[HN Gopher] Internal Combustion Engine
___________________________________________________________________
Internal Combustion Engine
Author : algui91
Score : 2019 points
Date : 2021-04-30 09:15 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (ciechanow.ski)
(TXT) w3m dump (ciechanow.ski)
| dandare wrote:
| Why are the bearings filled with oil instead of being normal ball
| bearings? All the other bearings in the whole car are ball
| bearings.
| thunderbong wrote:
| This page is a work of art.
|
| And going through the archives[0], looks like all the pages are!
|
| It's really, really rare to see this level of care, attention and
| detail put to something we all consider will be seen only for a
| few seconds. But as a testament to the adage "the cream rises to
| the top", I spent around an hour going through the website.
|
| Pure craftsmanship. Thank you.
|
| [0]: https://ciechanow.ski/archives/
| mraza007 wrote:
| Anyone who's interested in learning how the car engine works
|
| This is worth watching
|
| https://youtu.be/ZQvfHyfgBtA
| engineer_22 wrote:
| What a great website, awesome animations, and intuitive
| interactives
| umvi wrote:
| How were these animations made? SolidWorks?
| netfortius wrote:
| My first masters was in mechanical engineering, in the field of
| what ~40yrs ago was known as "Thermal Engines" (internal
| combustion engines, turbines, etc.). I have long departed the
| field (~90s), for CS (degree and work in the field, accordingly),
| but this article felt truly like a lost love one remembers all
| details about, with all good memories flooding the brain from way
| back... thank you!!
| knolan wrote:
| I'm a lowly mechanical engineering lecturer. I use Jupyter
| notebooks to teach fluid mechanics[0]. I make videos of fluid
| flows with Blender and embed them with the notes along with some
| basic Python code examples so that students are aware of how
| basic code can make an Engineer's life easier (even if Matlab is
| the standard platform).
|
| I also embed simple 3D models with pyGEL3D[1]. It's fine but very
| limited. I'm always blown away by this gentleman's work when it
| comes up here on HN and would like to use JavaScript instead, but
| I've no idea where to start. Can anyone recommend a good book or
| online course that would put me on the right path?
|
| [0]
| https://nbviewer.jupyter.org/github/nolankucd/MEEN20010/tree...
|
| [1] http://www2.imm.dtu.dk/projects/GEL/PyGEL/
| axelerator wrote:
| I recommend trying to get started with webGL Elm [0]. It's a
| language that compiles to JS to run in the browser. It's a
| functional language and saves you from having to deal with most
| of the historical baggage of JS.
|
| [0] https://lucamug.medium.com/3d-graphics-in-the-browser-
| with-e...
| vagrantJin wrote:
| I'm on mobile so linking is a bit of a schlep.
|
| 1. MDN is a good starting point to learn Javascript.
|
| 2.Then the three.js library for 3D in the browser.
|
| 3. Maybe P5.js as well for 2D.
| helixc wrote:
| Why do you have to learn JS? If you just want to make a web app
| and add some interactive 3D models on it, there're some Python
| libraries can help with that, like:
| https://github.com/streamlit/streamlit
| https://github.com/wang0618/PyWebIO
| https://github.com/plotly/dash
| knolan wrote:
| Why learn JS? I guess it's because I think it'll be a useful
| skill that will allow me to do more in the future, not just
| find a better way to embed 3D models in a notebook.
|
| It might be useful to build tools for research projects,
| interactive elements for assessment etc.
|
| The bulk of my coding is work Matlab and an increasing amount
| of Python. JS would allow me to to more web based stuff.
| kghvlgvkg wrote:
| There's an array of javascript libraries to choose from, but
| maybe you would find Observable (reactive javascript notebooks)
| to be a good substitute for Jupyter.
|
| Observable is geared toward the use of d3.js (essentially a
| library for drawing charts and graphs) which can be a bit
| intimidating, but you can use other libraries as well. For 3D,
| regl seems to be a good option. It's a library which makes
| using WebGL a bit more convenient. Here's an example of an
| Observable notebook that uses regl:
| https://observablehq.com/@rreusser/contour-plots-with-d3-reg...
|
| Check out R. Reusser's other notebooks too. My guess is that
| choosing a set of JS libraries/tools to learn is the hard part,
| here, once you've committed to javascript.
|
| http://regl.party/
| knolan wrote:
| Thanks, I'll take a look.
|
| I use Jupyter because it's something that the students are
| finding used more and more when they go on industrial
| placement. Matlab is extremely popular in engineering but
| Python is growing.
|
| My notebooks are deliberately simple so it's not I
| ntimidating for students who are frequently terrified by
| code. The point is to show them that some basic readable code
| can help them solve problems and avoid going too deep into
| the weeds.
| lasagna_coder wrote:
| For the graphics: - https://webglfundamentals.org/ -
| https://threejs.org/
|
| For general JS: - https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
| US/docs/Web/javascript#tuto...
|
| There's other stuff like build tools, cross-browser, and other
| stuff, but that's likely to be confusing and not super
| necessary to begin with. The above should be enough to get you
| running with what it sounds like you want to do.
|
| I appreciate you sharing those links. I'm trying to learn
| mechanical engineering stuff myself, if you have any further
| useful learning materials I would love to see them.
| knolan wrote:
| Much appreciated. I'll be adding to the fluid mechanics
| notebook this summer.
|
| What areas are you interested in?
| lasagna_coder wrote:
| Mechatronics, which is why I'm interested in mechanical
| engineering. I guess this mostly implies servomechanisms,
| kinematics, motors.
| lasagna_coder wrote:
| Also I would trade you mech eng tutoring for JS tutoring, if
| you've got the time.
| techdragon wrote:
| I wish there were more opportunities for people to learn via
| "cross training" like this.
|
| I'd love to learn more about a number of engineering
| disciplines by helping people who know those fields, learn
| how to implement the algorithms and mathematical calculations
| they need in Python and simultaneously, learning more about
| those algorithms and calculations in order to best implement
| them and show how best to use Python for these tasks.
|
| But unfortunately such opportunities are few and far between
| outside academia and other learning oriented environments in
| my experience.
| knolan wrote:
| I love this idea. The best way to get academics to buy in
| would be to have some clear outcome such as a publication
| or funding opportunity.
|
| There are a lot of clunky engineering tools that would
| benefit greatly from professional software development.
| Computational Fluid Dynamics software in particular is just
| plain awful in terms of usability for beginners.
| lasagna_coder wrote:
| What are the names of some of this software that are a
| good example of in-use but are clunky/have awful
| usability? I ask because it sounds like an interesting
| area, and I would like to see for myself what you're
| working with.
| knolan wrote:
| On one hand there is Ansys. It's a Frankenstein's monster
| of a software suite for numerical simulation comprising
| several tools that have been acquired over the years.
| It's frightfully expensive and there's no incentive to
| make it more usable as there's limited competition.
|
| Then there's OpenFOAM which is a fantastic open source
| alternative. It's entirely command line based but there
| are UI derivatives and cloud based versions (SimScale).
| However it's a nightmare of disjointed code, difficult to
| build and heavy on dependencies. You spend all your time
| dealing with endless problems related to defining simple
| geometries in the basic BlockMesh tool and then dealing
| with and compiling various solvers. It's a research grade
| tool and not a polished piece of software. I won't go
| into the various versions with incompatible differences.
|
| Getting the most basic stuff working is tedious and
| frustrating in both.
|
| After a few years of this masochism you just get on with
| it. However, when you are trying to guide students
| through the software for their final year project they
| spend about two thirds of their time just figuring out
| how to get something simple running and then never want
| to touch CFD ever again.
|
| Then there's Blender where I can install it in seconds
| and set up a simple flow simulation with a
| straightforward workflow. Sure the result is not remotely
| accurate but that's just the solver, there is no reason
| for the complexity of the workflow in Ansys or OpenFOAM
| other than it was designed by (Mechanical) Engineers who
| know nothing about good software design.
| lasagna_coder wrote:
| Thanks for the info! Heh, if Blender is your only go to
| alternative for ease of simulations and usability, then
| there's definitely a need for improvement.
| knolan wrote:
| What's this time you speak of?
| lasagna_coder wrote:
| (new Date()).toLocaleString()
| cratermoon wrote:
| When I was a boy, my dad decided that our '66 Mustang with a
| straight 4-cylinder engine needed new piston rings. I helped a
| bit but mostly watched as he tore down the engine to the barest
| elements, only the engine mounts keeping the block held up in the
| compartment. The crankshaft, connecting rods, tappers valves,
| piston heads, piston rods, all laid out neatly on the garage
| floor along with all the nuts, bolts, washers, seals, gaskets,
| belts, and everything else you see in this video.
|
| Although I really appreciate the reliability, efficiency, and
| durability that modern engine design has brought, a part of me is
| sad that modern cars are all about chips and software, and the
| average guy in his garage or under a shadetree can no longer
| break one down to the bare bones of electromechanical parts and
| put it back together better than it was.
| cx4life wrote:
| I think the design of a wiring harness is actually a good
| analogy for a well-created API, in that it provides a handful
| of endpoints, each of which fulfills a "contract". On modern
| wiring harnesses, it's pretty hard to connect the wrong thing,
| because the connectors are physically "typed", in that the male
| and female sides are uniquely shaped so only they will mate up,
| rather than having a generic connector that plugs in to every
| sensor.
|
| On the contrary, twisting a distributor to set timing, or doing
| _anything_ on a carburator, will make you long for those
| aspects of ICE to be abstracted to control by software. Weirdly
| enough, that's what's happened over time in cars with direct
| injection controlled by ECUs.
| cratermoon wrote:
| Obviously it's nostalgia for me, but timing lights,
| distributors, points, carburetor ports and butterfly valves,
| you could really see into the mechanisms. Hell, my dad (who
| was a master mechanic and worked on cars and railroad diesel
| engines to put himself through college) took a drill to the
| fuel injectors on a shitty 80s Chrysler engine that was
| knocking and stalling when cold (no amount of adjusting the
| choke could fix it). I drove that POS in my college years and
| never had a problem with it.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| If you're doing minimally invasive wrenching on stuff that is
| in good condition electronics are fine until you have to do
| serious work to them.
|
| Grafting two engine harnesses together because you can't buy
| the one you need (because nobody sells that stuff for 20+yo
| vehicles) will make you want a carburetor.
| pengaru wrote:
| > Although I really appreciate the reliability, efficiency, and
| durability that modern engine design has brought, a part of me
| is sad that modern cars are all about chips and software, and
| the average guy in his garage or under a shadetree can no
| longer break one down to the bare bones of electromechanical
| parts and put it back together better than it was.
|
| That's a totally flawed understanding of modern ICE vehicles.
|
| There was an era of vacuum-line misery separating the 70s and
| 90s, where you'd almost certainly never get it back together
| and functioning good as new again with the literal miles of
| vacuum lines and solenoids.
|
| But modern stuff, especially with just 4 cylinders, is
| relatively simple and entirely DIY servicable. Wiring harnesses
| have replaced all the vacuum lines, and everything has a
| physically unique connector pair, and the harness routing is
| well described in the service manual. So all the guesswork is
| gone there, honestly the worst part on new stuff is not
| overlooking any of the grounding lugs.
|
| I share your attitude WRT modern EVs, but I bet if we just
| treat the controller and battery as black boxes we don't
| attempt to disassemble and service, the rest is just more of
| the same simple machinery except with no hazardous gasoline and
| motor oil to drain and handle.
| buffet_overflow wrote:
| An aspect that appeals to me is interchangeability. If you
| needed to replace an engine or other major components, even
| just to similar items in the manufacturers lineup, there's
| definitely a "golden era" of late 80s to early 2000s cars
| where that is feasible for the...more enthusiast home
| mechanic. While not impossible for modern cars, it is far far
| more difficult.
| Reason077 wrote:
| > _" Wiring harnesses have replaced all the vacuum lines"_
|
| Of course, now days the wiring harnesses themselves have
| become huge and unwieldy in many vehicles - literal miles of
| cables! Automakers are looking at technologies like
| automotive ethernet and even wireless communication in order
| to reduce the cost, size and complexity of wiring.
|
| > _" I share your attitude WRT modern EVs, but I bet if we
| just treat the controller and battery as black boxes we don't
| attempt to disassemble and service"_
|
| Some EV batteries are quite serviceable (eg: LEAF), with the
| pack being able to be disassembled right down to the cell
| level relatively easily. Although admittedly, some modern
| pack designs are moving away from this level of
| serviceability (eg: Tesla, whose cells are cemented in place
| with fire-retardant foam/glue. Disassembly is a one-way
| operation).
|
| Things like motor controllers/inverters tend to be very
| reliable so there is rarely any need to disassemble or
| service them during the lifetime of the vehicle. If they do
| fail there's a ready supply of affordable replacement parts,
| thanks to salvage from crashed vehicles, so it's often easier
| to just replace a faulty part than attempt to service.
| pengaru wrote:
| > Of course, now days the wiring harnesses themselves have
| become huge and unwieldy in many vehicles - literal miles
| of cables!
|
| Engine harnesses are not that bad in my experience,
| especially not for a small 4-cyl. Chassis harnesses, with
| all the bells and whistles they keep piling into
| smartphones on wheels, agreed. But we're talking about
| engines here.
|
| > Things like motor controllers/inverters tend to be very
| reliable so there is rarely any need to disassemble or
| service them during the lifetime of the vehicle. If they do
| fail there's a ready supply of affordable replacement
| parts, thanks to salvage from crashed vehicles, so it's
| often easier to just replace a faulty part than attempt to
| service.
|
| I figured as much. This is basically already the case with
| all the various modules littering the chassis in modern ICE
| vehicles. We don't service the power steering or engine
| control modules; it either works or you replace it, usually
| with some cheap used replacement from a wrecker. Unless the
| car's been flooded, the miles and age don't seem to be a
| problem except the occasional cold solder joint.
|
| Many more of my hours have been wasted fussing with jets
| and floats on old carburetors than any control modules on
| these newfangled computerized vehicles.
| hellbannedguy wrote:
| Plus it doesn't help when vechicle manufacturers will not share
| repair information with the customer, or independant repair
| shops.
|
| It doesn't help when they refuse to sell scanners to
| independant shops, or customers.
|
| Yes---vechicles are much more complicated, but every vechicle
| sold in America should be required to tell customers up front
| about the ease, and accessibility of required repair
| information.
|
| My point is if they didn't hide repair information we might not
| look at modern vechicles as Challenger space ships.
|
| I have been casually looking to buy a new vechicle, and every
| salesperson laughed when I asked about buying a factory manual.
|
| Sales guy, "Oh--no one works on their car anymore, they bring
| it here." Sign behind him said, Shop rate is $275 hr. People
| drinking Starbuck's coffee for free though.
|
| My father told a salesman to throw in a factory service manual
| on the sale of a '97 Dodge Dakota. Salesman, "Hell yes!". He
| gave him the manual before he received the truck.
|
| And yes--after dealing with a failed smog check this week, and
| seeing the PID only shows up on the dealership scanner, I am
| more than pissed over propiatiary information. Failed
| smog--$125 gone. A trip to the dealership $450, for a sensor
| that one of the better scanners didn't have access to.
|
| I went to Automotive School, and worked on all my vechicles
| ever since.
|
| I am so hesitant on buying a new car.
|
| Today is definitely my Right to Repair Day.
