Re:There are some of these on my route to college
on
Road Marker Marks You
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· Score: 1
they don't light up constant but instead flash quite rapidly like the LED puch bike lamps
Hopefully, they don't flash 3x per second (or at whatever frequency is known to trigger epileptic seizures in susceptable people:(
** Something about the right to face your accuser...
* Not true. It's an old issue that involved poorly trained municipal officers
I didn't mean that the fact that PA local cops weren't allowed to use radar was an issue of the accused facing their accuser; I meant that banning completely automated enforcement in some states was that kind of issue.
* It doesn't really hinder the municipal cops much though.
No, in some ways it actually helps them and the people in their towns. Stopwatches and VASCAR require an officer looking at traffic rather than a radar gun set to beep at 10mph over the limit. The officer who's looking at traffic is more likely to spot other behavior that's more dangerous than just speeding, like unsafe lane changes, following too closely, or driving an unsafe car (no brake lights, for example).
The markers will probably be useful for detecting fog and leaving a light trail after cars. Speed cameras are best placed on vertical structures where the lens is less likely to get covered with ice/snow/road grime/spray paint and where the lens is also best positioned to view license plates. Besides, we'll probably all go to RFIDs in cars within a few years:) Automated enforcement of speed laws is actually illlegal in many jurisdictions like NJ and PA (in PA local cops aren't even allowed to use RADAR or laser). Something about the right to face your accuser...
The design of the device is that each barrel holds multiple bullets which are triggered by coded electrical signals. The bullets can be fired one at a time, several at once or all at once depending on the instructions sent.
Ah, sorta like a Pez dispenser for bullets:) I was picturing a very fast feed mechanism with electrically-fired bullets queued in the barrel rather than the simpler solution (the military often buys needlessly complex and overspecified stuff). The scary thing about firing such a weapon rapidly is; what happens if several of the bullets don't ignite? Hopefully, the barrel will be able to stand the resulting overpressure without exploding.
The key to realize however is that the Metalstorm system does -not- fire 1 million rounds a minute. It has what's known as a cyclical -rate- of 1 million rounds per minute.
Yep, I know that the gun won't be able to fire that quickly for any length of time. Still, even the 60,000 rounds per minute per barrel stated in the article seems like overkill. Although, I suppose that the system could as well the programmed to fire one bullet at a time.
Seriously, the 1 million round-per-minute gun sounds like an extremely bad idea. With a mechanism moving that quickly, if a grain of sand or anything else in the enviroment jams it, the results would be at least failure and at worst an explosion. Currently, our soldiers in Iraq are having problems with their M16s jamming due to sand contamination. Apparently, AK47s, with their looser tolerances, do much better in a dirty environment.
Not to mention that if you're shooting that many rounds into a small area, you may as well be done with it and fire in a few shoulder or vehicle-launched missiles or rocket-propelled grenades. Unguided missiles do not necessarily have to be complex or expensive. Guns are more useful in war when you need to fire a few shots into very specific targets.
My problem with them is safety. I'm allergic to death. If only I didn't have to worry about people mowing me down on the roads.
Actually, you're probably less safe on a bicycle than a motorcycle on the street. A motorcycle is bigger and fairly well-lit, so it's more visible to people driving cages. It can also move with the flow of traffic(*) - it's not speed that kills, it's speed difference;-) Personally, I think that everyone should be required to start on a motorcycle when they get their license at age 17, and only be allowed to move up to a car after a year or two. That would give them some personal experience as to why driving like an idiot is bad.
-Drew
(*)-> I've actually moved faster than the flow of traffic on a bicycle, but that was during rush hour on a major 2-lane road in NJ, weaving along on the shoulder. This was sort of fun, but also sucked because breathing fumes ain't fun, and I also had to deal with glares from pissed-off cagers who were annoyed that I was somehow cheating at their game.
A Kawasaki Ninja 250 is a fairly modern, water-cooled motorcycle. It does 0-60 in about 5.5 sec., which is better than 95% of the cars on the road, has a top speed of 100mph, and gets about 70mpg on the highway. It doesn't overheat in traffic like older aircooled motorcycle designs.
With a modern fuel injection system (new Ninjas still use carbs), and/or a hybrid drive system, this bike could probably get at least 10mpg more. Plus, it's more fun to drive than your average car. For the southern half of the country where it's above freezing most of the year, more bikes are a perfect solution. That, and better public transit, something which is sorely missed in many US "cities."
FIAT? Fix It Again Tony?
