Years ago – say getting on for 15 or 20 years ago – people used to ask why I had a performance car.

“There’s no where you can drive fast,” they’d say, “so why bother?”

I’d enigmatically respond with something like: “Oh, there are still plenty of places left to drive fast.”

And, in those days, there were.

The Northern Territory had no open road speed limit, and while the other Australian states and territories had 110 km/h limits, the philosophy of enforcement was then completely different.

There were no speed cameras – all radars were hand-held and, a little later, mobile in-car. In most states, radar detectors were completely legal, and all police communications were unscrambled voice. Trucks didn’t have speed limiters and on the open road typically sat well over the speed limit. CB radios were constantly used by trucks to communicate the presence of police cars (“double bubbles”) and police motorcycles (“Evel Knievels”).

In my Commodore VL Turbo I ran a radar detector, CB radio and police scanning radio. And they weren’t there for looks.

My BMW 3.0si ran to an indicated 220 km/h, my Commodore Turbo to 210 km/h, my Liberty RS to 220 km/h (which seems slow but that’s what I remember), my Daihatsu Handi turbo to 180 km/h and my R32 GTR to 260 km/h. And none of these were figures I got from just reading a book…

Any tight, windy road was a challenge there to be taken: the chances of being caught were tiny. In addition, the speed limit for the stretch of road was seldom set on the basis of the corners, so it was common for a 100 km/h limit to be in place on a road that included corners with advisories down to 30 km/h.

In those days turn-in understeer at 150 km/h was a real consideration; lightness in the steering at over 200 km/h was a right pain in the butt, and anything less than 130 on the open road and you must have had Grandma on board. I remember I boiled the auto trans fluid in the Commodore when going for a top speed run – the car was slipping its clutch-packs and the fluid got so hot it came out of the breather onto the exhaust. A guy I know used to sit on 180 km/h on the open road, ear plugs firmly in place.

Without any doubt the roads today are much safer – I’m sure the enforcement of speed limits and low/zero blood alcohols have resulted in less fatalities and injuries.

But now there really aren’t any places to drive fast. These days, they literally put you in jail if you drive fast, and take away your car if you have a few quick traffic light races. I am not saying that’s bad; what I am saying is that the road use of a performance car is now so limited that I wonder at their purpose.

I live at the top of a steep and windy country road. There’s about 15 kilometres of it – and I know it far better than the back of my hand. I’ve at times driven it extremely quickly, but any time I have done so I’ve been risking my license – the speed limit is 60 km/h. At sixty I can go around every corner without slowing.

Apart from flicking through an urban roundabout quickly (so what…), there is nowhere – literally nowhere – that I can drive fast. And that’s living smack-bang in the middle of what many call the best drivers’ roads for hundreds of kilometres.

And is it any different for other people? I was in a workshop the other day and the proprietor told me how the Falcon XR6 Turbo out the front had 450kW at the wheels. Or was it 550? – I don’t know, I wasn’t really listening. The prop went on to say that it was a really hard car to dyno because of wheelspin. Apparently, on the road it wheelspins up to 4th.

Now, honestly, apart from dyno bragging rights, what is the point of having that much power in a road car? As I have implied, once upon a time it would have been really useful – 100 to 200 km/h in just a handful of seconds. But now, spinning wheels will cause a police booking, a quick traffic light race ditto, and exercising anything like the top-end potential would immediately result in jail time.

Wouldn’t it make a lot more sense for people to have cars so low in power that you can have fun at what can only be described as slow speeds? Or instead of spending money modifying an already powerful road car to make it even more powerful, invest in kart, budget open-wheeler or dedicated drag car?

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The car industry can be thought of as having parallels with the fast food industry. For example, Toyota is rather like McDonalds.

McDonalds is a company I’ve always found enormously impressive. For so long associated with the consumption of unhealthy food (every media story of obesity accompanied with a pic of a McDonalds burger) and gratuitous consumption (talk of “McMansions”), the company has in recent years undergone a wonderful metamorphosis.

You can now buy food as healthy as salads and apples; breakfast can be high-fibre cereal; and all is provided at the cost and quality (one low, one high) for which the company is famous. But, if you so desire, you can stick with the high fat fries and burgers – cos they’re all still available too.

Commentators have suggested that the McDonalds reinvention is all a façade, that the vast majority of people still eat the unhealthy food but they feel better at attending a McDonalds restaurant because there’s also healthy food available. The same commentators say that while some food looks – and is – healthy, by the time you add the available condiments, the scales tip the other way.