|
| I thought about RTR movement while shopping. I was trying to
| think about being out, people getting vaccinated, friday, but
| that Right to Repair was stuck in my mind. We need to all get
| behind the movement.
|
| (To tired to edit.)
| chmk wrote:
| Impressive didactic gem here, this is what the web was created
| for.
| larsnystrom wrote:
| In a few decades the internal combustion engine will be to
| transportation what the typewriter is to typing today. It's kind
| of mind boggling, but there is really no alternative if we want
| to stop increasing the CO2 concentration in our atmosphere.
| kirse wrote:
| Pure EVs will reach a fundamental peak percentage similar to
| any other car class... Hybrid powertrains are really where the
| next 20-30 years are headed for the bulk of vehicles.
| Automotive racing and supercars have demonstrated hybrids are
| the most effective setup for the past decade, and barring some
| major breakthrough in battery tech that will all trickle down
| into consumer cars over the next 0-20 years.
| Hypx_ wrote:
| Hybrids are facing _real_ challengers from a combination of
| PHEV, synfuel, hydrogen combustion and hydrogen fuel cell.
| While it is the ideal car of today I wouldn 't be so sure
| about the next 20-30 years.
| slfnflctd wrote:
| > Hybrid powertrains are really where the next 20-30 years
| are headed for the bulk of vehicles
|
| It depends what you mean by 'bulk'. I see a major future here
| for big trucks-- right now, 99%+ of our long-haul tractor
| trailer semis are pure ICE. There is no way to fully
| electrify that fleet quickly, so I believe hybrid tech is
| being seriously underestimated in this space (especially for
| retrofitting).
|
| I've been expecting to see this emerge for over 5 years, I'm
| not sure what's taking so long. Likely it's a catch-22 of the
| industry being resistant to change, while large chunks of
| (reluctant) investor funded R&D are necessary to make it
| viable. In any case, I think some larger scale tests are
| finally being run this year, so I'm looking forward to the
| results of that.
|
| As far as consumer vehicles go, well... we should electrify
| almost all of it. Simply the best choice for the majority of
| use cases. But that's going to take a while, and will affect
| battery availability, which is all the more reason why big
| trucks will need a longer transition phase that hybrids are
| perfect for.
| londons_explore wrote:
| As soon as governments get serious about CO2 emissions,
| Hybrid powertrains will end up as a "worst of both worlds"
| position.
|
| Already across most of Europe all subsidies and discounts
| that applied for "eco friendly cars" no longer apply to
| Hybrids.
|
| That leaves few people wanting to buy a hybrid - it won't be
| cheapest _or_ most eco friendly.
| tmh88j wrote:
| Not sure I agree with that. I don't think you realize how
| many cars have switched over to hybrid powertrains, but are
| not advertised as a main selling point like the Prius or
| Volt. Volvo's entire lineup is now hybrid or electric along
| with their new performance brand Polestar. Mercedes is
| switching over to hybrid powertrains even on their AMG
| models. Audi's using hybrid powertrains even on their
| highest performance models like the RS6 and their ultra
| luxury vehicles like the A8. Hybrid technology is great for
| sports cars and offers many advantages over fully electric,
| most importantly being the weight savings.
| snazz wrote:
| It definitely feels like you get some free low end torque
| in a hybrid as well.
| jandrese wrote:
| I think the thinking on hybrids will shift from "smaller
| gas engine with an electric boost to help with merging on
| the highway" to "range extension option for the electric
| car." They'll be configured to not even fire up the gas
| engine until the battery pack is run down enough.
| Viker wrote:
| Hmm... Hard to beat that energy density when the workload is
| large.
|
| Trucks, tractors, planes, ships. Sure consumer cars will be EV
| but ICEs are not going anywhere
| whatever1 wrote:
| People have hard time grasping how much energy chemical bonds
| can hold. 15 gallons of gasoline store 500kWh of energy. That
| is 5 tesla model s worth of energy.
|
| Efficiency plays role for our day to day car tasks, but when
| you have to deal with external forces or higher requirements
| of momentum, then you need more energy period. Towing,
| beating high-speed drag / waves, climbing high, cannot be
| addressed with smarter design. You need to be able to store
| somehow enough energy to deal with these external forces /
| additional required momentum
| outworlder wrote:
| > 15 gallons of gasoline store 500kWh of energy. That is 5
| tesla model s worth of energy.
|
| Yes. However, the Carnot efficiency means that most of it
| is lost as heat. Suddenly the advantage is not that large
| anymore.
| whatever1 wrote:
| Not even close. An electric motor is 4 times more
| efficient than ice. An ice car can easily store 10 times
| more energy than an electric.
|
| F150 can tow 13,000 pounds and has a 27 gallon tank
| (almost 10 Tesla's).
| dahfizz wrote:
| This sparked my curiosity...
|
| Currently gasoline has about 50x more energy per unit weight
| than a tesla battery pack.
|
| Battery energy densities have tripled in the past 10 years.
| Keeping on that pace, it would take over 30 years for
| batteries to be competitive with gas.
|
| When you account for the astoundingly bad efficiency of ICE,
| though, the gap in usable energy decreases. This is why a
| tesla can go 300+ miles with a battery that can only store
| the same energy as 2.4 gallons of gas.
| rsj_hn wrote:
| The Tesla can go 300 miles by making it light, aerodynamic,
| brakes that recharge the battery, not turning on the
| heater, etc. Yes, it's a significant engineering
| accomplishment, but in the heavy long haul world when
| analyzing break-even points what matters is range
| improvements due to an increasing energy/weight ratio, not
| range improvements due to reducing air resistance and
| inertia. This is because the form factors of the boxcar are
| basically set by shipping container needs and the weight is
| going to be determined by the load you are carrying. Munro
| is advocating for hydrogen powered trucks and planes as
| hydrogen has similar power/weight characteristics to gas --
| electrification of these is going to be a challenge.
| outworlder wrote:
| > by making it light
|
| If there's one thing that EVs are not, is "light". Model
| S ranges from 4,561 to 4,941 lbs. A model 3, 3,648 to
| 4,250 lbs. A Nissan Leaf - 3,538 to 3,946 lbs.
|
| In comparison, a Honda Civic weights 2,771 to 3,012 lbs.
|
| Regenerative breaking is nice but it's very dependent on
| the particular drive and terrain. Heaters are power
| hungry as there is very little waste heat that can be
| used (again, due to the high efficiency), unless they are
| heat pumps.
|
| The main reason they can go so far with so little energy
| is the efficiency of electric motors.
|
| > as hydrogen has similar power/weight characteristics to
| gas
|
| No it doesn't! It has horrible energy density per volume,
| compared to any gas or liquid fuels. You can improve this
| by using high pressures (energy loss) or cryogenics (even
| more energy loss). But it's pretty bad to begin with.
| Turns out that the best way to store hydrogen is by
| adding some carbon atoms to it.
| rsj_hn wrote:
| > If there's one thing that EVs are not, is "light".
| _sigh_
|
| Obviously we are not comparing about the weight of an EV
| compared to an apple or vehicle that doesn't require a
| battery. We are talking about extreme measures taken to
| make the car lighter so it can improve range. Replacing
| cheaper steel with more expensive aluminum, reducing even
| surface area of plastics, reducing wires. Truly amazing
| steps were taken to reduce weight.
|
| > No it doesn't! It has horrible energy density per
| volume,
|
| volume? Seriously? "The energy in 2.2 pounds (1 kilogram)
| of hydrogen gas is about the same as the energy in 1
| gallon (6.2 pounds, 2.8 kilograms) of gasoline."
| https://afdc.energy.gov/fuels/hydrogen_basics.html
| twicetwice wrote:
| You're comparing mass to volume in that last paragraph
| there. Based on a quick google search, that 1 kilogram of
| hydrogen is going to take up 3.4 gallons as a cryogenic
| liquid--so even more as a compressed gas.
|
| Source: http://www.uigi.com/h2_conv.html
| Hypx_ wrote:
| You're likely to hit a hard limit to what battery energy
| density can reach. The next step will be fuel cells which
| don't have the efficiency limits of traditional internal
| combustion.
| Hypx wrote:
| ICEVs will outlast BEVs. Just like it did 100 years ago.
| Hypx_ wrote:
| ICEVs will outlast BEVs. Just like it did 100 years ago.
| legulere wrote:
| Don't forget to talk about rockets! Although there weight is
| more important than volume.
| jabl wrote:
| Volume matters too, especially for lower stages. There's a
| reason for the lack of success of hydrolox 1st stages.
| rhinoceraptor wrote:
| I wouldn't be so sure, I think there's a decent chance that
| e-fuel can be made economically viable.
| peter303 wrote:
| Hydrogen works fine in ICEs with modest modifications.
|
| Hydrogen can be created with nearly any energy source:
| renewable, natural gas, etc.
|
| There is a large infrastructure for moving fuels.
| rlonn wrote:
| This makes me appreciate even more the advantages electrical
| motors have over ICEs.
|
| If you build a naive version of an ICE, it will have lousy
| performance, at best. It might not even operate without a lit of
| mechanical tricks and tweaks. An electrical engine, however, can
| be built simply and still get decent, if not great, performance.
|
| The complexity of ICEs really is a huge disadvantage and there is
| no turning back.
| namelosw wrote:
| Perfect example of "Simplicity is a great virtue but it
| requires hard work to achieve it and education to appreciate
| it." - Edsger W. Dijkstra
| smusamashah wrote:
| How can we preserve article like this forever?
| lasagna_coder wrote:
| Forever is a stretch, but, being the web, you can always save
| the page and store it somewhere locally. It'll probably be
| archived by the wayback machine soon anyway.
| fractalb wrote:
| What an excellent illustrative write-up. I don't even know what a
| four-stroke engine is all these years! Thanks to the author, I do
| know now :)
| endisneigh wrote:
| How were these animations made? They're excellent!
| bob1029 wrote:
| view-source:https://ciechanow.ski/js/ice.js
|
| I find this to be a very impressive implementation.
| wyuenho wrote:
| I wonder if it's completely written by hand from scratch or
| done with something like emscripten.
| fuzzybear3965 wrote:
| He said on Twitter that he hand-wrote the animation code.
| fuzzybear3965 wrote:
| He posted a bit of information on his Twitter:
|
| https://twitter.com/BCiechanowski/status/1387827101294686210...
| louwrentius wrote:
| This is very nicely done, I love it.
| joshuaengler wrote:
| This guys writings are consistently some of the best in the
| world. His web design mixed with the articulate easy to
| understand vocabulary, and fantastic easy-to-understand motion
| illustrations are absolutely the finest I've ever seen.
| arduinomancer wrote:
| Agreed. The graphics/animation are obviously great but even the
| actual explanations/text are really clear and well written.
| senbarryobama wrote:
| Who did the 3D graphics for this post?
|
| EDIT:
| https://twitter.com/BCiechanowski/status/1387827101294686210
| busymom0 wrote:
| For those interested, the author has a lot of similarly excellent
| explanations over the years:
|
| https://ciechanow.ski/archives/
|
| I am curious about the 5 years gap between 2014 and 2019.
| bitwize wrote:
| Reminds me of how I got into computing in the first place.
|
| During the 1970s, my dad designed an engine, similar in principle
| to the Wiseman Engine: https://wisemanengine.com
|
| To better explore and elucidate his ideas, he bought a TRS-80
| Model 16 computer (Model II compatible) with high resolution
| graphics option and wrote a BASIC program that could compare the
| mechanical advantage graphs of several different engine
| mechanisms including his own. He had begun to add a visualization
| of the mechanism itself to the program. He had only completed the
| slider crank (what is used in most auto engines), but there it
| was, animated at half a frame a second: a wireframe drawing of a
| piston that moved up and down, pushing on a crank that turned the
| crankshaft. And my brain was like what manner of high wizardry is
| this!!
|
| This site is exemplary of what I had glimpsed that day, going on
| 40 years ago: the power computers have to explain our world and
| bring alive the principles that drive it.
| therein wrote:
| I have always wondered, if it would be possible to make a small
| enough internal combustion engine so that you could just have it
| laying around in an apartment, sitting a few feet away from you,
| powering your appliances or charging a 12V or 24V battery.
| Dispensing the exhaust through a long tube. If all goes well,
| complete combustion of propane should yield CO2 instead of CO
| anyway. An additional enclosure shouldn't be an issue given the
| generator is small enough anyway.
|
| The smallest propane powered generator I can find is basically
| still not much more silent or smaller than Honda EB2200.
|
| Imagine a 350W generator that you can connect to a camping style
| propane tank that you use to charge some batteries.
|
| I played around with setting up such a system with a Sterling
| engine but couldn't achieve high efficiency.
|
| Surprised to see no YouTuber with the necessary machining skills
| and CNC equipment attempted to build a mini internal combustion
| engine / inverter generator.
| baybal2 wrote:
| Yes, first 40% efficient ICE was made almost a century ago, but
| those were very big engines.
| sbierwagen wrote:
| >Micro combined heat and power is an extension of the idea of
| cogeneration to the single/multi family home or small office
| building in the range of up to 50 kW.[1] Usual technologies for
| the production of heat and power in one common process are e.g.
| internal combustion engines, micro gas turbines, stirling
| engines or fuel cells.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micro_combined_heat_and_power
|
| Unfortunately, looks like the smallest CHP unit Dalkia Aegis
| will sell you in the United States is the Yanmar CP35, which
| does 204,040 BTU/h. https://aegischp.com/products/product-
| comparison/
| catmanjan wrote:
| Washing machines and other appliances used to be powered by ICE
| when the grid was not widespread
| nemo44x wrote:
| Wouldn't it be loud as hell? Even 4-stroke small engines are
| inefficient all things considered.
| blamazon wrote:
| In japan some rural households use propane solid oxide fuel
| cells in this manner. Instead of combusting the fuel, which is
| loud, it's pushed through a piece of exotic ceramic which
| causes a chemical reaction that splits the fuel into hydrogen
| gas and water vapor--the resulting free electrons are used for
| electricity, the hydrogen gas is used as a home/water heater
| and to keep the ceramic fuel cell at its reaction temperature,
| and the water vapor is simply vented.
| chrisdalke wrote:
| For sure miniature gensets exist! They're often used on gas RC
| / autonomous airplanes to generate supplemental electricity.
| Here's one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1yB49G756OI
|
| I think the answer is that the miniaturization reduces
| efficiency, adds a ton of tiny, expensive parts/maintenance,
| and doesn't generate a lot of power compared to what you can
| store in a battery. So while the idea is cool, it's really only
| applicable in a few specialized use-cases like long-duration
| drone flight.
|
| You've got to also compare it to other available power
| generation schemes -- A single 250W solar panel is far cheaper,
| simpler, and eco-friendly.
| dysrend wrote:
| I wish this guy would write a textbook on life. Someone throw
| infinite capital at him.
| alanbernstein wrote:
| A few thoughts while reading this:
|
| In addition to a deeper understanding of engine _manufacturing
| considerations_ than I even knew I cared to learn, this article
| helps me appreciate why people are into engine work.
|
| The perfect tolerances and synchronization of these machines
| makes me a little ashamed to use the word "engineer" in my title
| of "software engineer". There is no real comparison of the
| quality of the result.
|
| And then I skimmed the source, and it makes me think the author
| deserves that title. It also validates my belief in vanilla
| javascript.