Actually, I kind of liked the car. Parts were difficult to get, but it helped that I lived about 20 mi. from a large Fiat restoration and parts shop. Apart from the overheating, the only time that the car left me stranded was when the timing belt slipped two blocks from home after a 200 mile trip. I pushed the car the rest of the way, and changing the belt (available at the local NAPA, believe it or not) took about two hours - try that with a new front-wheel-drive car. What finally convinced me to sell the car was the transmission losing second gear because of long-standing damage from my sister's ex-boyfriend shifting into second instead of fourth gear.
-b0s0z0ku
As someone who grew up in the 70s I can safely say the same of American cars
Hey, and Swedish cars too! I had a SAAB that had two puny electric fans on the radiator controlled by a temperature-sensitive switch and a relay. The temperature switch would refuse to activate at the most inopportune times, and I would have to pull over and bridge the contacts of the switch with a jumper wire that I kept for that purpose. A replacement switch failed again after half a year, so I finally caved and installed a dashboard switch to activate the fans manually. I think that the cooling system was just designed for the Swedish summer climate, not for New Jersey.
-b.
Acer plans to use them in their Ferrari line of thin laptops.
Is this the same laptop that was reviewed here a while ago? The one that makes revving sounds when booted up? Anyway, there's something wrong with putting a cool-running processor in a product named after an Italian car. Italian cars are supposed to overheat - when I had my FIAT/Pininfarina Spyder, part of the fun was sitting in traffic on a hot, humid summer day with the heater fully on to avoid cooking the engine.
b0s0z0ku
For example, am quite happy to have a Home Depot in my town -- the local hardware store never had what I needed and charged around three bucks for a pair of nails...
Well, my local hardware stores, both in NJ and when I lived in DC, actually have a better selection of obscure fasteners and hardware than the local Home Depot or even the auto parts store. This came in quite handy many times when I was trying to keep my old Fiat Spider (no more Fiat dealers in the Yoo-Ess, sadly). Home Depot only carries the more popular types of fasteners - their inventory is streamlined for quick sale and maximum profit. Also, the people owning/working in a local hardware store generally have more of a clue about what they're selling than the salesdroids that HD gives a week's training to and puts out on the floor. Also, from my experience, HD's racks of small parts seem to be awfully messy - the drawers with 1/4"x1" fine bolts seldom actually contain that type of bolt.
Like many of y'all, probably, I was a rather geeky kid in high school. When I started college in 1997, I didn't have much of an idea about interesting recent music. Other people, no doubt hipper than me, posted their collections of music on the network. I downloaded some of that music - listening to it helped me to develop an idea of what I liked and disliked. By the middle of frosh year, I had bought 20 or so CDs from record stores in Philly (some of them were even new). My CD collection kept growing from there. Had I not heard a lot of music that I wasn't familiar with via the campus network, my collection might have been much smaller.
Unfortunately, most of those CDs were in my car when it was stolen soon after I had moved down to DC for a summer. Thanks to the ease of file-sharing, I was able to download much of the music on those CDs (and re-burn some of it for use in my portable player and car).
The article says that the Veyron weighs 4300lb - a car that heavy can be fast, but it's seldom much fun to drive. For $25,000, I'd get a newer Mazda Miata that weighs half that, do some mods to the suspension, and drive it for 250,000 miles (autocrossing it occasionally). The Miata might not have the raw top speed or acceleration, but it can corner with the best of them, and lateral
g's are where the fun's at anyway. And, I'll get 30-35 mpg on the freeway while having fun:-p
The other $975,000? I'd use it for my presidential campaign...
One day in the not too distant future we will be able to kill hundreds of thousands of people without losing a single US soldier or even having one injury.
Ummmm. We already do. It's called a nuke.
Unfortunately for us, if satellites can more precisely measure this rise of the Earth's temperature, they cannot cure this fever.
Not entirely true, that last quote. We could, in theory, orbit large satellites which convert solar energy (sunlight isn't attenuated by the atmosphere in space) into microwave energy, and beam the microwaves down to an isolated site on Earth, where they are converted into electricity. Such a system is unlikely to be practical or cost-effective in the near future, however, and I'm not sure if facilities for receiving a concentrated high-energy microwave beam can be built with current tech anyway.
-b0s0z0ku
A good start would be to require that every engineer, in order to keep their license, should be required to shoot and kill (with as much pain as possible) one MBA per fiscal year. This would have the added side-benefit of making MBA think twice before proposing such schemes.
* Pig Hogger on Slashdot (2004.04.19) discussing disposable cars
Old Volvos rawk! I currently have an '88 240 wagon that's never broke down on my since I bought it a year ago:
No affiliation with any of these sites, but I recommend:
http://www.brickboard.com for technical advice on Volvos (anything from 1960 to now, basically)
http://www.ipdusa.com for performance suspension components and other tuning stuff for the older Volvos. With appropriately up-sized swaybars and poly suspension bushings, an old 240 becomes quite a good handling car. They also sell performance camshafts for the 4 cylinder engines that add a little bit of power at the expense of having to use premium gas.
http://www.turbobricks.com for tech advice on turbocharged Volvos or adding a turbo to an older Volvo.
