|
Post by BearClause on Mar 25, 2021 22:04:31 GMT -5
I had no clue what "rolling coal" meant. After looking it up, I'm just astounded that people intentionally spend money to modify their trucks just to do that. What idiots! Though it doesn't really surprise me. There are far too many pickup truck drivers who go out of their way to act like a-holes. I have an S2000, which brought me into contact with the Import Car crowd. It has always astounded me that there are people who deliberately install mufflers that don't work and who remove the catalytic converters from their cars, all because they think that having a car that is much louder and more polluting than it should be is somehow cool. So it's not just a pickup truck thing. A former coworker drove an S2000. Also a Saab. Kind of a weird combination. I've seen a few heavily modded S2000s. One with a big spoiler on the rear and a massive exhaust pipe. Didn't quite get what the spoiler did to help the airflow of a convertible. When I was in high school there was a guy who parked a heavily modded VW Beetle. Loud exhaust. And in the front license plate bracket was a Confederate battle flag. I was wondering who drives something like that around here, and a friend of mine said he knew the owner. Claimed he wasn't racist but that he did a lot of that for shock value. But if you want crazy - how about the Harley-Davidson crowd? This aftermarket exhaust systems often reduce performance and damage the hearing of the rider. Still not sure why the pilot of a 737 would bagging on the area he's flying to. Most of San Jose is sleeping nondescript suburbs and technology parks.
|
|
|
Post by mikegarrison on Mar 25, 2021 22:12:49 GMT -5
Didn't quite get what the spoiler did to help the airflow of a convertible. If you have the top up or have a hardtop installed, the aerodynamics are pretty much like any other car. The S2000 is pretty vulnerable to oversteer at high speed. It does get light back there, and adding a properly designed and installed rear wing is known to improve lap times (assuming you have a driver who knows how to drive appropriately). The typical race car S2000 wing is not necessarily going to look a whole lot like a show car wing, though. Here's an old picture of the car of a friend of mine. He's modified it a lot more by now (it's now a full race car, completely stripped and caged).
|
|
|
Post by BearClause on Mar 25, 2021 22:14:40 GMT -5
So it's not just a pickup truck thing. The thing about "rolling coal" is that it doesn't even have any perceived (even dubious claims) performance benefit. Reducing exhaust restriction can theoretically improve the top end. Some cars have a two-stage intake to increase intake restriction at lower revs, but open it wider at higher revs. Removing a catalytic converter might help with some restriction, although modern electronic engine controls tend to reduce unburned fuel to almost nothing. All "rolling coal" is going to do is to intentionally dump fuel into the exhaust that the driver knows isn't going to turn into energy.
|
|
|
Post by BearClause on Mar 25, 2021 22:26:44 GMT -5
Didn't quite get what the spoiler did to help the airflow of a convertible. If you have the top up or have a hardtop installed, the aerodynamics are pretty much like any other car. The S2000 is pretty vulnerable to oversteer at high speed. It does get light back there, and adding a properly designed and installed rear wing is known to improve lap times (assuming you have a driver who knows how to drive appropriately). The typical race car S2000 wing is not necessarily going to look a whole lot like a show car wing, though. Here's an old picture of the car of a friend of mine. He's modified it a lot more by now (it's now a full race car, completely stripped and caged). Wow. Not even massively oversized tires. Those look stock. I remember when factory hot rods didn't necessarily go for extremes. Before the S2000 there was the Integra Type R. I know it was front-wheel drive, but it had an 8500 RPM redline, 25 HP more than the Integra GS-R, and fairly minor styling changes (other than the big spoiler). And tiny tires. Not sure why the valve cover had to be red, but that's their choice. Also the aluminum tower bar didn't seem to be much of an improvement over the steel one in a GS-R.