Both points are probably to a degree right, but in my view the company still needs to be congratulated for making a huge cultural shift in the foods it makes available to the public.

In short, it sniffed the breeze of social change and took decisive action.

And Toyota is much the same. Over a decade ago it looked at long-term cultural change and realised that it needed to produce some very different products. The hybrid petrol/electric Prius was the first result.

But, like McDonalds, Toyota didn’t disenfranchise its existing customer base: salty high fat Landcruisers continued (and continue) to be produced. The parallels persist: some commentators suggest that the Prius is really for people who only want to appear to be green; that the environmental reality is actually quite different. And that the hybrid Lexus 600hL is really a huge, fat and greasy burger – but with a low kilojoule dressing and sold in a green box.

Like other fast food franchises that originally laughed at McDonalds healthy food move (but now do imitation garden salads and low-fat health burgers), car companies that were once happy to state that hybrids were a dead-end fad are now developing or selling hybrid cars.

But at this stage, those ‘me too’ products lack the cut-through decisiveness of the originals.

Both McDonalds and Toyota have been bold and brave. They’ve copped criticism – some with an element of truth – but by their foresight, they’ve changed the product paradigm. Rather than being driven by their current customer demands, they’ve looked at their goods in a far wider social sense, innovating rather than defending the status quo.

You can see why, in a world context, both companies and so successful…

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They’re rare but if you look long enough you’ll find some.

What I am referring to are books that show just mechanisms. These are the basic underpinnings of all machines, distilled down to their elements. Things like all the ways in that shafts can be joined; all the ratchet systems ever invented; all the ways in which variable ratio gears can be enacted; 2-link, 3-link, 4-link mechanisms; and so on.

One of the best on the topic is Mechanisms in Modern Engineering Design, a five-volume series written by I. I. Artobolevbsky and published by Mir Publishers of Moscow. Publication date was 1976, making it one of the few engineering books published in Soviet Union times that gained widespread popularity in the West. Well, ‘widespread popularity’ is of course a relative term – the books are still very rare.

I have the set, purchased on eBay at great expense.

The books have proved so useful – especially in a ‘food-for-thought’ way – that when I saw another, similar, book on eBay I bought it. And this one was quite cheap.

It’s called The Engineer’s Sketch Book and it’s by Thomas Walter Barber. Publication date is 1934. The subtitle gives you a feel for the contents: Mechanical movements, devices and details – with nearly 3000 designs and drawings classified and arranged for easy reference.

Chapter headings include everything from Ball and Socket Joints to Turbines, from Winding Apparatus to Mincing, from Ratchet and Pawl Motions to Springs. Like the Artobolevbsky volumes, it’s an absolute Godsend for someone groping their way towards the design of a mechanism required to achieve a particular outcome.

But what put a smile on my face was the Introduction to the second edition. Writes Mr Barber:

In view of the criticism of this work which has occasionally found expression by certain readers, who appear to have expected to find in it designs of Machines, Structures, etc., and complaints, based on the same misunderstanding, that the book is, consequently, not kept up to date, the Author has thought it desirable to append a few explanatory observations.

These impressions it may be stated arise from a complete misunderstanding of the intention of the Author and the purpose of the book.

This work is not a treatise on Design, nor a textbook on Mechanical Construction. Its object is to supply the designer with the basic elements of mechanical and structural composition, classified and displayed in such a way as to facilitate the selection of those details which may be most efficiently combined into an effective and harmonious whole.

And so on goes the author, obviously writing through gritted teeth! In fact, to avoid any more misunderstandings of his genuinely fabulous book, Mr Barber then takes the reader on a step by step detailed tour of the design of a reciprocating carriage, showing how each part of the design can be developed with reference to the different sections of his book.

If you like designing mechanical devices, keep an eye out for this type of book. But remember Mr Barber’s warning: they’re meant to show lots of different ideas, not do the full machine design for you!

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Had a problem with one of my cars yesterday.

My wife, who had been driving the Honda Insight, had previously questioned me about the clutch feel.

“It’s awfully light,” she said. “And it seems to engage right on the floor.”

Dismissing this with a wave of my hand (I figured she’d just been driving the much-heavier-clutch Peugeot diesel too much), I thought no more of it until I got into the Honda and the clutch pedal went straight to the floor. No gear selection was possible, so clearly the clutch was no longer disengaging.

