Being less circumspect

Posted on June 5th, 2008 in Driving Emotion,Economy,Hybrid Power,Opinion by Julian Edgar

Despite what some might say in discussion groups, everything I ever write for AutoSpeed is carefully considered and thought-through, whatever the consequences of its publication.

So, for example, I was prepared to write content in Part 2 of our water injection series that showed, despite the good hardware, the results in some ways were disappointing.

“What a let-down!” said one discussion group poster.

That may well be so, but I don’t ever want to be in the position of claiming some modification benefit that others cannot duplicate.

In the same way, for our stories on advancing the ignition timing by tweaking the intake air temp sensor (see The 5 Cent Modification) modifying the action of the EGR valve (see Part 1 and Part 2), I was deliberately understated in my description of the potential benefits.

Tractors and Cars

Posted on June 2nd, 2008 in Driving Emotion by Julian Edgar

I recently bought an interesting publication from the bookshop of the Australian National Library in Canberra. (Incidentally, this is a fabulous bookshop for all things Australian – political, historical, the arts, sport, and so on.)

The book is called Australian Tractors and subtitled Indigenous Tractors and Self-Propelled Machines in Rural Australia. It’s an interesting examination of the tractors that have been built in this country.

Written by Graeme Quick, an agricultural engineer and historian, the book covers some wonderful examples of Australian ingenuity and doggedness; people making – often with relatively primitive machine tools – tractors that could work the fields, day-in and day-out.

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