TGV, or Train à Grande Vitesse, is France’s high-speed rail service. It was the fourth high speed rail system to open when it went into service in 1978. It’s original trains, TGV Sud-Est, has captured the imaginations of more than one generation. Originally painted a bright orange, the unmistakable Alstom-built trains became a [...]
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 Ford Cosworth GBA 1.5 liter turbocharged V6 F1 engine. Click for Largerizer I was rooting around through YouTube videos, looking for something else entirely, when I came across these videos that I think everyone will find interesting. They’re from the BBC series Equinox and document a part of the early years of the Formula one turbo era. In particular, they follow the efforts of the Ford Cosworth engineers to design and build a competitive turbocharged 1.5 liter engine for the Beatrice (remember them?) F1 team. This post might be better fodder for Hooniverse, but there are all sorts of technology in evidence that was cutting edge in the mid-80s but is antique junk now. The computer technology for example, is very quaint and brings back memories that I’d just as soon be rid of to make room for something else, like all of the tricks that I used to use for programming and burning EPROMs. Totally useless today. There are evidently 3 videos in the series of which I could only locate the first two, each about 50 minutes long. The two videos cover the design and debugging the the engines, and I think the last one follows the team’s travails in the 1986 F1 season. If anyone can find an embeddable copy of the third video, let me know and I’ll add it. 
I knew I was never getting a date in high school when the pretty girl who sat beside me in grade ten math class caught me drawing pictures of the Sud-Ouest SO 9000 Trident. Continue reading Sud-Ouest SO.9000 Trident   Leduc 0.10 in flight Atomic Toasters’ editorial staff are big fans of early American and British Jet-Age aircraft; and rightly so, given the extraordinary machines they produced. However, we tend to overlook another innovative power of that era: France. Continue reading Leduc 0.10  This scene should have been repeated for the next twenty years The 1950s and ’60s were the best of times and the worst of times for the British aerospace industry. They were the best because the country’s engineers were at the top of their game, producing excellent machines like the Vulcan, Canberra, Lightning, and ground-breaking TSR-2. The worst because of the government’s disgraceful and vicious assault on a world-class industry. Continue reading Roto-rooted Today I flew from Detroit, MI to San Francisco, CA. This is a journey that takes between 4.5 and 5 hours, depending on the jet stream, in a Boeing 737. As I strapped myself into the metal tube that would soon be zooming through the air at nearly the speed of sound, I [...]
Wind tunnels have been used for aerodynamic research since before airplanes even flew. Carl Richard Nyberg was using a wind tunnel in the late 1800s to design his Flugan. The Wright brothers used a wind tunnel to design the wings of their Wright Flyer. However, this arena of aerodynamic research didn’t affect race car design until the late 1960s. ZomBees, as it turns out, really are hard to kill. After Saturday’s fantastic result against all odds, the Killer ZomBee, AtomicToasters’ quasi-official race car found itself in excellent standing for the second half of the 24 Hours of LeMons. Dysentery and Effluency, as it turns out, go well together. Who knew? The [...] Sparky, the ZomBee, and his Fifth Wheel. Proving once again that two wrongs CAN make a right, our very own Sparky Pete is currently at the 24 Hours of LeMons: Pacific NorthWorst, and appears to be defying everyone’s expectations, and the very laws of physics. Indeed, the Universe itself is watching in stunned [...] |
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