You must be joking. A BMW M3 can go from 0 to 60 miles per hour in 5.2 seconds! It will beat the hell out of a Miata.
Certainly. In a straight line. However, the previous poster wasn't talking about drag racing; he was talking about autocross, which is about driving the car quickly around a course with obstacles and tight turns. In that situation, the Miata with its double wishbone suspension all around (vs struts in the BMW), its lower center of gravity, and it's lighter weight, will surely win. Heck, Miatas can even be pretty fast if you add a turbo or replace the engine with an aluminum V-8 (which weighs about the same amount as the stock iron engine).
Besides, having fun driving a car has very little to do with raw power, and more to do with handling, and an overall feeling of tightness or "connectedness" to the road. To elaborate, the most fun car that I had was a FIAT Spider 2000 with 85hp. The other car that I drove that was really great to drive was my mom's old BMW 528e with 120hp. By contrast, I drove a Chevy Caprice with ~250hp for a while, and it was a numb ride and no fun at all.
As I've said before, if you want raw acceleration and fun, pick yourself up a motorcycle. A 500cc Kawasaki Ninja can be had for around $1500 used and will embarass 99% of the cars out there today.
-b0s0z0ku (who just got offered a Honda CB400 for $250 and can't help himself:)
Is it legal to just take the airbags out and drive without them?
Yes, in most states (all except the People's Theocracy of Utah IIRC). The only airbags that are required by Federal law are the two front airbags. Even they can be removed, because Federal safety standards only govern what can be sold new or done by mechanics, not what the owner does to his/her car once he buys it.
You'll have to remove the airbags yourself, though, because it is illegal for a mechanic to do so without a waiver from the NHTSA allowing him to. Be careful! - airbags can be dangerous and explode with great force when removed. You can find instructions on how to remove the bags on the 'net - just google or search groups.google.com.
The one caveat is that if you sell your car and someone gets hurt in a crash, you might be sued. IANAL, but you might want to either reinstall the airbags before sale, or inform the buyer in writing of the potential risks.
$25,000 or so for a car that didn't have most of the unneeded luxury features of modern cars, but was capable of running 400-500k miles without serious problems. Picture a car with the basic safety features - front airbags and seatbelts all around, good disc (not necessarily ABS) brakes, nimble handling - which also happens to meet US emissions standards (not hard to do, if you don't try to squeeze 300hp out of an engine). The engine would be mounted at the rear of the car to allow for rear wheel drive (better handling) without a heavy driveshaft and would be a flat-4 (or even a flat-2), perhaps made by Subaru or BMW Motorcycles. An added advantage of the engine placement would be a short, cheap, exhaust system run, if replacement was ever necessary (also, no exhaust system to damage on road obstacles). Transmission would be a standard 5- or 6- speed manual gearbox. The engine/transmission unit would be easily removable, with only connections for the shift/clutch linkage, electrical (multi-pin), drive axles to the wheels, and fuel. The radiator and exhaust would be mounted to the motor, so everything could come out as a unit if needed.
A hybrid drive system composed of in-wheel front motors connected through a controller to a battery pack would be optional. This would also have the advantage of giving the car AWD.
Doors would be full-length gullwings, to obviate the need for a B-pillar (easier entry, better visibility) without having weak doors that meet in the center - the side impact beam would run unbroken from front to rear. The doors would have sliding windows rather than roll-down windows - these windows would be easy for the driver to slide open with one hand without a need for power. The windows would be completely removable and stowable under the rear seat on hot days. The roof part of the doors would be removable canvas, replacable with fiberglass panels for winter conditions. An emergency release would allow easy removal of the windows for escape after a crash.
The floor of the car would be totally flat, due to the rear engine, allowing for 6-passenger seating, with the gearshift mounted either on the steering column or to the left of the driver (assuming left-hand drive). The handbrake would also be a lever to the left of the driver, like in old Volvo 140-series cars. A foot pedal is too cumbersome with a manual tranny, and an electronic brake is unnecessarily complex.
Suspension would be by double wishbones in front, and single A-arms plus damping struts in rear. A combination of a single spring across the car to control wheel movement in unison with a swaybar to control differential wheel movement will be used in place of the current 2-spring+swaybar system. Steering would be manual, with optional electric motor assistance. In the hybrid version, the front wheels should be able to turn up to 75 degrees from the straight position, allowing the wheel motors to "pull" the front of the car essentially sideways at slow speeds. Great for parking.