|
| edit: And later it occurs to me that Mr. Ciechanowski is a true
| craftsman of software; handmade and built to 1) Be beautiful (and
| informative), 2) last for years. (The open web standards are the
| ones that seem to stick around the longest, for better or for
| worse. (I'm ignorant of the shader world though))
| ehnto wrote:
| I have had the same thought, software can often feel messy and
| unpolished. But to be fair to ourselves, we simply don't
| require the same tolerances in most software.
| worewood wrote:
| > makes me a little ashamed to use the word "engineer" in my
| title of "software engineer". There is no real comparison of
| the quality of the result.
|
| I think that's because the barrier to entry is too low and
| anybody is being called a "software engineer" these days.
|
| But think about a system which makes proper use of
| synchronization primitives, like an OS kernel or a robotic
| control, or a CPU design like the other guy commented too, or
| maybe a 3D game with tricks like that of John Carmack. Those
| things can be as complex as an ICU engine.
|
| To make an analogy: in the physical world there are the
| engineers, and the mechanics.
|
| In the software world everybody is a software engineer.
| tjr225 wrote:
| I kinda wish my title was simply "Systems Administrator"
| which is probably the closest thing to a "software mechanic"
| that we have. Most of our titles have been inflated however.
| ehnto wrote:
| Thank fuck fluff titles like "Happiness Engineer" have gone
| away though.
| zikzak wrote:
| When I took "Software Engineering" in University, the prof
| was very careful to explain in great detail, and frequently,
| that the field was not mature enough to really be called
| engineering. Then he would talk at length about things like
| software for airplanes and spacecraft. It is impossible to
| call yourself an engineer while looking someone in the eye
| after taking his class. I am a software developer. Maybe an
| analyst. But mostly a developer.
| [deleted]
| djmips wrote:
| That's why I often joke that a big part of my work is as a
| software mechanic! Which is still highly technical and
| necessary but the engineering part happens less often.
| toolslive wrote:
| I _am_ a computer scientist, but also had a course "Gasoline
| and Diesel engines" at university. (Belgium before Bologna)
| kortilla wrote:
| > Those things can be as complex as an ICU engine.
|
| From a complexity perspective an ICU isn't nearly as complex
| as even something as simple is a script scraping a webpages
| for links and queuing them up for further crawling. I'm not
| sure if "complex" is the word you are going for but even the
| TCP state machine has significantly more complexity than an
| ICU and that's just a fragment of what it takes to transmit
| some data.
|
| The composability and abstractions we have in this industry
| allows you to quickly dwarf any regular mechanical system.
| There is a reason this is a whole new era beyond the
| industrial revolution.
| foepys wrote:
| I don't think you can compare both. It's abstractions all
| the way down, for both. Modern ICE are made from metals
| compounds that were unknown a few years ago and are the
| reason they are efficient. Just as you can send bytes over
| a wire without TCP, you can build an ICE from pure iron.
| But both then have just very low fault tolerances and break
| rather quickly.
| themeiguoren wrote:
| Well that's just because we understand internal combustion
| engines well enough that we can abstract away a lot of the
| details. Software engineering is nice because by design it
| is at a level of abstraction that we can grok it. We're
| basically manipulating structural concepts of pure thought.
| But never forget that reality has a surprising amount of
| detail. When we interact with the physical world, we rely
| on abstractions at our peril.
|
| http://johnsalvatier.org/blog/2017/reality-has-a-
| surprising-...
| d110af5ccf wrote:
| Quantifying complexity really depends on the level of
| abstraction though.
|
| Scraping a static webpage is simple when examined at the
| level of abstraction involving Python and ready made
| packages. An ICE is similarly simple when examined from the
| perspective of basic mechanics, as in the article under
| discussion.
|
| As you note, scraping that static webpage is no longer
| simple when you include as part of your assessment the TCP
| state machine, kernel interface, NIC firmware, and similar
| layers that had previously been abstracted away. Neither is
| the ICE though once metallurgy, machining, oil chemistry,
| and the physics of combustion are included.
|
| Granted, pursued to the logical extreme software eventually
| drags in everything the ICE did and more due to the
| physical hardware. But then modern engines are controlled
| by computers ...
| mauvehaus wrote:
| The complexity in the engine isn't in the mechanical
| concepts that make it tick, it's in the implementation
| details. Stepping back quite some time in technology, but
| staying with engines:
|
| The platonic carburetor is a dead simple device: a
| Venturi, a jet, and a butterfly valve. Real life
| carburetors are fiendishly complex: multiple jets, an
| accelerator pump, a choke. And god help you if you have
| multiple carbs on a single engine and need to sync them.
|
| Everything that goes into making an engine work is
| similar: cooling it correctly and evenly, allowing for
| operation while parts expand and contract at different
| rates as the engine reaches operating temperature,
| lubricating everything, preventing vibrations that'll
| make the car feel unrefined or maybe tear the engine
| apart, valve timing (fixed in most engines at some
| compromise between performance and drivability), ignition
| timing (variable in most engines), sealing things that
| need to be sealed across a huge range of operating
| temperatures and in the presence of differing rates of
| thermal expansion (head gaskets, among others) oh, and
| making it work for a quarter million miles or more with
| fairly minimal maintenance. And manufacturing them at
| enormous scale, and holding the tolerances that make all
| of the above possible across the lifespan of the
| production line.
|
| And all of _that_ is before we even discuss pollution
| controls.
| H8crilA wrote:
| Excuse me, but modern CPUs are way more complicated than this,
| even if you only look at "arranging events in time". Like
| several orders of magnitude more complicated. Anyone who has
| touched VHDL/Verilog knows how delicate signal propagation is,
| and how crafty you have to be with the clock.
|
| And even if you never tinkered with transistors surely you've
| at least looked at assembly code, and the amount of
| painstakingly detailed data layout orchestration that is going
| on there. A simple printf("hello world") is magical if you know
| what happens under the hood.
| cblconfederate wrote:
| Most people who write software do not know/care how circuits
| work, as they shouldn't. Car engineers similarly don't need
| to know how bridges are built.
| 1cvmask wrote:
| I doubt most of the readers here on HN ever wrote anything in
| assembly. It is like comical interaction of Marc Andreesen
| and Mark Zuckerberg and how Zuckerberg had no idea on the
| Netscape browser (let alone Mosaic or Gophers).
|
| https://www.businessinsider.com/when-mark-zuckerberg-met-
| mar...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gopher_(protocol)
| Valakas wrote:
| It's easy to dismiss the difficulty of something when all you
| see is a webpage explaining things very well and simply with
| some cool graphics. That webpage looks really cool, but this
| is just a front page of the result. The backend of all the
| math, equations and thoughts involved wouldn't be so visually
| appealing. This is just the pretty part result. If you would
| delve into the actual math and physics that was required for
| this I'm pretty sure you'd reconsider that statement. Just
| the study of vibrations alone is probably as difficulty as
| whatever you're talking about. And that's just one of several
| areas of study that needs to be considered when making a
| machine like this. Then you need static mechanics, dynamic
| mechanics, thermodynamics, fluid mechanics, knowledge of
| manufacturing processes, materials, among others. And each of
| these topics is HUGE in itself. You probably have no idea
| because you're a software engineer? It's easy to defend our
| own realm and dismiss others, when we know little about
| others' or all we know is based on some cool animations we
| saw on the web once.
| alanbernstein wrote:
| Well, Electrical and Computer Engineering is an extremely
| precise discipline, and while the line between hardware and
| software can be fuzzy in many cases, web software is an
| entirely different world from VLSI design, and even from
| instruction set design. And of course, some software, at all
| abstraction levels, is extremely well engineered as well. But
| it doesn't seem to be the norm.
|
| Most importantly, I'm talking about my own ability more than
| the best in the field.
| jason0597 wrote:
| The vast majority of people on this site have never written a
| line of C or Assembly in the past 12 months
| porknubbins wrote:
| Achievements in other disciplines can often look like magic
| (and some are but it usually takes experts to tell which). I
| think fundamentally engines are engineered like software- by
| solving one problem at a time. And after having gotten a
| distributed consensus algorithm to work with a perfect dance of
| elections and voting etc I feel like there is magic in software
| too.
| gfaure wrote:
| It's a beautiful touch that the animation demonstrating the
| spring itself has a spring action on its playback slider.
| csours wrote:
| If the author is reading this: A great addition would be common
| breakdown reasons, perhaps on another page.
|
| Something I didn't really think about until recently: solid metal
| bearings are used on the crank and piston journals as they can
| handle more force than ball or roller bearings. In other areas,
| ball and roller bearings are used to minimize energy loss.
| [deleted]
| incomplete wrote:
| as someone who as a hobby occasionally builds engines (for the 24
| hours of lemons), i was really impressed at how incredibly
| accurate and detailed this whole page is.
|
| i'm down w/TDC...
| mgarfias wrote:
| I wasn't. But then I've literally been working on engines since
| i was a little kid.
| addison-lee wrote:
| Quality contribution!
| mgarfias wrote:
| so was your mom
| publicola1990 wrote:
| What tool is being used for the interactive animations? They are
| really impressive.
| lambdatronics wrote:
| Really nice work! Reminds me of some of Bret Victor's stuff.
|
| The graph saying that the velocity curve of the piston is
| asymmetric left-right is wrong. It should be top-bottom
| asymmetric instead. They got the text right though. Edit: oops,
| _I 'm_ wrong... the position curve would be left-right symmetric
| while being up-down asymmetric, but then if you take the
| derivative you get what they are showing.
| Techasura wrote:
| Beautiful article. If at all, mechanical engineering was this
| beautiful.
| mgarfias wrote:
| ok, and?
| nemo44x wrote:
| What are the odds 50 years from now, the ICE becomes a hobby of
| the upper middle and upper classes? Much like analogue audio
| recording is becoming.
| userbinator wrote:
| Those who are curious about the oval piston skirts may find this
| interesting: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15397926
| RaiausderDose wrote:
| brillant explanation. I always wanted to know how an engine
| really works.
| B1FF_PSUVM wrote:
| Hat off, deep bow. Haven't seen such clarity of exposition in
| decades, if ever.
|
| Pity it's about technology on the way out, but hey, "perfection
| is achieved on the edge of collapse".
|
| P.S. Learned a few things, and I'm even more amazed that all this
| actually works and gets things moving at over 100 mph ... looks
| like a very clever Rube Goldberg joke.
| arendtio wrote:
| I like the detailed explanations and animations. It reminds me of
| another page, which doesn't look as polished, but has a few
| additional designs:
|
| http://animatedengines.com
| nxpnsv wrote:
| It first feels like one of those oversimplified generic how stuff
| works things. But this is so much better. Really worth reading
| through.
| yashksagar wrote:
| great find - i love the one on Cameras and Lenses too, great use
| of interactivity for pedagogy
| nielsbot wrote:
| Another great page! I just have one minor complaint: I wish the
| spaceball rotations always kept the y-axis oriented upwards...
| That would help me navigate the models much more easily...
| noveltyaccount wrote:
| This is incredible. I remember the Gears example from the same
| site, but now with 3D renderings. Great work.
| PinkPigeon wrote:
| Lots of very insightful comments already, I only have one thing
| to contribute, which is a spelling correction:
|
| "Since the piston moves down twice and up twice, it does a total
| of four strokes and the engine we've build is known as a four-
| stroke engine. Notice that it takes two revolutions of the
| crankshaft for the piston to do one full cycle of the work as it
| goes through the four phases: intake, compression, power, and
| exhaust."
|
| It should be: "the engine we've built", with a 't', not a d.
|
| /pedantry
| shivenigma wrote:
| This is such a great article man. Love for the effort you put
| into this article.
|
| I seriously wish I had teachers and schools like this. I used to
| imagine the four strokes when I was in school but it is very hard
| to relate all the moving parts and how everything connects
| together in that age where I've never used a motorcycle or a car.
|
| Thanks for writing this.
| sssilver wrote:
| Wonderful page. Here's something a bit more poetic on the
| subject: The man behind the smallest V-12 engine in the world[0]
|
| [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c1pJIVqCC1E
| nzealand wrote:
| Haynes sells an excellent Build Your Own Internal Combustion
| Engine model, which teaches children about all of these concepts.
| fernly wrote:
| Can't remember where I first learned this, twas years ago --
| unforgettable names for the four engine strokes:
| Suck, Squeeze, Pop, Phooey
| FabHK wrote:
| I know them (almost poetically, though not necessarily
| politically correct) as:
|
| Suck, Squeeze, Bang, Blow.
| josefresco wrote:
| If you like these kind of animations, I found this website a
| while ago: https://jacoboneal.com
|
| *Graphic designer & 3D artist. Creator of animagraffs.com
| anticristi wrote:
| This is so incredibly amazing! It must have taken tons of time to
| make it happen.
|
| Looking forward to the same with turbo, intercooler and EGR. :)
| [deleted]
| zmanji wrote:
| aaaaaa
| maxekman wrote:
| Seeing the complexity of an ICE in contrast to mechanically
| simpler and much more efficient electric motors is fascinating.
| It makes it obvious to me what will persist, and what will become
| the next steam machine.
| snemvalts wrote:
| Just goes to show how difficult energy storage is
| ecommerceguy wrote:
| I really wish as a kid I had something like this to read/watch
| because the engine (don't call it a motor I've learned from
| engineers) still confounds me with all of the moving parts and
| precision. I've found Detroit Diesel videos on Youtube rather
| satisfying.
| sergeykish wrote:
| And if want to share wonders of engineering with a kid check out
| How to Build a Car by Martin Sodomka [1]. Beautiful illustrations
| (sample on Czech [2]), translated into many languages.
|
| Series also includes How to Build a Motorcycle, How to Build a
| Plane, How to Build a House, How to Build a Railway. I've got all
| of them.
|
| [1] https://www.amazon.com/How-Build-Car-high-speed-
| friendship/d...
|
| [2] https://www.kosmas.cz/knihy/173150/jak-si-postavit-auto/
| hourislate wrote:
| If you want to take the experience further, I would recommend the
| following Redline engine rebuild time lapses that Hagerty has.
| They are mesmerizing and incredible. Their engine re-builder
| David is a master.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLHKCmmH-x9mI1aCu3Xr4_...
| dugditches wrote:
| That's the one nicer thing of motorcycles, is their simplicity.
|
| This fellows videos are pleasant. In that he makes
| 'experimental' engines with a very modest shop. Often using a
| hacksaw and a BBQ. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-Xr1bmbZ_s
| hourislate wrote:
| Thanks for this. Loved it!
| phpdave11 wrote:
| This was really educational! I love the design of the webpage,
| and I especially like how you can rotate the 3d diagrams and see
| each component from every angle.
| randlet wrote:
| If anyone is looking for a hands on educational model, my 6
| year old and I put together a model V8 engine [1] (made by
| Haynes of technical manual fame I think) that does a pretty
| reasonable job of capturing the essence of the main parts of an
| internal combustion engine. It kept him (and me) thoroughly
| engrossed for a few hours.
|
| [1] https://www.themotorbookstore.com/build-your-
| own-v8-engine-m...
| Syonyk wrote:
| I had _no idea_ until I read your comment that you could click
| and drag the engine models! Insane!
| sillysaurusx wrote:
| Ditto. Thanks.
| jiofih wrote:
| The text immediately before the first image says "You can
| drag it around to see it from other angles". Our attention
| spans are deteriorating quickly...