Paradoxically, despite the engine’s low absolute torque output, the clutch in the Honda has a hard time. This is because the gearing is so high – to move away from a standstill, the clutch always needs to be slipped. So although it doesn’t have a lot of kilometres on it, the clutch is starting to wear, juddering a little if the take-up is not got exactly right.

So when the clutch failed to work at all, I suspected the worse – perhaps the spring fingers had collapsed or something.

But the first step was a careful underbonnet inspection. There I discovered that the clutch uses a hydraulic actuation system – and the reservoir was empty! Hmm. I filled the system with Dot 4 brake fluid (as specified) and then bled it.

And then – what do you know – the clutch worked again!

So where had the fluid gone? There was a slight moistness around the slave cylinder, probably enough of a weep that over time the fluid level could have lowered itself sufficiently to start drawing air.

You see, I’d never – not once – checked the level of fluid in the clutch master cylinder reservoir. Not once.

So if you’re as dumb as I am, and your car has a hydraulically-activated clutch, you might need to be reminded to check its fluid level…

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Right now – and probably for the next few years – there’s a helluva bargain to be had.

I’ve bought one to put on the shelf and I highly recommend that anyone else into useable road performance does so too. And what should you buy? At least one of all those BA and BF Ford Falcon XR6 intercoolers that are being flogged-off on Australian eBay, commonly priced from about fifty bucks.

Yes, from fifty bucks.

Now maybe the people who want far in excess of the Falcon’s standard 240kW have an urgent need to replace these Garret-cored, bar-and-plate intercoolers with something far better, but for people who are happy to drive a car with performance not limited by wheelspin, these intercoolers look perfect. Being an all-welded design, they’d also be dead-easy to jacket with aluminium sheet, making them water/air intercooler cores. At a core size of 370 x 175 x 60mm, they’re relatively compact but have well-shaped alloy end tanks. For people wondering overall size, they’re 620 x 270 X 60 cm to the extremities. Inlet/outlet tube size is 58mm (hose ID).

Even if you consider the time and labour to fold up new end tanks from sheet aluminium and pay someone to TIG them to the original core, you’re still talking an excellent intercooler for the price.

The one I bought came with all its hoses and clamps – also very useful when you’re plumbing any intercooler into place.

Without having done any flow or temperature testing, but looking at the core and assessing the original application, I’d be happy running at least 200kW through them – more, eg 250kW – with a good water spray.

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Thank you.

Thanks to all of you; but to especially those who have been reading my material for a long time.

By your praise, and by your criticism, and by your demands that I produce the best for you that I can, you have all made me a far better self-taught engineer than I would ever otherwise have become.

Because I know that if I say something like: “This performance mod makes the car go faster” there will be a chorus of “Prove it!”, or “How much faster?”

I know if I write something about (say) how an anti-roll bar works, and I get it wrong, there will immediately be people happy and ready to correct me.

Doing this job for nearly ten years has taught me, in a way that I’d not realised before today, that in mechanical things I constantly internally justify what I do and how I am doing it, and that in everything I do I need to cite evidence that it works.

So thank you all.

And can I also say, you’re equally all responsible for my being today thrown off a discussion group!

Ah, the swings and roundabouts…

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Over the years I’ve spent a lot of time in TAFE libraries (for those not living in Australia, technical college libraries). In addition to the very valuable automotive books, it’s the engineering papers that are the most interesting.

Each year the Society of Automotive Engineers publishes numerous technical papers on all topics automotive. You can buy them as downloadable pdfs by going to www.sae.org – but because you can see only a précis of the paper before you need to get out your credit card, this can be an expensive way of acquiring information. However, technical college libraries often have some of the papers, especially in the book form that the SAE occasionally publishes.

The ability to keep on the cutting edge of change is one clear advantage of the SAE engineering papers, but there’s another major advantage that’s often overlooked. And what’s this other advantage? If you own an older car, it’s possible by consulting the papers of that era to find stuff that’s directly relevant to your machine.

In 1990, when I owned a VL Holden Commodore Turbo, I was frustrated by its lack of aerodynamic development. The standard car was lousy and there were no simple off-the-shelf improvements available. The HDT Brock Commodores had body kits developed with no scientific input, and the pictured groundbreaking ‘Walkinshaw’ Group A, the first HSV model and one shaped with a huge amount of wind tunnel work, was too expensive to buy. (And it didn’t have the turbo engine.) And because the Walky was a near new car, you also couldn’t buy copies of its body kit.