The car should have no more than three computers, really. One for engine control. Another for hybrid drive system (if fitted) control. A third for airbag control. Maybe a fourth for brake control if ABS is used. Things like climate control can remain manual. There's no shame, really, in having a lever pulling on a cable opening a heater valve or air door.
Total size shouldn't need to be greater than 15' long by 4' high by 5.5' wide. The body would take the form of a modified station wagon, with a small luggage compartment in front, and another larger trunk over the rear engine bay.
Lighting would remain incandescent in front and would use standard round headlights for ease of repair. A pair of auxilliary bright driving lights could also be fitted. Taillights, mounted at normal height, would also remain incandescent for ease of repair. The rear LED brake lights and turn signals would be mounted higher up on the car, making them less vulnerable in a crash. Front LED turn signals would be mounted
Are you insane? You ever been to Rome?
Or any city in England, France, or Poland, all of which have this system. Not having been to other European countries in a while, I can't speak for them.
The yellow-light-before-green system is great for European countries, where 80-90% of cars have manual transmissions. Drivers can shift into neutral at lights so they don't have to hold down the clutch (which wears the clutch bearing faster as well as tiring the leg muscles), and only shift back into first gear when the light is ready to become green.
Incidentally, some crosswalks in Washington, DC have a similar system where the sign displays a countdown of either the number of seconds until the "Walk" sign appears, or the time left to cross the street before the light becomes red.
The steering ratio in Volvo SUVs (the relationship between steering wheel angle and front wheel angle) is fixed. The stability control system interferes to prevent skids or rollovers by applying the brakes on one side of the truck.
Some cars have variable-ratio steering, where the relationship between steering wheel angle and road wheel angle is more complex (i.e. near the center position, the wheel is less "sensitive" to allow for more relaxed highway driving). This can be accomplished through purely mechanical means.
Older Citroens and very new BMWs have a system (electronic in the BMWs) where the steering ratio can be varied with speed - the steering wheel actually becomes less sensitive as road speed increases. BMWs system uses a planetary gearbox so that an electric motor can move the steering rack in addition to the steering shaft. Basically, position- rather than force-amplifying power steering. The BMW system is actually smart enough to detect a sustained crosswind and compensate for it so that the driver doesn't have to constantly steer to one side. Neat stuff, but this is really the only system in production today that can be said to truly steer for the driver.
As for myself, give me a low, nimble, and simple car like a Miata any day. A roll-control system isn't really required on such a car, because short of driving it into a ravine, it's almost impossible to roll, and the car is so agile that it's easy to get out of a bad situation if you see it. If more Americans drove lighter, lower, and more agile cars, the roads would be safer places today - but unfortunately everyone wants to be King Shit of Turd Mountain and sit higher than the next guy. The solution lies in creative mechanical engineering and changing the public's perceptions just as much as in whiz-bang electronic gadgetry. A decent system of public transportation combined with more-walkable cities and towns would also be a good thing, so people wouldn't have to drive as much. Even if my car drove itself, I wouldn't want to be cooped up in a steel box for 1/8 of my waking life every day!
Self-driving cars outside of fenced-off rights-of-way will only happen when machine intelligence approaches the level of human intelligence. Like it or not, you will always have bicycle, wild animal, and pedestrian traffic which behaves unpredictably and isn't wi-fi-enabled thrown into the mix on local roads and city streets. A computer might have to make the decision between hitting a 1000# moose or a 50# child. Worse yet, between the owner's child and some other poor schlubb's child. It will be a long time before such judgements are trusted to machinery along. OTOH, a few designated lanes on an interstate highway would be a perfect place to run self-driving cars. Steer the car into the abutting lane, press the "autopilot" button, set the exit where you want to get off, and read the newspaper. However, no one should be under the illusion that the cars will be moving at 120 mph 6 feet from each other. Unpredicted problems will still exist - mechanical failures (like blown tires), stuff falling from bridges, etc., and braking room has to be allowed for. Also, unless we're willing to run 100% identical cars in perfect condition, braking distances will differ, which is a further argument for reasonable following distances. Self-driving cars will improve efficiency to some extent, but probably not dramatically.
Actually, incorrect. If you turn SafeSearch completely off, you get mild pr0n images. If you select "Moderate -> filter images but not text" you get the first really disturbing image.
The S60R is still sweet design, and it uses a Volvo platform and Volvo drivetrain (engine/transmission). Ford had very little input into the design.
I do wonder whether the car, with all of its closed-standard electronic gadgetry, will last 161,000 miles and 16 years as my 240 has so far, and still run virtually flawlessly. Only time will tell, I guess.