| [deleted]
| specialp wrote:
| I just built an engine for my car. One thing I gained an
| appreciation for was how CHEAP cars and engines are. There's
| probably nothing else with as precise machining that is as
| inexpensive.
|
| Engine cylinders are honed to accuracies that are less than 1
| thousandth of an inch. Crank journals as well and rod journals.
| This is all precise machine work with metal. I use inches here
| because in machine work thousandths of inches is the language du
| jour. Transmissions are similar works of very precise and clean
| machine work.
|
| The distance between a crank bearing or rod bearing is less than
| 2 thousandths on modern engines. A small amount of oil in that
| tiny space is all that keeps your engine from having metal on
| metal seizure.
|
| So one would think that when EVs reach the same scale they will
| be significantly cheaper than ICE vehicles.
| mfer wrote:
| If people were willing to pay the higher cost for the same
| feature set, why would they well them for cheaper? Why not
| pocket the extra profit?
|
| I don't like this line of thinking but I'm sure it's going to
| or already is happening.
| clairity wrote:
| competition, a bedrock element of fair markets, capitalism,
| and efficient economic allocation, something we seem to have
| collectively lost sight of.
| admax88q wrote:
| ...
|
| Because the whole nature of market competition? People will
| still choose the cheaper option if its available.
| ianai wrote:
| I'm starting to think it may just be minimizing cost.
| Theoretically that just means "maximize profit", but I
| suspect in practice it means a whole slew of bad behavior
| and design choices. I.e. Pay for the part that's .0001 cent
| cheaper than another option, despite the cheaper part
| possibly being a fire hazard.
| swiley wrote:
| I've always felt cars were like computers; most people (me
| included) pay a premium for something mediocre because they
| don't want to bother understanding it.
|
| My personal solution is to live near the metro and bike as much
| as possible.
| jacobsenscott wrote:
| Mediocre in what way? Buy almost any new car from a well
| known brand today and it will run for 200,000+ miles. You
| almost need to deliberately buy a mediocre car. Biking and
| taking the metro is better for the environment, your health,
| and your budget though. If you are fortunate enough to have
| that option.
| pram wrote:
| I think automatic transmissions are more impressive looking
| than engines when they're open. They resemble EV motors too!
| Ambroos wrote:
| VW group has a dual-clutch automatic transmission that
| includes an EV motor for their plug-in hybrids, the DQ400E.
| It looks pretty cool indeed!
| benlivengood wrote:
| Automatic transmissions also have hydraulic logic gates in
| the valve body (implemented with check-balls and piston
| servos), even if they're also electronically controlled.
| Drag-racers will reprogram the valve body to change the shift
| order, have launch control, etc.
| elihu wrote:
| The raw materials may continue to cost more for EVs. Motor
| windings are generally copper, and batteries contain lithium
| and (usually) cobalt and nickel. Permanent magnet motors
| sometimes contain rare earths.
|
| One could make an EV with aluminum motor windings and
| electrical cabling, no rare earth magnets, and lithium iron
| phosphate batteries. That would keep expensive materials to a
| minimum.
|
| EVs don't need a catalytic converter, so that's a big thing in
| their favor.
|
| I'm looking forward to mass manufacturing continuing to bring
| down EV component prices. I think we're a long ways from the
| point where material costs are the bulk of the expense.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| Tesla already uses aluminum for power cabling because it's
| cheap and lighter weight. Tesla Model S were induction motors
| (at first at least) with no rare earths, and Tesla is
| partnering with CATL for lithium _iron phosphate_ batteries
| in lower cost versions of, if I believe, Model 3 and Y.
| rsync wrote:
| "Tesla already uses aluminum for power cabling because it's
| cheap and lighter weight."
|
| Ugh, really ? That offends my sensibilities ...
| Robotbeat wrote:
| Why? A properly engineered aluminum power cable is
| superior to a copper one when weight is at a premium.
| kube-system wrote:
| Aluminum is less ductile and prone to galvanic corrosion.
| It can definitely be engineered to work properly, but
| copper is much more forgiving.
| esaym wrote:
| Note to replace copper wiring with aluminum, you have to go
| up at least one gauge size.
| elihu wrote:
| Yeah, aluminum is a worse conductor so you need thicker
| cable. It's less dense, though, so I think it usually
| comes out as being lighter. Thicker cables can be more
| inconvenient. I think aluminum also tends to have more
| problems with oxidation causing too much resistance at
| electrical contacts.
|
| I think for motors generally you just end up with a
| larger motor for the same amount of power.
| Bubbadoo wrote:
| All points you make are very true. In addition, aluminum
| tends to crack as it ages and you'll find aluminum wiring
| is usually a culprit in electrical fires. In the world of
| mobile electronics, it's usually looked down upon as the
| cheapest alternative when compared to real copper
| conductor used in higher quality automotive wiring.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| It only requires proper engineering of the connection.
| Aluminum itself doesn't crack in properly engineered
| joints. What fails in old houses is shoddy connections.
|
| If people look down upon it, it's because they're either
| lazy or ambivalent. It's the superior performance
| solution in some situations.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| Or raise the voltage at the same time you change from Cu
| to Al.
| elihu wrote:
| I thought CATL makes lithium iron phosphate batteries, and
| lithium sulfur hasn't been commercialized yet. Unless
| there's some news on that front I missed?
|
| I think induction motors tend to be less efficient than
| permanent magnet motors (and thus require more cooling).
| The Netgain Hyper9 (a popular motor for conversions) is a
| permanent magnet motor which doesn't use rare earths. It's
| very efficient but not particularly powerful (though that
| may be due more to the relatively low voltage it runs at).
|
| That's cool that Tesla is using aluminum for power cables.
| Makes sense to save cost and weight where you can.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| Yes, I meant iron phosphate. (I've had sulfur on my mind
| from Bye Aerospace's 925km range 8-seat electric
| aircraft, working with Oxis Energy.)
| esaym wrote:
| > EVs don't need a catalytic converter, so that's a big thing
| in their favor.
|
| I feel there is some sort of scam going on with catalytic
| converters for the last few years. I actually worked in a
| small family owned auto shop in the early 2000's. If a car
| came in with a clogged cat, we'd first fix the source of the
| issue (usually a mis-firing cylinder allowing raw fuel into
| the exhaust) and then we'd cut out the cat, and weld in a
| universal fit one that we'd get from the auto store for $20.
| Then charge the customer $200-$400 for labor. I still see
| universal fit ones[0] although they are $80 now. But still,
| if you aren't dumping raw fuel or oil into your exhaust, cats
| are basically good for 300k+ "normal" driving miles. I assume
| they are expensive now because they are all mostly specially
| made/custom fit since all car manufactures keep cramming
| bigger and bigger engines into smaller and smaller spaces.
|
| And while I'm ranting, there's always a negative for every
| positive and no doubt for the catalytic converter. For a
| catalytic converter to convert "greenhouse gases", the engine
| has to be burning fuel at a perfect air:fuel ratio of 14.7:1.
| While cruising down the highway, an engine could easily save
| fuel by running a more lean mixture, but this would cause
| more "greenhouse gases" to go out. So choose your poison I
| suppose.
|
| [0] https://imgur.com/a/7X0sPlk
| buran77 wrote:
| On the other hand the quality and performance of those $80
| catalytic converters are questionable at best. They have
| neither the longevity, nor the performance of the original
| part. They might last even 10 times less, and they're
| usually just barely good enough to pass the emissions
| tests, which is already the lowest bar to pass given how
| all manufacturers optimize for that. Real life emissions
| are far worse.
|
| And the purpose of the catalytic converter is to make sure
| the CO, NOx, and unburned fuel are _rapidly_ oxidized to
| CO2, N, and water before leaving the exhaust system. The
| outcome is that you will produce more greenhouse gases but
| fewer compounds that are more immediately dangerous to
| people, especially in cities. So it reduces localized
| pollution at the price of more CO2.
| scythe wrote:
| Catalytic converters don't reduce greenhouse gases. Their
| function is to reduce _poisonous_ gases: NO, NO2, O3, CO,
| HO2, and sometimes HCN and H2CO. The good news is that all
| of these compounds are thermodynamically unstable so a
| catalyst can destroy them.
|
| I don't know where you got the 14.7:1 number but I am
| certain that NOx are unstable at any concentration (at or
| near STP) and will always be depleted by a catalyst.
|
| Another commenter is unsure whether the NOx or some GHGs
| should be reduced preferentially. To clarify: CO2 can't be
| removed, it is stable; only CH4, N2O and O3 can be removed,
| and they are not present at relevant levels (except ozone
| which is poisonous) anyway. The poisonous gases are far
| more important -- NOx pollution alone kills thousands of
| people every year (statistically, considering excess deaths
| as correlated to air pollution).
|
| The increased price of catalytic converters is partially
| related to the supply of palladium, which experienced a
| glut following the collapse of the USSR. The Soviet
| palladium ran out in 2012:
|
| https://www.mining.com/russias-stockpiles-said-to-be-
| deplete...
| sbierwagen wrote:
| >I don't know where you got the 14.7:1 number
|
| The cat has to be hot to catalyze. The engine is run rich
| so unburnt fuel makes it to the cat and is combusted
| there, warming it up enough to also kill the undesirable
| gases. This is wasted heat... unless you mount a
| turbocharger _after_ the cat, which has its own set of
| weird tradeoffs. (I 've never heard of a factory car with
| a rear turbo)
| golemiprague wrote:
| The reason is the increasing price of Palladium which is
| used by catalytic converters and your dentist. That's why
| there is huge increase in theft of those converters as the
| material is scraped and sold in the black market.
| elihu wrote:
| I don't think cats are to address greenhouse gasses;
| they're focused more on reducing pollutants that affect
| local air quality and human health.
|
| The main greenhouse gas from a car is carbon dioxide. The
| amount you create is directly proportional to the amount of
| fuel you burn.
|
| I don't know why modern cats are expensive; it might have
| to do with the price of platinum, palladium, and so on, and
| the relative amount of those materials. A cheap generic cat
| might have the bare minimum amount of catalyst, and might
| not do a very good job.
| czinck wrote:
| > I don't think cats are to address greenhouse gasses;
| they're focused more on reducing pollutants that affect
| local air quality and human health.
|
| I thought the same thing, but interestingly that's only
| kinda true. If anything, cats increase CO_2 as a desired
| end goal, because it's better to have CO_2 than CO or
| NO_x (or so the EPA has decided, I am no where near
| qualified to decide that). The issue with running too
| lean is that the reactions in the cat would rather use
| plain O_2 than NO_x, and so if you have too much O_2
| (lean) you won't get rid of any of the NO_x [0]. Before
| looking into this I thought lean engines produced more
| NO_x because of higher cylinder temps or something like
| that (which might be true as well).
|
| Cats not reducing NO_x when lean is essentially why
| Volkswagen (and practically every other manufacturer has
| been caught doing similar things to diesel engines) was
| cheating the test. Diesels have no throttle so they are
| (almost) always lean, typically very lean.
|
| This does make me wonder, though, does running lean
| actually increase fuel efficiency? Obviously rich lowers
| fuel economy because not all the fuel burns, but assuming
| it all burns what does it matter if you have 1 gram of
| fuel to 15 grams of air in the cylinder, or 1 gram of
| fuel to 18 grams of air in the cylinder? You'll still get
| the same amount of energy, right?
|
| [0]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catalytic_converter#Three-
| way
| baybal2 wrote:
| Diesels with combined SCR-EGR can go below US limits
| rather easily.
| Alupis wrote:
| > A cheap generic cat might have the bare minimum amount
| of catalyst, and might not do a very good job
|
| It depends on the car/engine. My old Mazda RX-8 had a
| _huge_ cat - longer than the muffler and cost me $2,000
| to replace (including labor) back in the late 2000 's.
|
| The rotary engine in that vehicle had a terribly
| difficult time passing California's emission laws even
| when it was brand new off the lot - which led to strange
| "hacks" including a blower motor that moved high volumes
| of air through the exhaust to heat the cat sooner and
| somehow improve it's numbers, among other things. I
| assume the extra-long cat was part of the shenanigans
| Mazda had to go through to get it compliant.
| elihu wrote:
| It's funny you mention the RX-8, since I'm in the (slow)
| process of converting one to electric. That weird cat
| blower was one of the many parts I removed while thinking
| "I'm glad I don't have to understand or care about why
| this car needed something like that in the first place".
| Alupis wrote:
| Just talking about the RX-8 brings back great memories -
| what a strange, yet beautiful car!
|
| The cat blower, and the subtle whining sound it made when
| you started up cold was one of the ways every RX-8 owner
| was hazed into the fold... after calling the dealer or
| posting on a forum and finding out it's entirely normal!
|
| Other oddities included how it deliberately burned oil
| (scaring new owners into thinking they had a serious
| engine problem), and how you were required to drive it
| hard to clear out its engine ports (multiple Mazda
| mechanics confirmed this factoid) - driving it like a
| normal car would literally clog up the exhaust ports and
| cause a loss of power (something to do with the lack of
| moving valves). If memory serves right, it had only 3
| (!!!) moving parts in the engine, and was perfectly
| content to hang out at 9,000 RPM all day - that's
| incredible.
|
| But, it seems the issues Mazda had maintaining it's
| emission certifications, and warranty issues with those
| apex seals (mine had 3 engine replacements over it's
| lifetime) eventually caused it to be retired. I was sad
| back then, and still sad we don't have a new improved
| version - there's really nothing else quite like it out
| there, not even the RX-7. It really was/is an
| enthusiast's car.
|
| Good luck on your project - sounds like a fun one!
| elihu wrote:
| I'm hoping LiquidPiston's rotary engine design pans out:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25450477
|
| In theory, it should fix some of the maintenance issues
| (apex seals are attached to a stationary part of the
| engine where they can be more easily lubricated) and fuel
| efficiency / emissions issues (combustion chamber is
| closer to spherical).
|
| I like the idea of the Mazda rotary engine, but I'm not
| really surprised they stopped making them, due to fuel
| economy and emissions. And at them moment, the hundred-
| thousand mile engine rebuild interval basically means you
| can get an RX-8 with a bad engine for almost nothing,
| which opens up a nice opportunity for EV conversion. It's
| hard to imagine a nicer platform to start from.
| Alupis wrote:
| Wow, that LiquidPiston rotary looks very interesting! I
| hadn't seen that before - I too hope it pans out.
|
| > I'm not really surprised they stopped making them, due
| to fuel economy...
|
| Eh, nobody bought that car for the fuel economy!
|
| The car sold itself... just one test drive and you _had_
| to have it. I 've owned and driven muscle and other
| sports cars, and still nothing compares to the RX-8 -
| it's just such a unique experience.
|
| Not sure how you're doing the conversion, but if you're
| keeping the carbon fiber driveshaft (vs. a motor on each
| wheel I suppose), there will be nothing keeping it from
| screaming off the line with an electric motor under the
| hood (traditionally the wankel wasn't good off the line
| with low RPM's, power band kicking in around 6500 if I
| recall - could make for a great "sleeper"). Although I'm
| unsure if the driveshaft would stand up to the torque a
| motor would output, since the wankel wasn't particularly
| torquey.
|
| If you're not already, keep a blog and pictures of the
| conversion - that would make for an interesting read!
| elihu wrote:
| > Eh, nobody bought that car for the fuel economy!
|
| True enough, but I'm sure there are other factors in
| play, such as public policy. Fuel economy standards have
| been going up.
