4 strokes don’t like to be run sideways for long periods of time. Oil starvation you know.

That’s sort of a chicken and egg situation on the factory, but I’m with you on the vote of no confidence. All the luck in the world to them, but I’ll believe that they can make a successful car when I see it.

Didn’t you basically write a book on such things? Maybe not a physical book, but still close.

Brake fluid flushes are super easy to do though, especially if you invest in something like a motive power bleeder (one of the most useful specialty tools I’ve picked up). For half the price of a shop doing a brake bleed (with whatever brake fluid is lying around) you can pick up a pressure bleeder, a catch bottle,…

Mazda just entered into a manufacturing partnership with Toyota, a company that sells just a few hybrids, so there’s some definite synergy available there. They could make some solid profits than to license the technology on a larger scale than their own manufacturing will support.

American Petroleum Institute. They’re a standards organization for the oil industry.

I approve this gif.

This looks like a Good Guys style Autocross, so they’re a bit more laid back about such things. They probably talked to the guy and asked him not to roll the thing, and from the look of things he wasn’t pushing it too hard. The SCCA rules are mostly a holdover from when the stock class was a bunch of stock sprung cars…

I mean, tube usually refers to a smaller diameter structural member while pipe refers to a sometimes pressurized structure for the transport of materials. Pipe is probably the better word here.

I took my MSF course on a Yamaha TW200. That was probably a better bike selection than a forward control, raked out cruiser.

If you run an FEA on a shape similar to the open-topped canopy design loaded head-on (in the style of an impact with a runaway tire for example), most of the stress will be directly back from the point of impact. The basic cross section loaded in that sort of a scenario is an arch, which is a very strong and resilient…

The above test video looks like more of a proof of concept test than a product acceptance test. I’d imagine that the Ferrari screen was tested similarly and I’d imagine the test went well, otherwise they wouldn’t have installed it. You wouldn’t put something like this on the car without such testing but they’re not…

That result doesn’t seem like an outright failure though. The windscreen did shatter, but as stated in the caption it did deflect the tire away from the driver. That’s a huge improvement over something with a high chance of immediately killing a driver, if the car’s a little broken that’s unfortunate but acceptable.…

I’d imagine it’s comparable in strength to a fighter jet canopy, which can deflect bird strikes at considerably higher speeds than those achieved by an F1 car. Even if it’s not perfect, it’s an improvement over basically nothing as far as impact protection is concerned.

It’s a tax credit, not a tax deduction. So if you owe less than $7500 you claim that on your taxes and they cut you a check for the difference. Doesn’t matter how much you do or don’t owe.

I do this, except with Camrys. The looks you get when you turn in a boring family sedan covered in as much Texas mud as one can physically affix to a car is priceless.

Yeah, if you’re interested in powertrain Formula is the team to join. Baja success is mostly about making a lightweight, super-durable car with good suspension. The process of making a good car that’s quick with a 10 HP motor (though more like 8 at the revs you’re allowed) will make you into an effective engineer.

Baja SAE evangelist checking in here. All of my jobs have been almost entirely the result of Baja (5 minutes of technical questions,then talk about racecars for 2 hours, and this is as a Metallurgist). Most of the prospective team members that wouldn’t do well weeded themselves out within a few weeks of the start of…

A lot of teams were in the same boat. I was the flagger at the base of the steep hill on the motocross course and saw so many cars cut that hairpin short and destroy their suspensions on the surprise drop there. There were a couple of rollovers too, but not as many as I thought there might be.

You would enjoy walking through the pits at a Baja SAE race. One of the cars ran a twin I-beam design at this year’s California race. It didn’t do particularly well, but you’ve got to give them a lot of credit for trying. To their credit, it held up even after having every single rock we put in its way.