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As I have often written here, I love buying (and reading too, of course!) car books. I have a very extensive library of automotive books, including many technical examples dating back up to ninety years.

Invariably, even when opening a very old book, I learn something. For example, a few months ago I bought a series on automotive engineering published in the late 1920s. I was amazed at the coverage given to steam and electric cars, and that in part triggered the series we ran in AutoSpeed on alternative forms of propulsion.

After all, if steam and electric were then so strong in comparison to the internal combustion engine, why not now as well?

However, there’s one type of old book which is usually a dead loss. Except, I guess, as a historical curiosity. And the type of book? Those that cover modification, or as it was often called then, ‘tuning’. Even the tuning books seen as classics – and so worth quite a lot of money – are today usually irrelevant.

For example, Automobile Engine Tuning (1962) is a book that is usually commands very good secondhand prices. Its author, Phil Irving, was a highly regarded automotive and motorcycle engineer. But open the book today and it’s all so dated that there’s nearly nothing you can use. Before people write defending the man, I’ve no doubt that in its time the information was all useful. But today I couldn’t find a single thing that benefited me. Not one thing.

David Vizard is another very well known and well regarded technical writer. But his Performance with Economy (published 1981 and 1987) is another that time has not treated favourably. I recently bought it, thinking that at least in an area like camshaft design and tuning there may be relevant material. But I was wrong. Instead, there’s excitement about electronic ignition…

Simply, the use of 4-valve heads, full engine management with closed loop control, variable valve timing – and all the rest – makes the technologies covered in these books pedestrian. Like, they get enormously excited dealing with stuff that was available mainstream 20 years ago. Or, to put it another way, what was then exotic and on the cutting edge is now available in cars so old they’re being sent to the wreckers for a hundred bucks.

But there’s another side. If the modification book looks not at hands-on tweaks but instead at the theory behind them, the material dates far less quickly. The superbly named Souping the Stock Engine, published in 1950, has plenty in it as relevant today as when it was published. For example, its Five Paths to Power are: increase piston displacement; increase the weight of the mixture drawn in on the intake stroke; increase the efficiency of combustion; increase the mechanical efficiency; increase the peak rpm.

Doesn’t get much more relevant that that, eh?

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We’ve all heard of short-shifters, where the throw of the gear lever is reduced. Short-shifters are available aftermarket for many cars and some performance models of mainstream cars use a shorter gear throw.

Generally a short-shifter moves the fulcrum point so that less movement is required of the gear-knob to achieve the necessary movement of the selector forks. Some short-shifters provide a movement so abbreviated that the gear lever feels more like a light switch.

However, in any gearbox, a shorter throw will require more effort – that is, the gear shift will be heavier.

Most enthusiasts agree that a shorter gear throw is attractive, purportedly because quicker shifts can be made. But in the real world, I doubt that’s actually the attraction. Instead, it’s probably because it makes the car feel more responsive and quicker – snick, snick, snick the gear lever on the way up and down the ‘box.

I once had a Rover 2000, a very British car with a large steering wheel, low-power 2 litre 4-cylinder – and about the quickest factory shifter you’re ever likely to come across! The movement of the very short gear lever movement was completely at odds with the feel of the rest of the controls.

These thoughts all became relevant yesterday when I went off to the wreckers to find a new gear knob for my Peugeot 405 SRDT. The original was cracked and tired and wrecker replacements are so cheap that the upgrade was well worth it. And $5 later, I had a nice, heavy, ex late model Kia gear knob that had the right shift pattern shown on top. The thread wasn’t a match for the odd, vertically splined (except they’re much too crude to be called splines!) Pug gear lever, but I figured I could adapt it.

At the wreckers I’d taken off the Pug gear knob, only to have it come to pieces in my hands. So on the trip home, I simply bunged the new gear knob on top of the shaft, so extending it by about 50mm.  And you know what? The slower, lighter gear shift that resulted actually felt pretty good! But I was sure that I was confused – how could a slower shift be better? – and left the gear knob in this position for a few days. I also got my wife to drive the car.

And we both agreed that the lighter, longer travel gear shift felt better than standard.

So, instead of shortening the gear lever and putting the new knob closer to the floor – so resulting in a poor man’s short shift – I went the other way…. installing a “long shift”!

Selecting second gear on a down-change is easier and on the up-changes, the synchro seems to like the slower shift. The gear-box, a design with a pretty horrible standard shift quality, is simply much improved….

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