I'm not bothered by the new S40 and V50 using a Ford platform - Volvo's low end cars (first the 340, then the S40/V40) have always been derivatives of another maker's cars. What worries me is that Volvo cars will end up using Ford's V-engines in FWD applications. On the new Taurii, changing the sparkplugs for the rear cylinder bank takes a two hours or odd bodily contortions. Ford's FWD transmissions don't have such a hot record for reliability either, what with late-80s and to late-90s Taurus transmissions dying at 60k miles. The RWD transmissions weren't much better, with our Lincoln Continental (made by FoMoCo) getting stuck in 1st gear at 100,000 miles. By contrast, my current Volvo has 161k mi. on it and is still on its original drivetrain (and clutch, for that matter).
My next (new) car will be either a Subaru (nice, simple cars), Mazda Miata (awesome handling, also very simple) or motorcycle. I know that Mazda is Ford-affiliated, but Ford only owns 34% of their stock and has generally left them to their own designs - they share some platforms, but Ford isn't planning to produce an RX-8 or Miata any time soon:). Let's hope that Volvo will be allowed freedom in design as well.
-b.
Re:Why a chip ???
on
Hack Your Ride
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· Score: 2, Interesting
his sounds like it might actually work if you could get enough amps out of your electrical system to run the leaf blower. Are there reasons why this wouldn't work?
None, really. The problem is getting enough amps out of a 12V electrical system. 1hp = 64A at 100% efficiency, and a supercharger takes at least 5-10hp to run. Factor in losses, and you'll need one mean mother of an alternator. Maybe when makers move to 36/42V electrical systems... Even then, 10HP at 80% efficiency will require around 260A.
-b.
An old Yamaha XS-650 weighs 400lbs. unladen and 580lbs. with rider (me). It puts out 55hp. Power/weight ratio of 11.6, which will still squick 90% of the cars on the road right now. Cost: $180. Insurance: $150/year. Of course, it broke down all the time, so I sold it, but I'm getting a Ninja 500 later this spring.
-b.
Slashdot Mirror
they don't light up constant but instead flash quite rapidly like the LED puch bike lamps :(
Hopefully, they don't flash 3x per second (or at whatever frequency is known to trigger epileptic seizures in susceptable people
* Not true. It's an old issue that involved poorly trained municipal officers
I didn't mean that the fact that PA local cops weren't allowed to use radar was an issue of the accused facing their accuser; I meant that banning completely automated enforcement in some states was that kind of issue.
* It doesn't really hinder the municipal cops much though.
No, in some ways it actually helps them and the people in their towns. Stopwatches and VASCAR require an officer looking at traffic rather than a radar gun set to beep at 10mph over the limit. The officer who's looking at traffic is more likely to spot other behavior that's more dangerous than just speeding, like unsafe lane changes, following too closely, or driving an unsafe car (no brake lights, for example).
-b0s0z0ku
-b0s0z0ku
Ah, sorta like a Pez dispenser for bullets
The key to realize however is that the Metalstorm system does -not- fire 1 million rounds a minute. It has what's known as a cyclical -rate- of 1 million rounds per minute.
Yep, I know that the gun won't be able to fire that quickly for any length of time. Still, even the 60,000 rounds per minute per barrel stated in the article seems like overkill. Although, I suppose that the system could as well the programmed to fire one bullet at a time.
-b0s0z0ku
Seriously, the 1 million round-per-minute gun sounds like an extremely bad idea. With a mechanism moving that quickly, if a grain of sand or anything else in the enviroment jams it, the results would be at least failure and at worst an explosion. Currently, our soldiers in Iraq are having problems with their M16s jamming due to sand contamination. Apparently, AK47s, with their looser tolerances, do much better in a dirty environment.
Not to mention that if you're shooting that many rounds into a small area, you may as well be done with it and fire in a few shoulder or vehicle-launched missiles or rocket-propelled grenades. Unguided missiles do not necessarily have to be complex or expensive. Guns are more useful in war when you need to fire a few shots into very specific targets.
-Drew
Actually, you're probably less safe on a bicycle than a motorcycle on the street. A motorcycle is bigger and fairly well-lit, so it's more visible to people driving cages. It can also move with the flow of traffic(*) - it's not speed that kills, it's speed difference;-) Personally, I think that everyone should be required to start on a motorcycle when they get their license at age 17, and only be allowed to move up to a car after a year or two. That would give them some personal experience as to why driving like an idiot is bad.
