car manufacturer’s model wins in the weekend, then this success translates to more car sales during the week.  It’s pretty simple really.

Race-ready Porsche 911

Race-ready Porsche 911

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Private Fleet Car Review: 2015 Subaru Impreza WRX STi Premium

It’s an icon, a brawny and chest beating icon. A Wheel Thing revisits the Subaru WRX STi, with a “proper” (read as manual) gearbox and that velcro/superglue/limpet grip.2015 Subaru WRX STi left front quarter

Subaru says its all wheel drive system is “all for the driver” and that’s evident in the way the WRX STi is set up. There’s absolutely no doubt its all paw grip is part of why it’s in the Legends corner of cars you must drive, but there’s more to it than simply getting each wheel driven. There’s 221 kW at over 6000 revs from the 2.5L boxer four, but, more importantly, 407 Nm at 4000, with a noticeable rocket launch to the back, thanks to 330Nm suddenly on tap at 2500 rpm. That’s enough to see one hundred kilometres per hour in 4.9 seconds.

2015 Subaru WRX STi engine

There’s a cost at the bowser if you choose to explore the outmost limits of this beast. Urban consumption of the specified 98 RON go juice is quoted as being 14.2L per 100 kilometres, with the tank holding just 60 litres. That’s nudging just 400 kilometres in a city environment. Otherwise, you’ve 10.4 and 8.4 litres per hundred on the combined and highway cycles to play with. A Wheel Thing, in predominantly urban traffic, struggled to see anything below 11.0L/100…

But sometimes you have to take the not so good with the utterly superb; there’s a wonderfully close gated and short throw gear lever, a family friendly clutch that doesn’t ask the driver to have a left calf muscle the size of a tree, the adjustable centre differential which proportions drive fore and aft and the Active Torque Vectoring System (ATVS) which applies braking automatically to each corner to centre the car’s attitude on road.2015 Subaru WRX STi centre console

The good kind of insanity is helped along by a super responsive steering rack; twitch and you turn. There’s no dead spot, no numbness, instead there’s real communication and a sense of weight, spoken to the driver via a leather clad tiller, with a nice diameter and heft,plus a lock to lock of just over two and a half turns.2015 Subaru WRX STi full dash

Coming into a corner, you feel the weight in the steering increase and the Driver Controlled Centre Differential (DCCD) working to apportion drive…feather the throttle and downshift….then plant the foot. There’s the thrum, the throb of the flat four from the front and resonating out through the quad tip exhausts…bang, another gear, bang, and another as you ratchet through the ratios, the lever falling easily to hand as you snicker to yourself, grinning inanely. A slight slip of the clutch also makes getting away a smoother proposition.

It’s an exercise in synchronicity, man and machine working as one, the body subconciously snicking each gear as the left leg rises and falls in time with the engine revs. There’s grip aplenty as you haul into a corner, the sports seats snug against your torso as the G forces increase, the Dunlop 245/40 rubber getting intimate with the tarmac as the 18 inch gunmetal alloys glint in the summer sun.

Braking force is full of confidence; there’s four pot Brembo (painted in STi black) calipers up front working in tandem with the two pot Brembos at the rear, with no fade to speak off and a solid, progressive reeling in of the STi’s forward motion. 2015 Subaru WRX STi 18 inch alloyOn a tight road near Blackheath, on the western fringe of the Blue Mountains range, a suddenly looming series of ninety degree turns were easily despatched with a firm yet unhurried prod of the brake. Lateral grip, asks Sir? Sir will find plenty, thank you kindly.

The ride is firm, hard, sometimes jiggly yet rarely teeth rattling. With a local road A Wheel Thing’s suspension tester, thanks to the non-needed speedhumps big enough to slow a rhino in situ, there’s a very firm bump/thump at lower speeds and at road legal speeds, the same yet less intrusive. The handling is helped by the compact size; the STi weighs just 1525 kilograms (kerb weight) and sits on a 2650 mm wheelbase, inside a total length of just 4595 mm.2015 Subaru WRX STi right front quarterThe get up and go is matched by the assertive look (the test car was coated in shimmering Pearl White); flared guards, the tuning fork alloys, the sharp shark like snout with slimline air intake in the bonnet, the tidy looking headlight cluster and that wing….2015 Subaru WRX STi rear2015 Subaru WRX STi wing…..inside, the bare bones look of the Impreza gets somewhat of a tickle up, with a carbon fibre look inlay surrounding the gear lever, red piping in the leather inserts for the doors, ventilated seat squab material (although the seats aren’t cooled, an oversight for the Aussie market) with the seats getting red highlighting and there is, of course, a sunroof. Oh, add in two front mounted USB ports… Naturally, there’s also boot access via the 60/40 folding rear seats.2015 Subaru WRX STi front cabin2015 Subaru WRX STi rear cabin