|
| The motor I'm putting in my conversion is a Netgain
| Hyper9 (high-voltage, double-ended shaft version). It's
| about 120 horsepower and less than 200 foot pounds of
| torque, so in theory the clutch/transmission/driveshaft
| should be fine. (I'm keeping the 6-speed transmission.)
| It probably won't be particularly fast, but we'll see.
| More powerful AC motors exist, but they tend to be
| expensive.
|
| I haven't posted any pictures yet; I've been meaning to,
| just haven't gotten around to it. There's another guy in
| the UK I think with a youtube channel that's doing close
| to the same thing, but with a Leaf motor.
| kube-system wrote:
| > moved high volumes of air through the exhaust to heat
| the cat sooner and somehow improve it's numbers
|
| This is because the catalyst works more efficiently at
| higher temperatures. Emission regs also test vehicles
| under a cold start. The quicker the cat can be heated up,
| the quicker it starts working, and that equals fewer
| total emissions over a given period of operation.
| the_cat_kittles wrote:
| cmon man. the total weight of pricey metals in a car is so
| low, there is no way its going to offset the cost of
| precision machining. tolerances < 1 thou and callouts for
| surface finish and perpendicularity are expensive!
| jeffreyrogers wrote:
| I'm sure a motor is cheaper than an engine (less steps to
| make), but they still require precision manufacturing, and
| all the other parts aside from the motor (driveshaft,
| axles, brakes, etc.) are more or less the same.
|
| Plus, the cost of those other materials is going to
| increase if demand for EVs goes up.
| the_cat_kittles wrote:
| evs could drive lithium but i really doubt they would
| influence copper that much, since it is used so much
| already
| jeffreyrogers wrote:
| I think the more constraining commodities are things like
| rare earths[0] and other important metals like cobalt.
|
| [0]: I know they aren't that rare, but they aren't
| mined/processed in many places and it takes a long time
| to bring a new mine online.
| elihu wrote:
| Somehow car manufacturers are able to make engines,
| transmissions, transaxles, and differentials really
| cheaply, so apparently all that precision manufacturing
| doesn't really cost all that much when producing at high
| volume. This should be equally true of EVs and combustion-
| engine cars.
|
| Raw material costs might still be less than the
| manufacturing costs, but they're pretty hard to avoid.
| Also, materials that are cheap now might not be if demand
| grows faster than supply.
| jbay808 wrote:
| Hard to say. Those tolerances would be expensive in general
| purpose machine work, but in engines those tolerances have
| been in place since at least the 1930s, and so economies of
| scale bring those costs down (ie, using specialized
| machines that are _really good_ at boring precision holes
| and measuring them. The costs of those machines get
| amortized over every engine).
| kokanator wrote:
| Anyone who has the inclination to build an engine, should.
|
| It is super rewarding not to mention you get to buy a bunch of
| really cool tools.
|
| I build a 350 Windsor from the block. The research and design
| decisions were one of the best parts of the project. Then to
| put it all together and realize the power was amazing.
| Prcmaker wrote:
| Ford (Aus) 4.0 was a great first build for me. I'm now taking
| my time on a Toyota 4K 1300cc, learning a lot more, and
| taking the time to design new components for it. Can't
| recommend it highly enough, though not for everyone to be
| sure.
| formerly_proven wrote:
| > I use inches here because in machine work thousandths of
| inches is the language du jour.
|
| Only in the USA ;)
| alexvoda wrote:
| The rest of the world figured that using prefixes with a
| predefined universal multiplier is more practical.
|
| Therefore you can use the milifoot equal to a thousandth of a
| foot, or the kiloinch equal to one thousand inches, or the
| microyard equal to one millionth of a yard, maybe even the
| centifurlong equal to one hundredth of a furlong.
|
| We are quiet proud of our prefixes. Now if only we would
| decide on a single reference unit to which to apply the
| prefixes. Conversion from megainch to hectofurlong is rather
| inconvenient.
| CRConrad wrote:
| > I use inches here because in machine work thousandths of
| inches is the language du jour.
|
| I'll make a wild guess: In the USA.
|
| EDIT: Heh, sorry... See
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26991690 . This time I
| really thought I'd checked, but there was _lots_ of catalyst
| talk in between.
| ryandrake wrote:
| Not only the tight measurements, but I've always been amazed at
| the precise timing of all the little moving parts, the valves
| all opening and closing at precise to-the-millisecond times so
| that each stroke happens, at 6000 RPM! So impressive.
| Especially with an interference engine, where getting that
| timing wrong means bent valves.
| globular-toast wrote:
| Mmm.. not really. It's just a cam and a spring. Pretty easy
| to get that bit working by yourself. Variable valve timing
| and lift is much more impressive.
| slver wrote:
| How about your phone.
| kccqzy wrote:
| > One thing I gained an appreciation for was how CHEAP cars and
| engines are. There's probably nothing else with as precise
| machining that is as inexpensive.
|
| Not to denigrate the amount of engineering that went into car
| engines, but literally, what about chips? Devices that contain
| billions of transistors, arranged precisely on the order of
| nanometers. Yet they cost only hundreds of dollars.
| akiselev wrote:
| They're apples and oranges. Chips are not machined, they're
| etched in batches. Their "tolerances", so to speak, are
| limited by the wavelengths of visible or UV light they use
| for creating the masks and exposing the photoresist that
| protects the wafer from hydrofluoric acid and other etchants.
| There's no mechanical force involved, except to spin wafers
| to apply coatings and move them between each stage of the
| process.
|
| Engine blocks, on the other hand, are CNC machined one at a
| time and the force of machining steel causes vibrations that
| move the cutting tools thousands of nanometers back and
| forth. Placing both in the same building, for example, would
| likely cripple the semiconductor fab. Having a machine shop
| in China make a one off would likely cost as much as a luxury
| car.
| specialp wrote:
| Yes you are referring to another insanely complex thing that
| is very cheap relative to making one of cost due to mass
| production. But it isn't machined metal :) I didn't say I
| don't appreciate electronics too.
| Animats wrote:
| _I just built an engine for my car. One thing I gained an
| appreciation for was how CHEAP cars and engines are. There 's
| probably nothing else with as precise machining that is as
| inexpensive._
|
| When cars started getting electronic engine controls, there was
| much internal grumbling about the cost. One Ford production
| guy, on hearing that the engine controller cost about $100,
| said "I can make the whole engine for 100 bucks."
| kingsuper20 wrote:
| >So one would think that when EVs reach the same scale they
| will be significantly cheaper than ICE vehicles.
|
| I expect that batteries are the only hangup, there's probably
| not that much magic left in an electric motor. Additional cost
| for regen brakes of course.
|
| I agree on the amazing cheapness of it all if you stick with
| the common stuff. That, along with the low cost of flat panel
| TVs is a miracle of the modern age.
| londons_explore wrote:
| > Additional cost for regen brakes of course.
|
| Regen braking has no physical cost associated - it's pure
| software/firmware. The _exact_ same hardware that is used to
| power the car forwards can be used for regen braking. It can
| be as simple as a single negative sign in the code to cause
| the phase to be 180 degrees out, current to flow backwards,
| torque to go the other way, and the battery to be charged
| instead of discharged.
|
| One day regen braking will take over hydraulic brakes, and
| another big cost/complexity of a car will be eliminated. The
| only reason that doesn't happen today is there are lots of
| laws and regulations requiring hydraulic brakes, and braking
| systems typically require more redundancy than power systems.
| distortedsignal wrote:
| > Regen braking has no physical cost associated - it's pure
| software/firmware.
|
| I think this is a slight exaggeration.
|
| The way I understand regenerative braking is that you
| (effectively) run your AC generator in reverse of what you
| would in order to accelerate in the direction of motion and
| then take the current generated by that, rectify it to DC,
| and use that current to charge a battery. The energy in the
| system is provided by the back EMF induced in the stator by
| the magnetic field generated by the motor rotor. I agree
| that the AC generator is going to stay the same, but I
| think there's specialized hardware needed for the
| rectification and charging cycles. At the minimum, you need
| a more specialized battery and battery management system to
| make sure that you're balancing the charge across the cells
| in your battery.
| labawi wrote:
| I think you are overestimating unique requirements of
| typical car engines. They are usually DC powered AC
| engines, where the DC->AC converter (generating 3-phase
| AC of controlled power and frequency) can probably run
| backwards (AC->DC) with at most a few minimal hardware
| changes, if any.
|
| If you're not overdoing regen, you probably don't need
| additional balancing. Even if you wanted to charge the EV
| by towing, you could probably use the normal charge
| balancing circuitry, again minimal if any HW changes.
| Non-wimpy batteries and cells should be fine - if they
| can fast-charge, they can take regen. Might have some
| limitations on acceptable power vs. temperature, charge
| state etc.
| [deleted]
| kingsuper20 wrote:
| Is that right? I didn't know that. I'd like to see a BOM on
| a regen braking as compared to a simple disk brake system.
|
| One implication to software-only brakes is that it requires
| that that corner is a drive wheel. If that's the case, I
| suppose that anti-lock is simply firmware and a sensor.
|
| note: I do see that Teslas have master cylinders, so they
| apparently are hydraulic braking systems.
| dahfizz wrote:
| A bill of materials? As OP said, there is _literally_
| nothing required aside from what is required to make the
| car go forward. An electric motor is a generator.
|
| Teslas have traditional braking systems in addition to
| the regen braking. The hydraulic brakes have nothing to
| do with the regen system.
| kingsuper20 wrote:
| I appreciate that now. Thank you to everyone for the
| education.
|
| >The hydraulic brakes have nothing to do with the regen
| system.
|
| I strongly suspect that they interact for antilock.
|
| I wonder how Teslas deal with parking brakes,
| historically kind of an issue with disks.
|
| It does seem to me that an entirely regenerative braking
| system would imply additional expense in terms of the
| strength of the half shafts, u-joints, transmission if
| any.
| specialp wrote:
| Parking brakes for disc brakes are usually in the center
| of the disc rotor (like a mini drum) with shoes. Some
| others like Chryslers have implemented hybrid brake
| cylinders
| cesarb wrote:
| > One day regen braking will take over hydraulic brakes,
| and another big cost/complexity of a car will be
| eliminated.
|
| I have read somewhere that the regenerative braking is much
| less effective when the car is going really slow, so you
| still need the hydraulic brakes to come to a complete stop.
| londons_explore wrote:
| True, but you can also use a tiny bit of battery power to
| do "reverse acceleration" to do the final stopping.
|
| It is true that electric braking would continuously use a
| small amount of power to stay stopped on a slope. That
| wouldn't be an issue for a few hours, but you couldn't
| park on a hill for months without ending up with a flat
| battery, and then eventually the car rolling away.
|
| Small locking pins are the answer to this, rather like
| the "park" on automatic gearboxes. They are very cheap,
| since they don't need to do any actual stopping, but
| merely keeping something stopped.
| mfer wrote:
| > I expect that batteries are the only hangup,
|
| Batteries are a huge hangup. For example, we don't know how
| to recycle them and they aren't good for dumps. And, used car
| batteries are expensive to replace and you get a lot fewer
| miles per charge out of older cars. Manufacturing of cars
| isn't great for the environment so we should want older cars
| to last. This model helps push people to more new cars
| faster.
| kingsuper20 wrote:
| No problemo. Just go to a big honkin' flywheel somewhere
| under the back seat.
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| there have been flywheel (only) powered vehicles made.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gyrobus
| B1FF_PSUVM wrote:
| > the low cost of flat panel TVs is a miracle
|
| That's really astounding, I just looked at a 55 inch brand
| name 4k TV going for 400 bucks retail.
|
| Guess it's the same logic as cramming more CPU, etc. into the
| usual couple hundred sq. mm chip. But you get more CPU for
| the same money and chip size, which is not as spectacular as
| more screen size for less money ...
| [deleted]
| piva00 wrote:
| > there's probably not that much magic left in an electric
| motor.
|
| I believe this sentence has been said about many technologies
| in the past that definitely invalidated it. I'm more playing
| devil's advocate than trying to falsify you, likely for being
| burned sometimes reading or, worse, stating it, haha.
| londons_explore wrote:
| There isn't much more _efficiency_ to be gained in the
| electric motor world. Motors typically get 90% of
| theoretical efficiency, so any improvements there will be
| modest.
|
| Substantial improvements in other metrics might be had, but
| they probably won't massively impact EV's (weight and costs
| of the motor are both a small part of the total for a car)
| gtvwill wrote:
| > "I use inches here because in machine work thousandths of
| inches is the language du jour."
|
| Yeah not in Australia unless your machinist is >50 years old.
| Metric is more accurate/easier/less prone to mistakes. Metric
| is what we use.
| specialp wrote:
| I'm not denying the metric system. Just in the USA it is thou
| period. and if the measurement is a consistent unit of
| whatever it works. Also GM (and Holden in oz) are inch based.
| So using metric will subject you to mistakes possibly. I
| agree though in science SI is the way to go
| gtvwill wrote:
| Yeah I cut my teeth on Subaru engines (helped having a gf
| who was a subi then telsa mechanic walking me through it).
| Subi are all metric tho. My workshop is a mix of metric for
| new gear and imperial from my old mans days running a farm.
|
| We even have some stuff thats neither metric or US
| imperial, but is british witworth imperial...so different
| again and just enough to make a difference. Makes for some
| confusing repairs when your working with stuff that's had a
| mix of all 3 systems due to a long life of repairs.
| jabl wrote:
| I'm in Europe, and I've had/worked on German, Japanese and
| Swedish cars and boat engines. Metric all the way.
|
| Only time I've needed an imperial set of tools was when
| overhauling a B&S lawnmower engine.
| Prcmaker wrote:
| I was trained in Australia, in the past decade, and was
| taught thoroughly in both metric and imperial. The engineers
| and machinists I have worked with that insist metric is the
| only way habe been more prone to mistakes when imperial
| components pop up, as they do. Accuracy is down to the spec,
| the person and the machine, ease of use is identical when
| decimal inches are used, mistakes are a result of poor
| communication.
| s5300 wrote:
| Still widely used and taught in the machine shops of highly
| reputable universities over here in the U.S.
|
| If you're under 40 and can't use metric and imperial jargon
| without a second thought in the shop here that's a different
| problem. I _personally_ enjoy doing machine shop-esque metal
| fabrication in metric and woodshop type things in imperial,
| but all machine shop instructors I 've met through several
| good stem uni's that look even slightly middle aged love to
| talk in thou of inch, some to the point of getting quite
| physically frustrated when asked where the metric drill
| index/reamer set are in otherwise highly stocked shops...
|
| Also, I've noticed and heard the same from others in
| surrounding states - Fluid Dynamics professors love to
| include absolutely unecessary boatloads of strange units and
| conversions in coursework/exams to apparently "prepare us for
| the shitshow that is industry"
| tmh88j wrote:
| Nice! What engine did you build?
|
| >The distance between a crank bearing or rod bearing is less
| than 2 thousandths on modern engines. A small amount of oil in
| that tiny space is all that keeps your engine from having metal
| on metal seizure.
|
| The BMW S65 and S85 engines are prime examples of what happens
| when the wrong tolerances are chosen. I can't think of another
| engine family where rod bearings are considered a maintenance
| item.