-Drew
(*)-> I've actually moved faster than the flow of traffic on a bicycle, but that was during rush hour on a major 2-lane road in NJ, weaving along on the shoulder. This was sort of fun, but also sucked because breathing fumes ain't fun, and I also had to deal with glares from pissed-off cagers who were annoyed that I was somehow cheating at their game.
With a modern fuel injection system (new Ninjas still use carbs), and/or a hybrid drive system, this bike could probably get at least 10mpg more. Plus, it's more fun to drive than your average car. For the southern half of the country where it's above freezing most of the year, more bikes are a perfect solution. That, and better public transit, something which is sorely missed in many US "cities."
-Drew
FIAT? Fix It Again Tony?
Actually, I kind of liked the car. Parts were difficult to get, but it helped that I lived about 20 mi. from a large Fiat restoration and parts shop. Apart from the overheating, the only time that the car left me stranded was when the timing belt slipped two blocks from home after a 200 mile trip. I pushed the car the rest of the way, and changing the belt (available at the local NAPA, believe it or not) took about two hours - try that with a new front-wheel-drive car. What finally convinced me to sell the car was the transmission losing second gear because of long-standing damage from my sister's ex-boyfriend shifting into second instead of fourth gear.
-b0s0z0ku
As someone who grew up in the 70s I can safely say the same of American cars Hey, and Swedish cars too! I had a SAAB that had two puny electric fans on the radiator controlled by a temperature-sensitive switch and a relay. The temperature switch would refuse to activate at the most inopportune times, and I would have to pull over and bridge the contacts of the switch with a jumper wire that I kept for that purpose. A replacement switch failed again after half a year, so I finally caved and installed a dashboard switch to activate the fans manually. I think that the cooling system was just designed for the Swedish summer climate, not for New Jersey.
-b.
Acer plans to use them in their Ferrari line of thin laptops.
Is this the same laptop that was reviewed here a while ago? The one that makes revving sounds when booted up? Anyway, there's something wrong with putting a cool-running processor in a product named after an Italian car. Italian cars are supposed to overheat - when I had my FIAT/Pininfarina Spyder, part of the fun was sitting in traffic on a hot, humid summer day with the heater fully on to avoid cooking the engine.
b0s0z0ku
Well, my local hardware stores, both in NJ and when I lived in DC, actually have a better selection of obscure fasteners and hardware than the local Home Depot or even the auto parts store. This came in quite handy many times when I was trying to keep my old Fiat Spider (no more Fiat dealers in the Yoo-Ess, sadly). Home Depot only carries the more popular types of fasteners - their inventory is streamlined for quick sale and maximum profit. Also, the people owning/working in a local hardware store generally have more of a clue about what they're selling than the salesdroids that HD gives a week's training to and puts out on the floor. Also, from my experience, HD's racks of small parts seem to be awfully messy - the drawers with 1/4"x1" fine bolts seldom actually contain that type of bolt.
Just one man's view,
-b.
Unfortunately, most of those CDs were in my car when it was stolen soon after I had moved down to DC for a summer. Thanks to the ease of file-sharing, I was able to download much of the music on those CDs (and re-burn some of it for use in my portable player and car).
-b0s0z0ku
The other $975,000? I'd use it for my presidential campaign...
-b.
One day in the not too distant future we will be able to kill hundreds of thousands of people without losing a single US soldier or even having one injury.
Ummmm. We already do. It's called a nuke.
Not entirely true, that last quote. We could, in theory, orbit large satellites which convert solar energy (sunlight isn't attenuated by the atmosphere in space) into microwave energy, and beam the microwaves down to an isolated site on Earth, where they are converted into electricity. Such a system is unlikely to be practical or cost-effective in the near future, however, and I'm not sure if facilities for receiving a concentrated high-energy microwave beam can be built with current tech anyway.
-b0s0z0ku
A good start would be to require that every engineer, in order to keep their license, should be required to shoot and kill (with as much pain as possible) one MBA per fiscal year. This would have the added side-benefit of making MBA think twice before proposing such schemes.
* Pig Hogger on Slashdot (2004.04.19) discussing disposable cars
No affiliation with any of these sites, but I recommend:
http://www.brickboard.com for technical advice on Volvos (anything from 1960 to now, basically)
http://www.ipdusa.com for performance suspension components and other tuning stuff for the older Volvos. With appropriately up-sized swaybars and poly suspension bushings, an old 240 becomes quite a good handling car. They also sell performance camshafts for the 4 cylinder engines that add a little bit of power at the expense of having to use premium gas.
http://www.turbobricks.com for tech advice on turbocharged Volvos or adding a turbo to an older Volvo.