Centrepieces of the console are the centre diff selector and drive selector buttons. A Wheel Thing found that for a better feeling balance for tight cornering, a somewhat more rear driven choice made powering out (and slow entry) easier to live with. The drive slector offers a choice of three, Intelligent, Sports and Sports Sharp, which made lower rev driving around town just that much more tolerable, by seeming to increase torque, reducing the stuttering otherwise felt.2015 Subaru WRX STi sunroofUp the rev range and Sports Sharp was indeed, with a snappier response and a more noticeable pull from the 3000 rpm point. Both the diff and drive choices were made visible on the driver’s centre dash display, itself an operation in style, with sharp looking lettering and design highlights.2015 Subaru WRX STi dash close up Audio wise, the Starlink navitainment touchscreen system was linked to a Harmon Kardon setup which was surprising in its lacklustre sound and performance, lacking depth, separation and range.

Safety wise, it’s fully loaded with nearly all of the expected passive and active electronics and a full suite of airbags, as there’s a reverse camera, left hand side under mirror camera but no parking sensors.2015 Subaru WRX STi boot There’s Blind Spot Monitoring on board, Lane Change Assist and Rear Cross Traffic Alert. Hidden in a small box, directly ahead of the rear vision mirror’s stalk, is Subaru’s much vaunted forward looking radar system, looking for all the world like an old style View Masta…2015 Subaru Impreza WRX STi front

The Wrap.
“Economy” aside, A Wheel Thing has declared the STi to be a car that would be welcomed with open arms to the garage on a permanent basis. There’s room enough for four, a boot big enough for shopping every week (460L), enough “boy’s toys” to play with daily, that scintilating performance and the stove hot presence. Lob in the three year/unlimited kilometre warranty and the service structure Subaru has, it makes the $55K pricing easier to swallow. There’s also the fact that when the car was launched in 2014, it was set at $49990, a full ten thousand under the car it was taking over from.
For details, go here: http://www.subaru.com.au/wrx-and-wrx-sti
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Tech Talk: Kilowatts/Horsepower and Torque

When you’re shopping for a new car, there should be a list of things that are important to you. Nowadays it’s how many USB ports or bottleholders but in the past it was about the “donk” and how many “neddies” under the bonnet. Before Australia went metric and still how the U.S. measures power, there’s horsepower. Metrification uses kilowatts and then there’s this mysterious thing called “torque”…

Horsepower, by its very name, measures output or work done in comparison to horses. Scottish engineer, James Watts (whose name also gives us part of the other measure) adoptedthe unit’s measure in the late 18th century with: Horsepower (hp) is a unit of measurement of power (the rate at which work is done) in order to compare the output of steam engines to draft horses. That was subsequently expanded to compare to other types of engines like turbines and electric engines.

Watt, being an engineer, put forward this equation:  P = \frac{W}{t} = \frac{F\cdot d}{t} = \frac{180\,\mathrm{lbf}\cdot 2.4 \cdot 2\, \pi \cdot 12\, \mathrm{ft}}{1\,\mathrm{min}} = 32,572 \cdot \frac{\mathrm{ft} \cdot \mathrm{lbf}}{\mathrm{min}}.

In short, Watt had calculated that a horse could turn a mill wheel 144 times in an hour (or 2.4 times a minute), with the wheel measuring 12 feet (3.6576 meters) in radius; therefore, the horse travelled 2.4·2π·12 feet in one minute. Watt judged that the horse could pull with a force of 180 pounds. What does all of this mean? Horses would perform a certain task with a certain amount of work performed over a given time period, which boils down, without all of the physics involved, to be calculated as horsepower.

Kilowatts is the other measure of what an engine can provide and is, simply, an amount of thousands of watts. For example, a car engine may be quoted as 200 kilowatts, being: The unit is defined as joule per second and can be used to express the rate of energy conversion or transfer with respect to time. The unit was named after the aforementioned James Watt.

When it comes to kilowatts versus horsepower, one kilowatt is equivalent to 1.34 horsepower, with neddies or ponies considered as suitable replacement words. In reverse, there’s about 0.75 horsepower per kilowatt.

