Cars of Technology

       Various parts of your car are held together by springs. You probably refer to them as bolts.  They’re actually springs. A bolt is a round piece of steel with a head on one end. When you turn the nut on the other end of this bolt you’re really tightening a steel cylindrical spring. Tightening the spring increases the clamping force between two parts.  You need to stretch these springs to a rather precise length. We generally do this by turning the nut to a given torque figure. If you tighten the nut too much you’ll actually break the spring. If you don’t stretch this spring to the correct length though hold the parts together  Let’s use a Porsche connecting rod bolt as an example of a spring. This bolt requires a torque setting of 40 ft-lbs. When you reach that point on your torque wrench the bolt will have stretched between 0.0055 and 0.0065 of an inch. The 40 ft-lbs is an approximate measure. We’re pretty sure that when we reach 40 ft.-lbs we’...

         I’m still trying to wrap my head around the idea of vintage racing cars with a data acquisition system. It doesn’t really matter how we might feel about this. It’s happening and you could be the next person in line for a high tech system. You need to think about how complex of a data acquisition system you need for your car and then what you’ll do with all of the data.        Y ou’re only going to understand the data if you get some knowledgeable help. Don’t start with the hardware. Start this whole process with selecting a person who can help you understand data acquisition.       Remember data acquisition is about making you a better driver. A driving coach can do that. Once you have a coach you simply buy the system that coach is familiar with. That’s the easy way.             Ask around the pit area about various coaches that people ha...

Story and Photography by Richard Newton When you total your expenses at the end of the season you’ll notice that tires are one of your biggest expenses. Tires also make the single largest difference in how well you do at your various events during the season.             How about a few tools that will help your tires work better? These tools allow you to collect data. If you assemble a lot of data about your tires the tire companies can give you guidance about changes you might want to make to your car. You spend a lot of money with these companies you might as well get some help in using their tires. The first step is to let them know what your tires are doing on the track. Pressure Gauge – There are two things we need from a tire pressure gauge. First it needs to be accurate. Next it needs to be reliable. Reliable is more important than accurate. A tire pressure gauge can be off a few pounds and that’s not a big deal. Just...

Story and Photography by Richard Newton            When you drive around a corner the inside wheels want to lift off the pavement. The faster you go around the corner the greater the lift. This means you don’t have all of the tire on the pavement. The faster you corner the less rubber you have on the ground. We need to find a way to push that inside tire back into the ground.             The easiest way is to use a torsion bar (or spring) that runs from one side of the car to other. Corvettes normally have two of the torsion bars. We just call them sway bars or anti roll bars.  Since 1984 Corvettes have always had one sway bar in the front and another sway bar in the rear. The rear sway bar was optional in the earlier generations. What a Sway Bar Does:  As the inside tire tries to come off the ground this spring, or torsion bar, pushes the tire back into the surface of the road. This...