-b0s0z0ku
Certainly. In a straight line. However, the previous poster wasn't talking about drag racing; he was talking about autocross, which is about driving the car quickly around a course with obstacles and tight turns. In that situation, the Miata with its double wishbone suspension all around (vs struts in the BMW), its lower center of gravity, and it's lighter weight, will surely win. Heck, Miatas can even be pretty fast if you add a turbo or replace the engine with an aluminum V-8 (which weighs about the same amount as the stock iron engine).
Besides, having fun driving a car has very little to do with raw power, and more to do with handling, and an overall feeling of tightness or "connectedness" to the road. To elaborate, the most fun car that I had was a FIAT Spider 2000 with 85hp. The other car that I drove that was really great to drive was my mom's old BMW 528e with 120hp. By contrast, I drove a Chevy Caprice with ~250hp for a while, and it was a numb ride and no fun at all.
As I've said before, if you want raw acceleration and fun, pick yourself up a motorcycle. A 500cc Kawasaki Ninja can be had for around $1500 used and will embarass 99% of the cars out there today.
-b0s0z0ku (who just got offered a Honda CB400 for $250 and can't help himself :)
Yes, in most states (all except the People's Theocracy of Utah IIRC). The only airbags that are required by Federal law are the two front airbags. Even they can be removed, because Federal safety standards only govern what can be sold new or done by mechanics, not what the owner does to his/her car once he buys it.
You'll have to remove the airbags yourself, though, because it is illegal for a mechanic to do so without a waiver from the NHTSA allowing him to. Be careful! - airbags can be dangerous and explode with great force when removed. You can find instructions on how to remove the bags on the 'net - just google or search groups.google.com.
The one caveat is that if you sell your car and someone gets hurt in a crash, you might be sued. IANAL, but you might want to either reinstall the airbags before sale, or inform the buyer in writing of the potential risks.
-b0s0z0ku
A hybrid drive system composed of in-wheel front motors connected through a controller to a battery pack would be optional. This would also have the advantage of giving the car AWD.
Doors would be full-length gullwings, to obviate the need for a B-pillar (easier entry, better visibility) without having weak doors that meet in the center - the side impact beam would run unbroken from front to rear. The doors would have sliding windows rather than roll-down windows - these windows would be easy for the driver to slide open with one hand without a need for power. The windows would be completely removable and stowable under the rear seat on hot days. The roof part of the doors would be removable canvas, replacable with fiberglass panels for winter conditions. An emergency release would allow easy removal of the windows for escape after a crash.
The floor of the car would be totally flat, due to the rear engine, allowing for 6-passenger seating, with the gearshift mounted either on the steering column or to the left of the driver (assuming left-hand drive). The handbrake would also be a lever to the left of the driver, like in old Volvo 140-series cars. A foot pedal is too cumbersome with a manual tranny, and an electronic brake is unnecessarily complex.
Suspension would be by double wishbones in front, and single A-arms plus damping struts in rear. A combination of a single spring across the car to control wheel movement in unison with a swaybar to control differential wheel movement will be used in place of the current 2-spring+swaybar system. Steering would be manual, with optional electric motor assistance. In the hybrid version, the front wheels should be able to turn up to 75 degrees from the straight position, allowing the wheel motors to "pull" the front of the car essentially sideways at slow speeds. Great for parking.
The car should have no more than three computers, really. One for engine control. Another for hybrid drive system (if fitted) control. A third for airbag control. Maybe a fourth for brake control if ABS is used. Things like climate control can remain manual. There's no shame, really, in having a lever pulling on a cable opening a heater valve or air door.
Total size shouldn't need to be greater than 15' long by 4' high by 5.5' wide. The body would take the form of a modified station wagon, with a small luggage compartment in front, and another larger trunk over the rear engine bay.
Lighting would remain incandescent in front and would use standard round headlights for ease of repair. A pair of auxilliary bright driving lights could also be fitted. Taillights, mounted at normal height, would also remain incandescent for ease of repair. The rear LED brake lights and turn signals would be mounted higher up on the car, making them less vulnerable in a crash. Front LED turn signals would be mounted
Or any city in England, France, or Poland, all of which have this system. Not having been to other European countries in a while, I can't speak for them.
The yellow-light-before-green system is great for European countries, where 80-90% of cars have manual transmissions. Drivers can shift into neutral at lights so they don't have to hold down the clutch (which wears the clutch bearing faster as well as tiring the leg muscles), and only shift back into first gear when the light is ready to become green.
Incidentally, some crosswalks in Washington, DC have a similar system where the sign displays a countdown of either the number of seconds until the "Walk" sign appears, or the time left to cross the street before the light becomes red.
-b.
Some cars have variable-ratio steering, where the relationship between steering wheel angle and road wheel angle is more complex (i.e. near the center position, the wheel is less "sensitive" to allow for more relaxed highway driving). This can be accomplished through purely mechanical means.
