Cars of Technology

When the British shot down a German plane in early 1940 they found a rather interesting connection in the aircraft's control system. This unique connection was what we’ve come to call a spherical rod end. In the UK the patent was given to Rose B earings Ltd .   That’s why British call them Rose Joints. In North America the H.G. Heim Company was given an exclusive patent to manufacture these joints. That’s why in the United States we call them Heim Joints. They’re the same thing.                         High quality economical spherical rod ends really didn’t appear until the late 1970s. A Japanese company, N.M.B, produced these spherical rod ends. The reason they were so economical was that they were selling them for less than it cost them to manufacture them. The United States government asked them to please leave the marketplace so they purchased a U.S. company, N.H.B.B....

All of our cars have exhaust manifolds. Some of us are even using the stock manifold that came on the car when it was new. Others have spent thousands of dollars on the latest and greatest header system. Before you get your checkbook out you need to think about a few things. Am I spending all this money to go faster? Or, am I concerned about what people think when I open the hood? Maybe it’s a little bit of both. Materials: We have a number of choices here. About eighty per cent of all aftermarket headers are coated mild steel. Stainless steel though is becoming a popular replacement material for exhaust headers. Just keep in mind that not all stainless is the same. The folks at Burns Stainless point out that technically, Stainless Steel is a trade name applied to what are known as corrosion-resistant steels. They believe that “It is a fabulous material that outperforms mild and alloy steels in so many different applications in racing that no other material can match it.” A three-digi...