|
|
|
Post by mikegarrison on Mar 25, 2021 23:06:21 GMT -5
Wow. Not even massively oversized tires. Those look stock. The rims are not stock. And I'm sure the tires are R-compound, and probably wider than stock. Huge rims are not fast, actually. There are some advantages to not having too much tire sidewall, but tires are lighter than rims, so rotating mass tends to go up with huge rims. The really big advantages, though, come with the tire compound and tread. R-compound tires have minimal tread but are still technically DOT street legal. They typically use rubber that gets very sticky when hot. Full race slicks are illegal to use on the street (and dangerous with any amount of water), but they offer the best traction and high temperature tolerance. Shaved R-compounds are kind of a compromise. A tire shaver literally cuts away a big part of the tread of an r-compound tire, but this can actually make the tire last longer on the track. That's because the "squirm" of the tread blocks generates heat internally in the rubber. Without the tread blocks, the tire is less prone to get overheated and the grip and tire life increase. Typically you run shaved r-compounds right down until they get "corded". But as soon as you start seeing any cords on the tire, the grip goes away almost entirely. You don't want that to happen on the track, so you start looking at your tires super carefully when they start getting close to that. If your aren't a pro team and don't have real racing "wets", most racers just use unshaved R-compounds as their rain tires.
|
|
|
Post by BearClause on Mar 25, 2021 23:58:48 GMT -5
Wow. Not even massively oversized tires. Those look stock. The rims are not stock. And I'm sure the tires are R-compound, and probably wider than stock. Huge rims are not fast, actually. There are some advantages to not having too much tire sidewall, but tires are lighter than rims, so rotating mass tends to go up with huge rims. The really big advantages, though, come with the tire compound and tread. R-compound tires have minimal tread but are still technically DOT street legal. They typically use rubber that gets very sticky when hot. Full race slicks are illegal to use on the street (and dangerous with any amount of water), but they offer the best traction and high temperature tolerance. Shaved R-compounds are kind of a compromise. A tire shaver literally cuts away a big part of the tread of an r-compound tire, but this can actually make the tire last longer on the track. That's because the "squirm" of the tread blocks generates heat internally in the rubber. Without the tread blocks, the tire is less prone to get overheated and the grip and tire life increase. Typically you run shaved r-compounds right down until they get "corded". But as soon as you start seeing any cords on the tire, the grip goes away almost entirely. You don't want that to happen on the track, so you start looking at your tires super carefully when they start getting close to that. If your aren't a pro team and don't have real racing "wets", most racers just use unshaved R-compounds as their rain tires. I remember seeing some specialty Michelin tires that were designed to be shaved. And they were street legal, but barely so. The Integra Type R came with Bridgestone Potenza RE010 tires in this tiny 195/55-R15 size. And only V speed rated. Also at the time it came out, I heard the Integra Type R engine had the highest piston speed (at redline) of any production car engine until the S2000 came out. But the B18C5 was very popular for engine swaps. I heard of one company that placed them in the Lotus Elise to import into the US before Lotus sold any in the US with a Toyota engine. I don't know how it exactly works when put in a mid-engined car, but apparently it worked. I heard there was talk about Lotus squeezing an F20C in there, but apparently they had a better relationship with Toyota.
|
|
|
Post by mervinswerved on Mar 25, 2021 23:59:48 GMT -5
mike, I have been trying to nail down your employers for months now about a business deal and they've ignored me. I blame you. On a related note, can you help me nail down a deal?
|
|
|
Post by mikegarrison on Mar 26, 2021 0:13:50 GMT -5
mike, I have been trying to nail down your employers for months now about a business deal and they've ignored me. I blame you. On a related note, can you help me nail down a deal? I can not.
|
|
|
Airplanes
Mar 26, 2021 0:15:47 GMT -5
via mobile
Post by mervinswerved on Mar 26, 2021 0:15:47 GMT -5
mike, I have been trying to nail down your employers for months now about a business deal and they've ignored me. I blame you. On a related note, can you help me nail down a deal? I can not. Dammit. What good is VT?
|
|
|
Post by mikegarrison on Mar 26, 2021 0:21:57 GMT -5
I heard there was talk about Lotus squeezing an F20C in there, but apparently they had a better relationship with Toyota. F20C would be a bad choice for that. The thing is, engines are mainly designed to be either longitudinally mounted or transverse mounted. It's hard to swap them around. With a front-engine, RWD car, the engine is longitudinally mounted. It drives a driveshaft that runs forward-aft and then goes through a T-shaped diff that drives the rear wheels. A FWD car is usually transverse mounted, with the engine crankshaft in line with the front axles, not the car. Instead of a transmission and a differential, they use what is called a "transaxle" which does the same job. The Lotus Elise is designed for a transverse engine, but instead of sitting between the front axles it sits near the rear axles. You would have had to turn the F20C sideways and it wouldn't have fit very well in the Lotus. For the same reason it wouldn't be a good engine to try to swap into an Integra either. Some mid or rear-engine cars are designed to have a longitudinally mounted engine, but the Elise is not one of them.