Older Citroens and very new BMWs have a system (electronic in the BMWs) where the steering ratio can be varied with speed - the steering wheel actually becomes less sensitive as road speed increases. BMWs system uses a planetary gearbox so that an electric motor can move the steering rack in addition to the steering shaft. Basically, position- rather than force-amplifying power steering. The BMW system is actually smart enough to detect a sustained crosswind and compensate for it so that the driver doesn't have to constantly steer to one side. Neat stuff, but this is really the only system in production today that can be said to truly steer for the driver.
As for myself, give me a low, nimble, and simple car like a Miata any day. A roll-control system isn't really required on such a car, because short of driving it into a ravine, it's almost impossible to roll, and the car is so agile that it's easy to get out of a bad situation if you see it. If more Americans drove lighter, lower, and more agile cars, the roads would be safer places today - but unfortunately everyone wants to be King Shit of Turd Mountain and sit higher than the next guy. The solution lies in creative mechanical engineering and changing the public's perceptions just as much as in whiz-bang electronic gadgetry. A decent system of public transportation combined with more-walkable cities and towns would also be a good thing, so people wouldn't have to drive as much. Even if my car drove itself, I wouldn't want to be cooped up in a steel box for 1/8 of my waking life every day!
Self-driving cars outside of fenced-off rights-of-way will only happen when machine intelligence approaches the level of human intelligence. Like it or not, you will always have bicycle, wild animal, and pedestrian traffic which behaves unpredictably and isn't wi-fi-enabled thrown into the mix on local roads and city streets. A computer might have to make the decision between hitting a 1000# moose or a 50# child. Worse yet, between the owner's child and some other poor schlubb's child. It will be a long time before such judgements are trusted to machinery along. OTOH, a few designated lanes on an interstate highway would be a perfect place to run self-driving cars. Steer the car into the abutting lane, press the "autopilot" button, set the exit where you want to get off, and read the newspaper. However, no one should be under the illusion that the cars will be moving at 120 mph 6 feet from each other. Unpredicted problems will still exist - mechanical failures (like blown tires), stuff falling from bridges, etc., and braking room has to be allowed for. Also, unless we're willing to run 100% identical cars in perfect condition, braking distances will differ, which is a further argument for reasonable following distances. Self-driving cars will improve efficiency to some extent, but probably not dramatically.
Cheers,
-b.
-b.
The S60R is still sweet design, and it uses a Volvo platform and Volvo drivetrain (engine/transmission). Ford had very little input into the design.
I do wonder whether the car, with all of its closed-standard electronic gadgetry, will last 161,000 miles and 16 years as my 240 has so far, and still run virtually flawlessly. Only time will tell, I guess.
I'm not bothered by the new S40 and V50 using a Ford platform - Volvo's low end cars (first the 340, then the S40/V40) have always been derivatives of another maker's cars. What worries me is that Volvo cars will end up using Ford's V-engines in FWD applications. On the new Taurii, changing the sparkplugs for the rear cylinder bank takes a two hours or odd bodily contortions. Ford's FWD transmissions don't have such a hot record for reliability either, what with late-80s and to late-90s Taurus transmissions dying at 60k miles. The RWD transmissions weren't much better, with our Lincoln Continental (made by FoMoCo) getting stuck in 1st gear at 100,000 miles. By contrast, my current Volvo has 161k mi. on it and is still on its original drivetrain (and clutch, for that matter).
My next (new) car will be either a Subaru (nice, simple cars), Mazda Miata (awesome handling, also very simple) or motorcycle. I know that Mazda is Ford-affiliated, but Ford only owns 34% of their stock and has generally left them to their own designs - they share some platforms, but Ford isn't planning to produce an RX-8 or Miata any time soon:). Let's hope that Volvo will be allowed freedom in design as well.
-b.
his sounds like it might actually work if you could get enough amps out of your electrical system to run the leaf blower. Are there reasons why this wouldn't work? None, really. The problem is getting enough amps out of a 12V electrical system. 1hp = 64A at 100% efficiency, and a supercharger takes at least 5-10hp to run. Factor in losses, and you'll need one mean mother of an alternator. Maybe when makers move to 36/42V electrical systems ... Even then, 10HP at 80% efficiency will require around 260A.
-b.
An old Yamaha XS-650 weighs 400lbs. unladen and 580lbs. with rider (me). It puts out 55hp. Power/weight ratio of 11.6, which will still squick 90% of the cars on the road right now. Cost: $180. Insurance: $150/year. Of course, it broke down all the time, so I sold it, but I'm getting a Ninja 500 later this spring.
-b.