Engines found in cars will quote x amount of kilowatts in their marketing material, with the higher the number seemingly the better. The “problem” with this approach is that PEAK kilowatts and horsepower are generated at high engine revs. That’s fine for applications where that approach is needed, say Formula 1 racing or powerboat racing but then fuel efficiency for the common man, not to mention the sheer driveability,becomes an issue…

power graph

Torque, the forgotten part of what a car engine does, is, in simplest terms, the amount of grunt or the measure of twisting force an engine can generate. A great way to think of what torque and kilowatts can do is by imagining a screwdriver and a stuck screw. The twist that you use to move the screw is torque and the continued turning of the screwdriver to get the screw out is the kilowatts or horsepower. Should you see a skilled driver perform a burnout, let’s say a motorsport driver that’s won a race and is celebrating, they will use both torque and kilowatts,with torque coming into play to break the traction between rubber and road then power (kilowatts) to continue to spin those tyres against the gripping force of both road and hot rubber, which then produces the spectacle of heaps of smoke.

Torque is made by an engine at a lower rev range than horsepower or kilowatts; a diesel engine will produce more torque than a petrol powered engine simply because of the way a diesel engine works. Petrol engines use electricty and spark plus to ignite the fuel vapour inside the cylinders, which pushes the piston down and turns the crankshaft. Diesels, on the other hand, use compression (squeeze a balloon until it pops) by injecting diesel fuel into an air filled combustion chamber (or cylinder, in the case of a car engine) and pushing the piston against that until it “explodes” and forces that piston back down. Diesel torque

Or in tech terms: The diesel engine (also known as a compression-ignition or CI engine) is an internal combustion engine in which ignition of the fuel that has been injected into the combustion chamber is initiated by the high temperature which a gas achieves when greatly compressed (adiabatic compression). This contrasts with spark-ignition engines such as a petrol engine (gasoline engine) or gas engine (using a gaseous fuel as opposed to petrol), which use a spark plug to ignite an air-fuel mixture.

Torque is also the motive force that gets your car going in the first place. Using the transmission, with a set of differing ratios or gears, that torque is sent from the engine to the driving wheels via that transmission and that torque is then what starts moving the tyres against the road. As the revs rise, kilowatts then take over to keep your car going, before the transmission changes ratio and drops the revs back down.

And, as we all now know, the less revs the engine is doing, the less fuel it’s consuming, hence the growth of gearboxes with more ratios, the most common being a six speed but with some luxury brands having eight, perhaps nine….and an engine with enough torque to utilise those ratios.

(Information sourced from Wikipedia. This article is not intended to be an in-depth explanation of kilowatts, horsepower and torque, but an overview to suit its intended audience.)

 

 

 

 

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Catching Suspects

You know, there’s heaps of cool technology that will be used (if not already in use) in the automotive scene.  Yes, there’s all the on-board safety wizardry that helps to keep you and others safe on the road.  And, there’s Voice Control, satellite navigation and other infotainment systems on-board a lot of new cars.  But what is pretty amazing is some of the new technology that Police will use for catching, say, a car thief.

Catching car criminals or even any criminal travelling in a car seems like a tough job and is all about speed, right?  Well actually, there might be an easier way.  Here is some of the high-tech ways for catching a suspect that Police can or will employ.

  • Already seen in action, the CCTV camera is used for keeping a watch on an area and will often capture vital video evidence which can then be used in a court appearance.
  • Funnily enough, the police are up-on-the-play with social media posts, and often the social media can be used for investigations.  Police have their own software that scans all social media channels, and this scanning can be used to find out important times and locations of an offence.  Facebook does reveal a lot!
  • You may be well aware of the amazing stuff that drones can do.  In fighting crime, police can use drones for surveillance, and any police officer can remotely control the drone from a distance.  This is a very easy way of following a fleeing suspect, and the action can be seen as it happens by an officer in a car or back at headquarters.
  • As a vehicle owner, you could subscribe to a service like OnStar which is a system capable of tracking your car if stolen.  What’s more, it could be used to remotely disable your vehicle and shut down the engine.  All you need to do is let the police know that your car has been stolen, and then OnStar does the rest.
  • Police cars can be equipped with GPS Dart technology, which basically fires a small GPS tracker from the nose of the police vehicle so that it sticks onto the vehicle needing to be tracked.  They can then plan how to catch and apprehend the suspect whilst tracking the suspect’s whereabouts.
  • Already in action, police cars are equipped with automated license plate scanners.  This technology is effective in catching those drivers that are driving a car that has failed its inspection or has a registration license that has lapsed.  These scanning cameras can scan literally thousands of license plates per hour.

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