This is a video of me taking part in a 3 hour endurace ice race this past January. The New Meadows Ice Racing Association (NMIRA) of Bath, Maine held this event in Sabattus, ME and the weather decided to dump a few feet of snow on us. Visibility in some cases was less than 20 feet in front of the car, and the race was shortened to 2.5 hours. Although I usually drive the whole 3 hours myself instead of switching drivers, I decided to quit halfway through on this one before I had an accident. The 4 hour round trip drive was in very poor road conditions, so I logged 5+ hours of adverse-weather driving that day. This is in my 1995 Miata with Bridgestone Blizzak WS-50s, but neither RWD nor unstudded tires are competitive in this class of racing. For those of you not already in-the-know, this is the cheapest racing experience you will ever find.
The SCDA has posted their new HPDE (High Performance Driving Event) schedule, which looks to be the most packed season yet. New this year is a “season subscriber” track package, which discounts the cost of attending every event in the season (ahem, Clint). For those of us with cars worth actual money, there’s even available insurance!
You’ll find a lot of articles on driving technique here because refining it is something we promote with enthusiasm. It occurred to me during recent snowstorms that while Noah has written many good articles on race driving technique and I have a few on handling a car on snow covered roads in situations a flight instructor would call “unusual attitudes”, not one of us has written about how to get a stuck car out of the snow.
The Northeast is getting sacked with snow and we’re out enjoying it. If you’re in Massachussetts, New Hampshire, New York, Rhode Island, or Connecticut, get in your car and get driving. 12″ are forecast for many areas.
If you forgot to get snow tires, enjoy your living room for me. :p
It’s the time of year people start buying snow tires, so what better time to write a review? Having spent the last two years ice racing and trying to wring the most performance from a set of winter tires on an icy track, I’d like to share my insights into what makes a good snow and ice tire.
Why Snow Tires?
First, a few words on why you should buy snow tires at all. Snow tires make the single biggest difference in bad weather traction, period. As I have long stated, there is no substitute for a good snow tire. I will recommend a RWD car with snow tires over a 4WD/AWD car with “all-season” tires, every time. One prominent auto magazine a few years ago ran a snow driving comparison with a RWD Porsche wearing snow tires versus an Audi with all-season tires. The Porsche won hands down, owing entirely to the tire choice. When a freak Nor’easter caught us last December during evening rush hour, I was stuck in the worst traffic jam I have ever seen — for FOUR HOURS on what should have been a 30-min trip — simply because nobody bothered to buy snow tires. There is no excuse for not having a proper winter tire.
CNET reports the new Nissan 370Z features an automatically rev-matching manual transmission:
“six-speed SynchroRev Match manual transmission, which is the worlds first synchronized downshift rev matching system. The system “blips” the throttle on downshifts and upshifts, matching engine speed to the next chosen gear, smoothing out gear changes.”
It was only a matter of time before someone came up with this. It’s basically the bridge between a fully computer-shifted gearbox and a real manual transmission. The number of components Nissan would have needed to add is very small; a sensor to detect gear position and a little extra code in the ECU is all it would take. Most cars these days have throttle-by-wire, in which the engine computer controls throttle opening based on pedal position and there is no mechanical linkage between the pedal and the throttle plate. If the computer knows what gear you’ve shifted to (up OR down), the gear ratio, and how fast the car is going, it can figure out what engine speed it needs to hit by the time you let out the clutch. The only problem I can see with this system is that it has to work in-between when the clutch is depressed and when the clutch is released, which might not be enough time to make the rev match smooth enough.
Luckily, for those of us who know how to drive and like having complete control, SynchroRev Match comes with a button you can press to disable it.
Recently I picked up a copy of Popular Science at the airport to kill boredom on a cross-country flight. I’m accustomed to getting a skim what’s new in science and technology, nifty how-tos for hacking home gadgets, and yes, even automotive news.
What I’m not used to seeing are full-page ads of preposterous scams that any technophile can spot a mile away. This one in particular claims “over 100 miles per gallon, even with an SUV”. The paragraph of blatantly false pseudo-science that follows is at once outlandish and offensive. “The Science Behind The Solution“, the ad claims “…is to install a Hydro-Assist Fuel Cell Kit. Using electricity from your battery, it turns water into pure gas that is mixed with your gasoline in the combustion chamber.” — seriously folks, I can’t make this stuff up.
What they are describing (electrolysis of water) is not only inefficient, but it is net-energy-negative, meaning it takes more energy to separate water into hydrogen and oxygen than burning them can ever make back. Add to this the fact that the alternator which charges the battery and the battery itself are both inefficient, this system must inherently be consuming more energy than it can produce!
But wait, there’s more! They also claim to use “a Covalizer (to break down the covalent bonds of the fuel)“. Sounds like another fuel line magnet to me. (by the way, that link goes to Popular Science’s sister publication Popular Mechanics, in which they disprove automotive fuel improvement scams) There’s also brief general mention of “ionization” in the ad too; if ever there was a general rule for regarding consumer gadgets, it’s ‘if they use the word “ionization”, don’t buy it’.
Had enough? That’s not all. Apparently, “the second step is to install a customized Pre-Ignition Catalytic Converter (PICC) that will actually turn your fuel into plasma and burn it so clean that there is no pollution“. With the former owners of “male enhancement” companies being fined 500 million dollars on charges of fraud, I’m shocked there are still con artists out there dumb enough to peddle this crap.
How can anyone expect a (presumably educated) reader of a science magazine to believe that a “relatively inexpensive modification” will more than quadruple fuel economy and burn with “no pollution”? If it were possible, wouldn’t every automaker already be doing it? How can any technology publication with integrity allow supermarket-tabloid science onto its advertising pages? Shame on you, Popular Science.
As the global financial markets come crashing down all around us, something else is falling with them. The price of a barrel of oil just passed its lowest price in over a year. As I write this, the national average cost per gallon of regular unleaded is $3.35, down from a whopping $4.11 in mid-July 2008. According to CNN, experts are predicting $60/barrel oil in the coming year, which should make gasoline about $2/gal in 2009.
Maybe by next summer it will be time to bring your 600 horsepower turbo cars out of storage.
GoPro Camera has released their Digital Hero Wide, a 170-degree field of view, wide-angle, 30fps video camera designed for rough use in extreme sports and motorsports. It’s waterproof, shock-proof, and records conveniently to SD Flash cards up to 2GB for about an hour of continuous video. We use their Digital Hero standard camera (54-degree FOV) to record track footage you see here (including Clint’s recent NJMP excursions). You can’t beat these things for cost and convenience. Direct-to-digital video, no messing around with expensive bullet cams and separate recorders. If you want to do motorsports video, the Motorsports Wide for $199, or the helmet model for a bit less both get the job done. Expect videos with our new Wide camera this ice racing season.
The camera comes with the below accessories, which include adhesive “bases” that attach the quick-release camera housing to your car. If you buy it from the below link, it helps us publish the site, which we appreciate.
It’s no secret that a well-designed exhaust is an important piece of any performance car. In designing an exhaust for my Stealth turbo, I outlined several characteristics which I considered to be essential: a turbo exhaust should be free-flowing, reasonably quiet, lightweight, and robust. A deficiency in any of these categories is unacceptable when performance is the goal, so I set out to design and build the best possible exhaust system.