| specialp wrote:
| I built an LSX (Aftermarket GM) iron block engine (V8 LS) for
| a CTS V. I had to get some very precise tools (Have to
| measure to 10,000ths) or they were useless for bearing
| clearances and verifying cylinder diameters. My cylinders
| were 4.155 bore, and the bearing clearances were around 1.8
| thousandths. Forged pistons, rods and crank.
|
| I had cracked a cylinder/piston on the original LSA. I did
| not trust anyone to do the work so I did a lot of research
| and did it all myself. I appreciate someone asking because my
| friends and software dev co workers aren't interested :)
| kingsuper20 wrote:
| Very cool. Although I own an LS, I've never touched an LS.
| The Sloppy Mechanics guy is impressive though.
|
| Since a short block is mostly just a short block, I'll be
| interested in seeing if LS heads/intake manifold/headers
| takes off in the SBC community.
| mgarfias wrote:
| Huh? What do you mean "takes off". Do you mean do we
| build LS motors now instead of gen1/2 SBCs then yes.
|
| If you mean "do the LSx heads drop onto a gen1/2 SBC",
| then no, not at all. only thing common between them is
| the cylinder spacing. The LS uses 4 bolts per cylinder
| like a ford, instead of 5 like the SBC, the firing order
| is different, the valve layout is different (ports are
| symmetric vs mirrored), etc.
| kingsuper20 wrote:
| Firing order is something of an arbitrary thing, it's
| been done on SBC for some time.
|
| There are small block Chevrolet blocks that accept LS
| heads (Bill Mitchell maybe?)
|
| (note: I wasn't referring to box-stock LS heads on a box-
| stock SBC)
| mgarfias wrote:
| Mostly what i've seen is making the SBC take a
| symmetrical head. Saw some INSANE CFE pro stock heads at
| the machinist last year, he was building them in a large
| bore, short stroke deal setup for bonneville to run like
| 11krpm.
| Grazester wrote:
| Why did you go iron block for your build? Is it that your
| were afraid you cracked the block again? How did you do
| that in the first place. Are you running any boost on this
| engine?
| specialp wrote:
| I'm running 14 lbs boost yes. And yes it was piece of
| mind that it's much harder to crack and unlike the
| aluminum block I can bore it more than 5-10 thou if it
| needed it again. Downside is 100lbs more but this is in a
| 4200lb car so whatever
| tmh88j wrote:
| >I had cracked a cylinder/piston on the original LSA. I did
| not trust anyone to do the work so I did a lot of research
| and did it all myself
|
| I love working on cars so I totally get wanting to do that,
| but why didn't you trust someone else to do the work? There
| are probably more reputable LS builders across the US than
| any other engine family.
| esaym wrote:
| It sounds like he wanted some very precise work done.
| Quality in the blue collar trades has gone to nil in the
| last decade. And if you do find someone that is very
| detailed and "by the book" level of quality, you are
| going to pay 3X the normal labor rate. For instance, this
| is a performance transmission shop [0] that regularly
| takes apart "precision" rebuilt transmissions only to
| find they were not done right at all.
|
| [0] https://youtu.be/aI5iO2YSHMs
| tmh88j wrote:
| LS engines are among the most common engines in custom
| built cars, and there are countless shops out there who
| specialize in them. No offense to him or you, but it's
| quite ridiculous to believe you can do a better job
| building an engine on your first try than shops like
| Texas Speed who have been doing it for decades with full
| blown R&D labs and regularly build 2000+ horsepower
| motors, all with highly skilled machinists and engineers
| using professional equipment that the average person
| would never be able to afford.
|
| Edit - For reference here's a video of the shop I'm
| referring to. They're far from a podunk operation.
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8HgwF5dISmU
| specialp wrote:
| I could do a better job than them in all due respect. I
| care about my job more than anyone on earth. I know they
| do good work but if we could both measure to the same
| specs and know we did it right, how could I do it worse
| than them. we have the same measuring tools. Not that I
| think they do bad work. But if you ever built an engine
| you know its all about attention to detail. there is
| nothing they have to verify the integrity of the build
| that I don't to a similar level of precision.
|
| Edit: I dont have the machines they do, but when my bare
| block comes back from the machine shop, my tools are just
| as good as theirs to verify the dimensions are correct.
| That isn't possible to verify with a built short or long
| block. They could possibly have 100 employees that care
| as much about my job as me who knows. This is a job about
| verification of specs and assembling correctly not of
| insane tech. They don't have anything I dont when
| assembling an engine. Machine work yes
| selykg wrote:
| Texas Speed or TKM are two places I'd use if I were doing
| an LS build.
| mywittyname wrote:
| It helps that they are abundant (in the hundreds of
| millions units produced), have been in use for decades
| (since the mid-50s), and are simple to work on (as
| evidence by the OP randomly learning to machine one).
|
| As cool as 2-atom thick plasma transfer wire arc cylinder
| liners are, that's not something which will ever be
| available to a layman.
| mgarfias wrote:
| I really doubt the OP did the machine work himself, those
| tools are not affordable for just using once or twice.
| Buying bore gages and mics however is totally doable.
|
| And no, the LS motors have been in use since '97.
| Including the gen1/2 small blocks doesn't count, there
| are no shared parts between them.
| specialp wrote:
| Yes you are right as far as LS engine builders there's
| loads. I could have ordered a crate engine from Texas Speed
| and been done with it. And yes for hours of my time spent
| vs hours of money saved I lost a ton of money. But all it
| takes is one very small mistake to make an engine short
| lived with these exacting tolerances. I'd rather blame
| myself than deal with someone kicking the blame back. It
| was also a personal satisfaction thing.
|
| My wife's engine had an issue and it was the middle of
| winter so I said whatever let's just have a shop fix it. In
| the process they "flushed the transmission" and it failed 4
| days after we got the car back. Of course they stonewalled
| us and I can't prove they broke it. So I ordered a late
| model wreck transmission and replaced it and 3 years later
| still running strong.
|
| But I then decided that I would never be in that position
| again where someone could tell me it wasn't their problem
| and get me aggravated. With this engine I built it from raw
| parts. I had the block machined, and I had the tools to
| verify.
|
| It was certainly not worth my time, but as you said I love
| working on cars too.
| Grazester wrote:
| I have a buddy that is adamant about not flushing
| transmissions if you dont have a issue because he think
| its guaranteed to have an issue after, from his
| experience. lol
| Severian wrote:
| There is _some_ truth to that, but not never. A flush
| will dislodge any metal shavings and crud from the moving
| parts. The filter should catch these, but the filters
| themselves can get clogged, and then bye-bye
| transmission.
|
| Flushing can really be bad if you've never done a routine
| flush on a schedule. You don't want to go 150,000 miles
| before your first one. You would need a garage with a
| forced flush system to move it all out, and then probably
| flush again soon after to make sure all the gunk is out.
|
| Transmission oil breaks down with heat and wear like any
| other, and will eventually contain sludge and dirt.
| specialp wrote:
| I'd concur with that. Note this was one of the notorious
| to fail JATCO nissan/mitsubishi transmissions. Blowing
| fluid through with pressure makes no sense. Sediment
| sitting in pans does not affect operation until it is
| agitated into suspension
| Grazester wrote:
| The Nissan automatics and especially manuals(cd009) are
| fairly strong. It's their CVT that's the issues. I don't
| know why Nissan insist on using them with their V6's.
| philg_jr wrote:
| Damn, dropping a new engine in a CTS V? What year? NA? How
| much power are you shooting for? The CTS V is definitely
| one of my favorite cars, I'd love to own one one day, but
| the ones with the manual trans hold their value pretty well
| :)
| specialp wrote:
| It was and still will be supercharged. It was 650 crank
| Hp, and will be over 800 conservatively . and its manual
| ;)
| philg_jr wrote:
| Yep. Jealous. Best of luck on the build!
| mgarfias wrote:
| 17-18 thou here on my LS6 on the rods. 23-24 on the mains.
| I'd like to see tighter on the mains, but not sure if its
| worth ordering another set of bearings and using 1/2 of
| them to tighten up 1/2 a thou like i did on the rods.
|
| what amazes me is the cam lifts we're running these days.
| I'm running .646"/.649". In the 90s .500" was big for a
| street motor, and only full blown race motors were running
| whats normal now.
| kirse wrote:
| Subaru EJ motors munch through rod bearings quite happily.
| samstave wrote:
| What are the indicators that replacing them is neigh?
| Prcmaker wrote:
| In my experience with these, when I've heard the first
| indicator to do it, the damage is done. Standard regular
| maintenance hasn't identified the issue in advance. I'd
| be curious to see whether long term monitoring of
| particulates in oil can make an help though.
| zeusk wrote:
| Any race or high power engine, especially those that rev
| quite high will need rebuild - not just in bottom end but
| often with piston rings and valves as well.
|
| You don't really hear about those other engines much because
| their buyers understand that a race engine needs more
| maintenance than any other road car.
|
| Also, not beating on the engine until oil has warmed up to
| temp will elongate the bearing lifespan quite a bit. I have a
| friend with E60 6mt S85 that has factory bearings at 110k mi
| and has perfect oil analysis results.
| tmh88j wrote:
| The S65 and S85 are road car engines, not racecar engines.
| They're also hardly BMW's highest performing motors. Even
| Dinan built engines don't suffer from that problem.
| zeusk wrote:
| They're meant to be dual duty. There aren't any road car
| engines I'm aware of that use individual throttle bodies
| or 12+ compression without direct injection.
| tmh88j wrote:
| The S54 engine which came before the S65/85, was also
| high revving, had 11.5:1 compression ratio and didn't
| have any of the rod bearing issues. The 20v Toyota 4AGE
| also had them too with a high compression ratio.
| jcoby wrote:
| The S54 absolutely had rod bearing issues. There was a
| recall on the 2001-2003.5 M3s to replace them and BMW
| switched to 60w oil as part of the remediation. They're
| still having issues to this day.
|
| The S54 is also notorious for VANOS issues and cam drive
| failures. I had to replace the solenoid pack on mine but
| elected to not upgrade the drive while I was in there.
| zeusk wrote:
| S54 most definitely had rod bearing issues.
|
| 4AGE is 4cyl 11:1 compression producing 155hp with
| 7200rpm redline.
|
| S85 is 10cyl 12:1 compression producing 500hp with
| 8250rpm redline.
| esaym wrote:
| > Also, not beating on the engine until oil has warmed up
| to temp will elongate the bearing lifespan quite a bit.
|
| I am curious if there is proof to this. I've always felt
| the same way. I know in the "old days" with iron pistons,
| if you you simply started up a cold motor and and drove it
| hard without a warm up period, the pistons would expand
| quicker than the block and would start to scour the walls
| and/or lock up.
|
| But other than that, the only other "proof" I have is from
| people in high school that like clock work at 3:30
| everyday, would smoke tires leaving the parking lot
| everyday. They seemed to go through motors every 6 months.
| I'm talking knocking bearings and lifters cracked in half.
| I've never gotten rough with anything I own until after a
| 20 minute "warm up" and all has been well (so far).
| kingsuper20 wrote:
| It wasn't so much locking up or anything but cast vs.
| forged.
| Grazester wrote:
| I thought once you replaced the crappy OEM bearings you were
| all set on these engines. I guess it is not the case?
| [deleted]
| Sosh101 wrote:
| This is amazing educational content.
| cbsudux wrote:
| This is awesome. How did you create the animations?
| qwertox wrote:
| One of those web pages which deserves an award. Some place in
| some kind of Internet Hall of Fame, an historical archive which
| shows the only best highlights of what websites were actually
| capable of presenting. Milestones of web development.
|
| This page summarizes pretty good what web technology is capable
| of, when in the hands of a real professional.
|
| ---
|
| Ok, I just realized this is from Bartosz Ciechanowski, and this
| reminded me of the Cameras and Lenses [1] article which I've seen
| recently. It was the same kind of quality.
|
| This man is a real genius.
|
| [1] https://ciechanow.ski/cameras-and-lenses/
| cblconfederate wrote:
| The award is the bookmark. This is a great reference for
| cleaniness.
| pitspotter wrote:
| https://ciechanow.ski/cameras-and-lenses/
|
| > [...] We've barely scratched the surface of optics and camera
| lens
|
| A real genius certainly, but, I'm always doing this; bad choice
| of metaphor here!
| hutzlibu wrote:
| "bad choice of metaphor here! "
|
| Or a funny one.
| jonplackett wrote:
| Love how it's written
|
| > While reliable and easy to direct, a cannon ball won't be
| very effective at pushing the crank
| ehnto wrote:
| That was a fantastic metaphor, and though I am intimately
| familiar with engines I had never thought of the crankshaft
| as four simple hand cranks stuck together before.
| rz2k wrote:
| I wonder if it was inspired by well known this classic
| video explaining differentials.
|
| https://youtu.be/yYAw79386WI
| BlueTemplar wrote:
| Yeah, and to think that some people are incredulous when I say
| that I need animation support in my electronic documents !
|
| This is even better, I will bookmark it as an example.
| exhaze wrote:
| Saw a startup recently building something like "PowerPoint
| for animated documents" - https://www.unscene.app/
|
| Crazy that no one's made this before
| BlueTemplar wrote:
| Really cool, but : - For the love of God, why a web app ?!?
| - We pretty much already have what I'm asking for in the
| form of MHTML, I just need Firefox support !
| pvg wrote:
| I like the the interactive visualizations a lot and some of the
| setup (a camera picture is a thing that changes in certain ways
| as you fiddle with these 3 parameters, etc). But I always have
| a hard time telling who the actual _audience_ for this stuff
| is. If it 's someone who has very little exposure to how
| cameras actually operate, is a Bayer filter really the second
| thing they need to be aware of? I don't really follow the
| pedagogical narrative/intent here.
| [deleted]
| umvi wrote:
| I'm assuming he used something like SolidWorks to CAD up the
| parts, but then it looks like he custom made all the animation
| stepping widgets and camera rotation logic and various shaders
| for the different effects in pure JS[0]? Surely he didn't write
| this JS by hand (i.e. it was generated from blender3d or
| solidworks files or something?).
|
| I would like an article on how he made the interactive
| animations in the article.
|
| [0] https://ciechanow.ski/js/ice.js
| vishnugupta wrote:
| > Surely he didn't write this JS by hand
|
| It seems parts of it are auto-generated like all those co-
| ordinates. But then some parts appear as if they are hand-
| coded.
|
| I also noticed that other program texts are getting assigned
| to variables (example "line_vert_src"). Could someone please
| describe what's going on?
|
| That explosion animation is absolutely mind-blowing. Goes to
| show what can be achieved if someone focuses their attention
| to a topic to understand it in depth _and_ explain it at the
| same depth.
| JW_00000 wrote:
| > I also noticed that other program texts are getting
| assigned to variables (example "line_vert_src"). Could
| someone please describe what's going on?
|
| These are fragments of code in "OpenGL ES Shading
| Language", passed to WebGL. See for instance [0] for a
| tutorial.
|
| [0] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
| US/docs/Web/API/WebGL_API/T...
| gfaure wrote:
| I think it can't be understated how important it is to able
| to rotate, and move the playback forwards and backwards.
|
| It's almost like being able to hold the part in your hands,
| examine the reasoning behind its structure and "debug" your
| mental model of it by playing its operation back and forth.
| CaptainBanger wrote:
| It really reminded me of the educational 'toys' that I used
| while I was attending Montessori school. You could go at
| your own speed and come to understand a concept by letting
| you play with all the constituent parts when you felt like
| it - or if you saw someone else doing it and joined in.
