Well there you have it. A methed out, 20 year old crack head barreling down the highway in 80,000lbs fumes belching jagarnaut. He is only 20 miles from metropolis city, where crowds of cuddly orphans have gathered with their parents to watch the parade. Disaster cannot be far behind. Crowd screams in horror. Crying…

I think its safe to say that any consumer that knows what a timing chain is, is not going to be bothered by the noise it makes. However, most consumers don’t fall into that category.

I don’t believe that the chains themselves have gotten quieter. I think we’ve gotten somewhat better sprockets, and mostly much better covers to quiet things down. I think the popular thing to do now is to make them out of laminated metal/ruber/metal material.

The chain is made out flat metal plates, connected by pins. Over time the holes in the plates become oval, allowing the pins some slack and making the overall chain longer. It’s not exactly stretch, but we call it that.

Timing chains are loud. One of the original solutions to this problem were nylon sprockets. You can see how this could not end well.

I’m generally with you on your love for timing chains vs belts, but it should be pointed out that when timing belts came out, they were an improvement over the timing chains of old. Those had a bad tendancy of jumping teeth on their sprockets, resulting in cetain calamities. So yes, at one time a timing belt was the…

Dear Kinja people. I tried to type this on my mobile, but all the words came out backwords. as in I type in WHILE and the screen was showing ELIHW. What is that all about?

While a coasting light seems pretty useless, it might be time to rethink the brake light. Currently it is activated by the brake pedal because originally it was the only practical way of doing things. Today, I would propose this.

Oh no, someone inconvinienced Doug! they need to be chopped up into little bitty pieces and burried alive!

Right, agree on all counts. In the market the Alpha is (most likely) going for, a hard to pronounce name is a benefit. Probably not much of a benefit, and if we’re wrong it’s not much of a hinderence either. Names just don’t matter that much. Reliability, economy, luxury, performance, cost, financing terms, prestige,…

Does anyone know what kind of endurance those small helicopter have? How many hours can they stay in the air? And for bonus points, how many hours can they stay in the air while carrying around a bambi bucket?

So imagine this, you come across your ideal car. Of course it is a brown wagon miata with a manual transmission and flat plane v12 engine pushing 650hp. It keeps your coffee warm, your soda cold, and does it’s best to convince your girl to give you a bj everytime you look sad. It’s $28k, brand new, with all the…

Yes. All 3 of us, typing from a bunker.

Dear Tom McParland: You’ve been hanging out with the marketing folks for too long. Whatever problems Alfa faces, the model name isn’t very high up on the list. If a car can offer performance and longevity at a desired price, it is likely to do well, even if it’s named the KA979 (just don’t name it imajerk or something…

Yes, but in 20 years cars are likely to be safer than they are now

Since the problem we are trying to solve is a speed differential, i.e. cars moving at different speeds on the same road, any sort of graduated plates/liscences seem like the wrong solution.

At this point, I’m not entirely sure what consitutes a robot anymore. An arm capable of moving in 3 axis and picking up attachments is a robot, while a mill capable of doing the same isn’t, for some reason. Industrial automation isn’t a new idea, it’s been around, in cruder forms, since the industrial revolution (at…

If you look at the cause of accidents nation wide, you’ll notice that something like 99% of them are due to “driver error” on the part of one, or both of the drivers. No matter how many dangerous cars you’ve heard of, mechanical failure is very rarely the cause of any accident (unless you listen to the guys who just…

Why with increased funding, they could ignore and misanylize 98% of complaints!

“The designers describe an aircraft capable of transonic flight, with a cruise speed of Mach .80 and a cruising altitude of 35,000 feet. This would maximize flight efficiency and minimize specific fuel consumption while voiding the need for a vertical tail.”