|
|
|
Post by BearClause on Mar 26, 2021 1:04:49 GMT -5
I heard there was talk about Lotus squeezing an F20C in there, but apparently they had a better relationship with Toyota. F20C would be a bad choice for that. The thing is, engines are mainly designed to be either longitudinally mounted or transverse mounted. It's hard to swap them around. With a front-engine, RWD car, the engine is longitudinally mounted. It drives a driveshaft that runs forward-aft and then goes through a T-shaped diff that drives the rear wheels. A FWD car is usually transverse mounted, with the engine crankshaft in line with the front axles, not the car. Instead of a transmission and a differential, they use what is called a "transaxle" which does the same job. The Lotus Elise is designed for a transverse engine, but instead of sitting between the front axles it sits near the rear axles. You would have had to turn the F20C sideways and it wouldn't have fit very well in the Lotus. For the same reason it wouldn't be a good engine to try to swap into an Integra either. Some mid or rear-engine cars are designed to have a longitudinally mounted engine, but the Elise is not one of them. I know someone with a Ferrari 458 Italia. Saw it once and that thing has a glass hood. And it's longitudinally mounted. But the Ferrari is just a showoff. There's some discussion here of people who swear that they've seen an F20 in an Elise or maybe an Exige. There seem to be a lot of conversions of the Elise or Exige with a K20A2 from the 2002 or so Civic Type R/Integra Type R/RSX Type S. However, this guy claims to have shoehorned an F20C into an Elise.
|
|
|
Post by mikegarrison on Mar 26, 2021 1:06:33 GMT -5
I remember seeing some specialty Michelin tires that were designed to be shaved. And they were street legal, but barely so. Were they Pilot Sport Cups? I remember Michelin selling an R-compound version of their Pilot Sports that they called Pilot Sport Cup. It came stock on certain cars like the 911 GT3.
|
|
|
Post by mikegarrison on Mar 26, 2021 1:09:21 GMT -5
There's some discussion here of people who swear that they've seen an F20 in an Elise or maybe an Exige. There seem to be a lot of conversions of the Elise or Exige with a K20A2 from the last Civic Type R/Integra Type R/RSX Type S. I'm sure somebody can figure out how to do it, but the engine in those FWD Honda cars was pretty much the same as the F20C in terms of technology. It would certainly be easier and probably better to swap in an engine designed to be transverse.
|
|
|
Post by BearClause on Mar 26, 2021 1:42:36 GMT -5
I remember seeing some specialty Michelin tires that were designed to be shaved. And they were street legal, but barely so. Were they Pilot Sport Cups? I remember Michelin selling an R-compound version of their Pilot Sports that they called Pilot Sport Cup. It came stock on certain cars like the 911 GT3. I don't think it was since those are fairly new. It was maybe 15 years ago as I was sitting in a shop waiting for my tires to be mounted. This was a specialty place in Berkeley that had a ton of accessories that your average tire shop wouldn't have. They were talking about possibly shaving a tire for someone with a blown tire on a Subaru who didn't want to replace the full set. But I was fumbling through the brochures and there was one for a Michelin competition tire. It was something really weird too - like 4/32" from the factory, but where they recommended shaving off even more for track use. But that's not even the weirdest. I went to the California Science Center to see the Space Shuttle Endeavour. They had a used sample of a Space Shuttle main landing gear tire made by Michelin. Not sure why, but it was bias ply and apparently taken out of service after a single landing. Something about having minimal tread just to shave off as much weight as possible.
|
|
|
Post by BearClause on Mar 26, 2021 1:48:51 GMT -5
There's some discussion here of people who swear that they've seen an F20 in an Elise or maybe an Exige. There seem to be a lot of conversions of the Elise or Exige with a K20A2 from the last Civic Type R/Integra Type R/RSX Type S. I'm sure somebody can figure out how to do it, but the engine in those FWD Honda cars was pretty much the same as the F20C in terms of technology. It would certainly be easier and probably better to swap in an engine designed to be transverse. I get that it was probably easier, and Lotus chose a Toyota engine from a transverse mounted FWD car. However, some apparently like a challenge. I was also the extra horsepower although I'm not sure what transmission was used. The one in the ad claimed that the swap was done after the original Rover engine suffered a head gasket failure.
|
|