| jiscariot wrote:
| One of the 'toys' I remember from my Montessori
| experience was these long bead chains. They had all
| different sizes, e.g. one would be a chain of 8 segments,
| each containing 8 beads on a rod between the joints. The
| '8' chain would be blue and have an associated blue cube
| of beads 8x8x8. I remember the '10' chain and cube was
| something really to be seen.
|
| We also had really large blocks, because someone dropped
| one on my head.
| ehnto wrote:
| Exactly, having control over the artifact is so empowering
| for learning and curiosity. A simple image or gif wouldn't
| be nearly as engaging.
| circadian wrote:
| "This page summarizes pretty good what web technology is
| capable of, when in the hands of a real professional."
|
| I was looking at this when I went to bed, and though the
| subject matter isn't completely new to me I was enthralled by
| the execution and stayed up and read all of it...
|
| Absolutely LOVE the way this has been put together, it really
| speaks to me of beauty in simplicity, at least from the visual
| perspective!
| Waterluvian wrote:
| This, like the Fourier Transform webpage, is a masterpiece.
|
| Silly Question: when I add gasoline to my car it's a liquid. When
| it enters a cylinder of my Engine, mixed with air, is it still a
| liquid? Is it a gas? Aeresolized? What causes the change in state
| and when/where?
| [deleted]
| petrocrat wrote:
| Can you share a link to the Fourier Transform page that you
| mentionted, please?
| Waterluvian wrote:
| https://www.jezzamon.com/fourier/
| wolfgang42 wrote:
| It's an aerosol, fine droplets of liquid in a stream of air. It
| used to be the carburetor that added the fuel to the airstream
| (by way of the Bernoulli principle); modern cars use a fuel
| injector, which works on much the same principle as a spray
| bottle to create the fuel-air mixture directly in the cylinder.
| 49yearsold wrote:
| This is unbelievably awesome! I wish I had such material and
| teacher like Bartosz Ciechanowski when I was learning IC engine
| during my undergrad for mechanical engineering. Thanks a million
| to Bartosz wherever you are and whoever you are! Simply
| wonderful! Thank you, thank you, and thank you!
| [deleted]
| globular-toast wrote:
| Over the years I've learned how most parts of a car work at a
| basic level. Engines, clutches, gearboxes, differentials etc. I
| can't help but feel a bit sad that it might all go away within my
| lifetime. Electric cars are essentially just a battery and a
| motor. They're just not very interesting.
| the__alchemist wrote:
| Question from the part of the article where the piston is
| introduced: We know what constrains the up and down positions of
| the piston; What constrains the direction of rotation of the
| crank?
| Sharlin wrote:
| The crank's angular momentum, which is originally derived from
| the turning of the starter motor.
| the__alchemist wrote:
| Thank you. So the engine can go either way, and the direction
| is determined by the initial rotation?
| Sharlin wrote:
| As far as I know, yes.
| pierrec wrote:
| Well done. According to the author's Patreon, this is his first
| article that's "Paid for by patrons" though no details are given.
| His Patreon is set up so that donations happen whenever he
| publishes a new article. I guess the advantage over recurring
| donations is that it doesn't pressure him to crank out content -
| he can just do it on his own schedule, and donations are always
| justified.
|
| https://www.patreon.com/ciechanowski
| quercusa wrote:
| This part delights me - check the diagram just under "now
| whenever we push on the bucket the spring will push it back in
| place"
|
| When you release the slider _it_ springs back into place.
| kingsuper20 wrote:
| It's a lot scarier when you see things going under load at speed.
| Lots of wiggling, twisty magic, waves.
|
| Smokey Yunick (blessed be his name) used to make see-through
| timing covers, oil pans, valve covers + strobe light + some sort
| of oscilloscope setup to watch the craziness. I think I remember
| seeing the results for small block Chevrolet timing gears on
| sprint car engines as the teeth wiggled more and more with rpm.
| Cam went backwards and forwards. Ooof.
| Syonyk wrote:
| > _Smokey Yunick_
|
| Oh, man. I'm not a huge NASCAR fan, but that guy. _That guy._
| He was an absolute _master_ of "But the rules didn't say I
| couldn't..." and probably is responsible for half the thickness
| of the modern rulebook on his own!
|
| "What? The fuel tank capacity can't have an inflated basketball
| in it that springs a leak during the race, leaving us with more
| fuel capacity?"
|
| "What? The fuel lines have to be a short path between the tank
| and engine? Now, look, _nowhere in this here book_ does it say
| I can 't stuff the frame rails with a couple hundred feet of
| spiraled fuel line. It gets an extra gallon or two in the car?
| _Really?_ Huh... "
|
| "Nowhere in the book does it say the bodywork has to actually
| match the size or positioning of the stock car the race car is
| based on. I can't help it if nobody else has totally redone the
| bodywork to improve aerodynamics... oh, OK, you're bringing
| cardboard templates next season, got it, that trick is done."
|
| The guy was an absolute master of "creative advantages that
| weren't actually illegal at the time they were used."
| mysterydip wrote:
| He also had an infamous Fiero with a "hot vapor engine" that
| was claimed 50+ mpg and 250hp (when the stock 4cyl made
| ~90hp, it was the 80s after all):
| https://www.legendarycollectorcars.com/featured-
| vehicles/oth...
| kingsuper20 wrote:
| The aero belly of his 1968 Camaro was interesting. The SBC-
| powered Indy car (probably the last of home-garage built
| vehicles for that race), the time he drove a NASCAR car back
| from an impound without the gas tank, etc.
|
| Not to say that cheating didn't happen elsewhere. Check out
| the front-end sheet metal of the Trans-Am Boss 302s. Use of
| the headlight holes for brake ducting. The inline Autolite
| carb. There were some good minds at Holman-Moody, Kar Kraft,
| Bud Moore, etc.
| jborichevskiy wrote:
| > "What? The fuel tank capacity can't have an inflated
| basketball in it that springs a leak during the race, leaving
| us with more fuel capacity?"
|
| Pardon my ignorance- what is the motivation for temporarily
| reducing the fuel capacity in this example? And why was it
| disallowed?
| BrentOzar wrote:
| Your fuel tank was only allowed to hold a certain amount of
| fuel because if you had more, you could go farther between
| pit stops, thereby covering more laps while the other
| drivers were stopped for gas.
|
| He would temporarily meet the small tank regulations during
| inspection, but under race conditions, the ball would
| burst, allowing for more space in the tank, which would get
| filled up with more fuel than his competitors at the first
| pit stop.
| nemo44x wrote:
| If you're not cheating you're not trying.
| samstave wrote:
| How was he "caught" if thats the term?
| TheGallopedHigh wrote:
| By the mere fact that the car wasn't pitting as often.
| Car was likely inspected afterwards.
| bronson wrote:
| Most of them weren't pitting as often as they should.
| Syonyk wrote:
| I would assume that by some point, if one of his cars
| won, the officials just took the whole thing apart to
| find out what sort of bizarre loophole he'd found that
| met the letter of the requirements while totally
| violating the spirit. His antics weren't secret, even at
| the time he was working. He was just _really good at it._
| matkoniecz wrote:
| @TwoBit
|
| I guess it depends whether you accept "technically,
| according to rules as written (...)" is a valid
| explanation.
|
| Maybe I am wrong, but in racing it seems to be.
| TwoBit wrote:
| And nobody considers that dishonest? It's cheating in the
| spirit of the rules if not the letter of the rules.
| Wxc2jjJmST9XWWL wrote:
| Nope ; Motorsport is always drivers' skills coupled with
| engineering ingenuity. It's always about "what can I come
| up with, which gives me an edge, and still somehow is
| within the rules?" I don't know anything about Nascar,
| but the history of Formula 1 is full of such little
| tricks as well. It's just easier to regulate "other
| sports" than it is to regulate sports that come coupled
| with a lot of technological involvement.
|
| If sth gives you an edge for half a season until rules
| are adjusted, that might be enough to win a championship.
| It's a cat-and-mouse game, but it's also exciting, and
| important for the whole thrill of it.
|
| Decades past Gordon Murray designed a fan quite literally
| sucking cars to the ground, which somehow was within
| regulations, because no one even considered something
| like that https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hb6DAmm7sZg In
| rally driving, they would sometimes come up with fake
| reasons for a start to be delayed, so they wouldn't have
| to drive in the front car's dust all the time. Audi
| entering with their 4-wheel car back in the days was only
| possible, because they pushed for a rule change and no
| one else really knew what was coming. Sometimes
| manufacturers straight up "cheated" (almost, sometimes
| for real) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6lo4dGTrzr8 ;
| it's a thin line, but also what makes it exciting.
|
| I would say that it's the hacker's / engineering ethos
| almost. What can I do within the framework? Whether it's
| building a bridge (to make it more stable while still
| following this brash design), a road car (how can I
| create something fun, with torque, sound, emotion, down
| force, power, but a nice shape, and still get a road
| legal car within environmental regulations), computer
| games (consider
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=izxXGuVL21o ; computer
| games are full of hacks to get the most out of the
| hardware), even legal (how can we pay almost no taxes,
| while not being busted for tax avoidance?) ; not every
| ingenuity is necessarily good, but it will always be cat-
| and-mouse, that's the point of living.
|
| This got meta quick ... and quite a more detailed answer
| than I anticipated. Sorry for that, hope I gave you a
| different perspective though.
| geocrasher wrote:
| Excellent comment. I watched the Audi/Lancier video in
| full. Wow. Amazing stuff. Thanks for all the info!
| [deleted]
| samstave wrote:
| Was watching the formula 1 series, and one team appeared
| to fully copy the body stylings of the mercedes team, and
| while it was technically legal, it was morally frowned on
| and a lot of other teams were pissed off.
| Syonyk wrote:
| No. You're free to abide by a conservative interpretation
| of the rules, it just means you'll literally never win
| against a team with a more creative interpretation. It's
| very much of a realm of "That which is not explicitly
| forbidden is permitted." And the range of "explicitly
| forbidden" tends to be based heavily on what the rules
| body feels offers too much advantage.
|
| It's quite literally a major part of what makes the sport
| interesting. Yes, driver skill matters, but an
| exceedingly creative crew chief (see Smokey) is worth
| quite a bit more.
|
| Some of it is certainly "cheating, good luck catching
| us." Some of the trick throttle body restrictor plates
| that look like a perfectly valid restrictor plate ("A
| hole of X diameter to restrict airflow to the engine so
| everyone has the same power") end up flowing a lot more
| are pretty clearly cheating - they're against both the
| letter and spirit of the rules, but you have to catch
| them, which is hard.
|
| Others? It's literally just undefined areas. To borrow a
| few of Smokey's antics, sure, the car has to be based on
| a stock car you can buy - but does it have to be
| dimensionally identical, or can you get creative? He did
| things like create smoother windshield/frame junctions to
| reduce drag, extended the bumper down to improve
| aerodynamics, etc. Is that cheating, or is that just
| creative optimization within the rules? You were, at one
| point, allowed to use an alternative frame for the car.
| As worded, that doesn't _prohibit_ a custom made frame
| with the drivetrain offset to one side for balance
| improvements for circle track duty... but is that
| actually _cheating_? It never said you couldn 't.
|
| One might reasonably assume that a fuel line routing
| would be "a more or less direct and protected path from
| the fuel tank to the engine." But, if you've not
| specified this, and someone stuffs the frame rails with a
| couple gallons worth of spiraled fuel line... the
| requirements specify _fuel tank capacity._ They don 't
| specify _fuel line length or capacity._ So if you stuff a
| ton of the largest diameter fuel line you can get your
| hands on in just about every frame rail and it doesn 't
| say you can't... well, is that cheating?
|
| The rules have gotten more strict over time, but there
| are still plenty of creative ways to use the provided
| parts. A few years back, some team found some way to use
| the provided suspension components, within spec, to meet
| the ride height requirements at the start of the race,
| when it was measured. They were _consistently_ lower than
| they ought to be at the end of the race, but they used
| the provided parts and met the requirements, as written,
| at the time they were racing. I believe the letter they
| got was essentially, "We can't figure out what you're
| doing, but stop it, and we're going to start checking
| ride height at the end of the race, here's the
| tolerances." They met every requirement provided, but
| found some way or another to get an advantage.
|
| And that's just NASCAR. You get into F1 with
| "functionally unlimited budgets" and some of the
| engineering insanity that is entirely within the bounds
| of the rulebook, but is still wonderfully absurd...
|
| Stuff like "You never said we had to race with the
| physical engine we qualified with, so our qualifying
| engine is run at the literal edge of holding together and
| we replace it before the race." I believe it was BMW that
| got around 1500hp out of a 1.5L motor (so 1000 HP/L), but
| the engine more or less came apart at the end of the
| qualifying laps.
|
| Can you water cool your brakes? Well, OK, nothing against
| it. Whoops, did you water cool your brakes so much you're
| underweight during the race, but refill the tank before
| post-race weigh in? Well...
|
| Far as I'm concerned, this is the sort of thing that
| makes racing interesting!
| richardw wrote:
| The same ethos added to pro cycling is pretty much
| considered cheating but I'd guess not in the inner
| chambers. Fair game as long as you pass the tests? Draw
| oxygenated blood out and put it back in halfway through a
| tour. Now that's called blood doping. Rinse and repeat,
| for decades:
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_doping_cases_in_c
| ycl...
| rocqua wrote:
| People do, that's why the rules are changed after a
| while. Competitors are usually outraged. Fans are
| somewhat split. Rulemakers are annoyed, but don't
| retroactively change the rules.
| jborichevskiy wrote:
| That makes sense, thanks. Clever!
| ska wrote:
| I suspect that it increased the fuel capacity from the
| nominal "max" at race start, so when you hit a pit stop you
| can put more in.
| [deleted]
| WalterBright wrote:
| Fuel capacities are reduced to minimize the fire in fiery
| crashes. But lower fuel capacity means more pit stops,
| which the racer wants to minimize.
|
| Temporarily reducing fuel capacity means the car passes
| tech inspection, but really has more capacity.
| [deleted]
| Syonyk wrote:
| Fuel tank capacity is required to be 10 gallons. Say, 20
| laps or so.
|
| They check, at the tech inspection, that your tank doesn't
| hold more than 10 gallons. Great.
|
| Except, once you deflate the basketball (or get creative
| with routing fuel lines all over the car), you _actually_
| have 11-12 gallons onboard.
|
| Which means, at the end of the race, when everyone else has
| to pit, you can make the "risky option" to skip the final
| pit stop, keep rolling, and, well, surprise of surprise,
| make it over the line (in first place) before you flame
| out.
| jborichevskiy wrote:
| Ah, that explains the fuel lines as well. Very
| interesting!
| zombielinux wrote:
| When you qualify, your fuel tank is only allowed to hold X
| gallons. With the basketball inside, it held X gallons.
|
| When the basketball sprang a leak and deflated, the tank
| held X+Y gallons, netting a slight advantage between pit
| stops (an extra lap or two over 500 miles adds up)
| [deleted]
| jakogut wrote:
| I assume the rule book specified a maximum fuel tank size,
| to ensure that teams were making roughly equal pit stops
| for refueling, etc. Installing a larger fuel tank with the
| volume taken up by an adjustable air reservoir means the
| tank starts at legal capacity, and increases in capacity
| after the race begins, allowing fewer stops for refueling.
| adrianpike wrote:
| We had a see through engine w/strobe system at the uni I
| studied vehicle engineering at, it was really really
| educational to be able to adjust ignition timing and fuel
| mixture and see how it would change the color & shape of the
| flame front.
|
| Probably a ton easier to simulate it these days but at the time
| it was absolute magic and really helped me understand how to
| ear-tune an engine to at least good enough to get on a dyno.
| gooseyard wrote:
| Kevin Cameron from Cycle World has written some of the most
| fantastic articles about these topics, in particular there's
| one that I'm struggling to find about the problems with solid
| camshaft mass when rpms started to get really high and resulted
| in cam oscillation and failure, so they were made hollow, only
| to then discover they got too hot, which led to making the
| sodium filled, and on and on.
|
| Also a couple of great ones about the struggle to find alloys
| for radial engine cylinders that could flex without cracking.
| His writing is so insightful and concise!
| towndrunk wrote:
| You can get clear valve covers for some BMW motorcycles now.
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BE71lpgJ4ng
| TheSpiceIsLife wrote:
| How much of that was really metal elasticity and how much
| artifacts of the camera technology used, eg. rolling shutter?
|
| I work with metals all day every day, and damn can it flex, but
| would have imagined the high carbon steels used in engines
| would he fairly still.
| bob1029 wrote:
| Reciprocating machines are fairly remarkable when you consider
| all of the components involved, forces, etc. Even more so when
| you think about how long a typical car engine lasts.
|
| These incredible forces are why rotary and turbine engines are
| substantially more reliable. Some gas turbines have only 1
| moving part, and in some applications this moving part
| experiences zero wear due to magnetic/aerodynamic/active
| bearings.
| kingsuper20 wrote:
| Rotaries are a funny case. Look good on paper. Thermal
| efficiency issues. Smog. Seals. Noise control difficulties.
| Weird patches like bridge ports.
|
| For modern passenger cars, it's kind of like overcoming the
| difficulties of two-stroke.
|
| In anti-defense of 4-stroke ICE, it seems to me like we are
| hitting peak wacky complexity of those. Variable timing cams,
| turn off the cylinders, direct port injection, turbos,
| variable intake, complicated ECU. It's a far cry from a
| flathead 6 or VW flat 4.
|
| Thank God electric cars are becoming more available, although
| I fear increasingly complex cooling and battery management
| and the 1000 things a software guy is going to add to them.
| baybal2 wrote:
| The problem with ICE industry is that nearly nothing
| improves much in absolute terms.
|
| If you take a look at list of ICE records, nearly all of
| them were made decades, and decades ago.
|
| Biggest piston engines - early 20th century
|
| Most powerful piston engines - fourties
|
| Most efficient piston engine - Jumo 204 held the record
| until nineties
|
| Most power to weight - eighties
|
| Uncounted billions put into engine RnD were mostly about
| scraping last few percents off everything above, and
| environmental compliance.
| dahart wrote:
| > Jumo 204 held the record until nineties
|
| And what has happened since then? Google is showing me
| several engines with breakthrough efficiency in the last
| 10 years.
|
| When I was a kid in the 90s, SUVs commonly got 12 MPG.
| The new models are 25 sometimes 30 MPG. Emissions have
| gotten considerably better in the last 30 years.
|
| I'm looking and can't find any info to back up the claim
| that this 1920s engine was more efficient than engines
| designed in the 80s and 90s. I am curious about it, not
| just is it true, but specifically what kind of efficiency
| you mean and what design features made it efficient. Do
| you have any sources or reading? Wikipedia talks about
| how the arrangement of the valves increased the
| efficiency, but only says this made it approach four
| stroke efficiency (at the time), not that it exceeded
| other designs. The 204 was a two stroke, and it seems to
| be common knowledge that even today, four strokes are
| more efficient.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Junkers_Jumo_204
| stickfigure wrote:
| Like those distorted maps of the united states weighted
| by population[1], your post should be read with
| "environmental compliance" as the center of mass. Yet you
| shrug it off like a footnote. Nobody, except perhaps ship
| designers, cares who has the biggest piston engines.
|
| [1] http://www-personal.umich.edu/~mejn/election/2016/
| elihu wrote:
| > Thank God electric cars are becoming more available,
| although I fear increasingly complex cooling and battery
| management and the 1000 things a software guy is going to
| add to them.
|
| I'm hoping lithium iron phosphate starts to be used more in
| midrange vehicles; partly because they can be scaled up
| while sidestepping the potential resource bottlenecks
| around cobalt and nickel, and partly because they're very
| durable and cooling isn't usually much of an issue. Though
| heating might be an issue in the winter time (most LFP
| cells don't like being charged when temperatures are below
| freezing; heating might be necessary in winter).
| bitexploder wrote:
| [*] more reliable in theory. Mazda RX8 and rotary engines are
| famous for being a bit maintenance heavy and unreliable.
|
| The amount of engineering and brain power that has gone into
| making common ICE engines in cars in wide deployment reliable
| is staggering.
| Dork1234 wrote:
| I've own an RX8 maintenance came down to adding oil every
| few fill ups, and changing spark plugs every 10k miles. If
| you treat the engine correctly, the will easily get to 100k
| miles, if you drive the engine incorrectly (run at low
| RPM), or run low on oil things won't last long. The car is
| a sports car and won't get you worry free 200,000 miles
| like Accord or Camry. Even the S2000 had similar oil usage.
|
| Talking to the dealers I took the car too, many of the
| issues with related to people who didn't warm engine up, or
| baby the engine below 3,000 rpms causing carbon build up.
| bob1029 wrote:
| Agreed on automotive rotary. It's not in the same spirit as
| the gas turbine and others.
| roflchoppa wrote:
| i just got a driveshaft balanced for my 240z, it was 2/3oz out
| on the front and 1/3oz out on the tail. I was thinking how much
| force would that generate at speed.
|
| Hopefully the vibration problem is gone.
| tyingq wrote:
| The quality of the explanations, and progression of complexity,
| reminded me of an old video that explains how a car's
| differential (rear end) works:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yYAw79386WI
|
| Skip to 3:30 for the explanatory part.
| obiwanpallav1 wrote:
| This video is a gift.
| alanbernstein wrote:
| Wow, this video was fantastic, thanks for sharing. I see how
| the progression reminded you of this, but the physical demo
| presents as more of a history-of-mechanisms lesson, which is
| fascinating.
|
| I also appreciated the humor. They seem to have built a working
| mockup of a car with the driveshaft penetrating the passenger
| compartment, just to make the joke that it would be
| inconvenient to rest luggage on the spinning shaft.
| warmwaffles wrote:
| If you really want a rabbit hole, I suggest this guy's
| channel.
| https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwosUnVH6AINmxtqkNJ3Fbg
| RamRodification wrote:
| Can we have better titles please?
| ekianjo wrote:
| What is the best way to archive such a page for offline browsing?
| I tried ArchiveBox on this, but all the animations are gone in
| the offline version (no matter which method was used).
| soperj wrote:
| That was awesome. I'd love to see another with the Wankel engine!
| _acco wrote:
| Animagraffs also has an amazing short on the ICE:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQvfHyfgBtA
| ehnto wrote:
| Wow, that was perfectly executed. A testament to what the web can
| be.
| enono wrote:
| HOW
| xixixao wrote:
| Open devtools, Sources, ice.js, on line 5193, change 2 to 40.
| Fixes the speed of the first animation.
|
| Disclaimer: I don't know what the real speed should be. The whole
| website is amazing though.
| npunt wrote:
| Another great Bartosz Ciechanowski creation. Also check out his
| past work [1] about light & shadows, cameras & lenses, color
| spaces, floating point, etc.
|
| [1] https://ciechanow.ski/archives
| barcosofttech wrote:
| hello
| fideloper wrote:
| whoops thought this was an article about basecamp
| iaw wrote:
| I spent a couple years trying to fully understand automotive
| systems tip to tail and did pretty well (excluding transmissions,
| they're magic). This is _the best_ illustration of how engines
| work that I 've ever seen.
| mrfusion wrote:
| Isn't it risky for the timing to rely on a rubber belt? Does it
| never slip? Even a mm of slippage seems like it would make the
| valve timing stop matching the pistons?
| frosted-flakes wrote:
| Timing belts are toothed, and if installed correctly they will
| never slip. Modern kevlar timing belts are near-indestructible
| under normal use. The real problem is the pulleys--once those
| bearings wear out, they can seize, causing the belt to slip or
| even break.
| pjc50 wrote:
| Timing belts have teeth.
|
| Occasionally chains are used instead; more expensive and
| heavier, but more durable. You do need to maintain the timing
| either way it it will destroy the valves.
| elihu wrote:
| I think another reason belts are common is that chains tend
| to be a bit noisier.
| bluedino wrote:
| If the engine is a non-interference design, losing the belt
| won't be catastrophic for the valves
| thereisnospork wrote:
| >Timing belts have teeth.
|
| To expand: It is the teeth that make belts timing belts, they
| keep the 'timing' (relative rotational orientation) of 2 or
| more toothed pulleys. In an ICE the camshafts are locked to a
| 2:1 ratio to the crank shaft, in a 3d printer it keeps an
| axis fixed relative to the stepper motor shaft.
| blamazon wrote:
| In addition to what frosted-flakes said, many engines are "non
| interference" design so that if the belt snaps or jumps a tooth
| the engine won't be destroyed, and the belt will just need to
| be replaced. However, non interference engines are not as
| compact as interference engines.
|
| Many engines also use a timing chain instead of a timing belt,
| but this carries extra weight and requires lubrication.
|
| It's all about tradeoffs!
| TheSpiceIsLife wrote:
| The engine in one of the vehicles I own has timing _gears_
| rather than a chain or belt. Another option, different trade-
| offs.
| CRConrad wrote:
| Much more common with pushrod engines, where the camshaft
| is situated close to the crankshaft; less so with overhead
| camshafts. Though I think some very high-revving sports and
| competition engines have gears driving overhead cams; IIRC
| the McLaren TAG F1 turbo V6 (by Porsche) back in the 1980s
| was one example.
| blamazon wrote:
| The engine used in the Ferrari Enzo and Maserati MC12 is
| a notable example:
|
| https://36.media.tumblr.com/8a928fcccf1b41e82be0273ccbe20
| 05a...
| [deleted]
| lubesGordi wrote:
| It is risky and they do slip or even break from time to time.
| They are generally a 100k maintenance item. The alternative is
| a chain, which can also fail (or other related components), but
| is generally not considered a maintenance item.
| mxxx wrote:
| Yeah it's one of those things that you just have to replace
| every X miles just to be safe. I got one replaced a couple of
| days ago because the service history was missing and I couldn't
| tell whether it had ever been done. If your timing belt goes
| you're in all sorts of trouble.
| mulmen wrote:
| When I started driving German cars (may be coincidental) I
| noticed my mechanics would write the date and miles of the
| service directly on the parts.
|
| My Toyota actually had a small decal on the timing belt cover
| itself specifically for the purpose of tracking that service.
| MAGZine wrote:
| The belts are finely machined to very small tolerances, and
| things are tightened to specific foot-pound tolerances to make
| sure they sit exactly where they need to. So no, nothing slips.
|
| I just went through a belt change with my brother not long ago.
| The tolerances you're dealing with are measured in thousandths
| of inches. Something that wasn't installed quite straight can
| cause almost imperceptible wobble that can destroy things under
| load.
|
| Still, every day shop tools will help you get the precision you
| need.
| mulmen wrote:
| My first car would diesel after turning it off. Basically the
| engine would keep running on fuel in the carburetor and
| residual heat in the engine. Sometimes it would do this
| _backwards_. This was very problematic because the timing belt
| tensioner only worked in one direction. When it ran backwards
| the timing belt would jump a tooth then the car would not
| start. I got in the habit of just killing the motor with my
| foot on the brake and the car in gear then letting the clutch
| out.
|
| I also had the machine shop at my high school weld up a custom
| tool to help me reset the timing belt in a parking lot with a
| couple of hand tools. It could be done in a few minutes.
|
| This is a long way of saying yes, if they slip it is bad.
| arh68 wrote:
| Rubber with embedded steel wire is less stretchy than the
| rubber bands we're used to. Tires even more so than belts; it
| adds integrity like rebar in concrete.
|
| You're correct that once it jumps even 0.5cm (~1 tooth) it
| could touch piston to valve; it depends on the engine, but I'd
| wager most nowadays are interference.
| csbartus wrote:
| This post has 1199 points and 290 comments, a 4:1 ratio.
|
| This always rings me an alarm: Hey, this is something
| extraordinary even Hacker News can't deal with it (via the usual
| way, like on posts with an inverse points/comments ratio,
| indicating hate and flame inside).
|
| Right, this guy is a genius.
|
| Together with Amelia Wattenberger they represent a new wave in
| storytelling: Meaningful content and meaningful interactions.
|
| The previous wave was proven to be a bubble. Embraced, supported
| and pushed by mainstream media (NYTimes, Bloomberg, Spotify) the
| formula for the first wave was not successful: Meaningless
| (average) content + Meaningless (flashy, art-pour-art, attention-
| seeking, etc) interaction.
| toxik wrote:
| This was excellent, but should perhaps be clarified that this is
| a gasoline engine - diesels don't ignite by spark, but by immense
| pressure in the chamber. This also invalidates the "you cannot
| add fuel to increase power" of gasoline engines. Diesels can (and
| should!) run at lower rpm; they don't stall because the ECU can
| add fuel to increase power output.
| keanebean86 wrote:
| What I want to try is replacing valves with electric iris
| mechanisms. The computer would signal the iris to open or close
| depending on the situation.
|
| No more complicated variable valve stuff. Just hold the iris
| open longer. Also no more interference engines and timing
| chain/belt changes.
|
| Iris:
| https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Iris_Diaphragm.gif
|
| Edit: fixed typo, added link to iris gif
| toxik wrote:
| It's a good question, why is only fuel injection and ignition
| computer controlled? The intake and exhaust valves must also
| be solenoid controllable.
| opwieurposiu wrote:
| This exists, but it is very expensive.
| https://www.freevalve.com/freevalve-technology/
| LeonM wrote:
| Swedish hypercar builder Koenigsegg has made a system like
| this, they call it FreeValve.
|
| Their upcoming car called the Gemera will feature
| FreeValve, its 2.0L 4-cylinder is said to generate over
| 600HP. Though it must be said that this is a 1.5 million
| dollar car, so don't expect this kind of performance per
| displacement from other brands.
|
| A guy on Youtube made his own version of freevalve, and got
| it to work on a Mazda Miata:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E9KJ_f7REGw
| golemiprague wrote:
| Because of reliability and the potential damage, not
| injecting fuel is not such a big deal but a stucked valve
| can cause serious damage with all the pressure inside the
| cylinder. There are some cars now with no camshaft, but
| they are very high end experimental sport cars like
| Koenigsegg
| addison-lee wrote:
| I don't think an iris like that would last very long with the
| immense pressures in the cylinders. It makes way more sense
| to electronically control the valves themselves, like
| Koenigsegg is doing with their Freevalve tech, so you get the
| mechanical seal of the valve with the control of electronics.
| keanebean86 wrote:
| I figured it was something like that. It would still be a
| fun experiment with a small engine.
| Severian wrote:
| And thus the reason why there's such as thing as a runaway
| diesel engine.
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