Roy Gardner's Thoughts I'd like to call it a blog, but it's not version 1.6.2    21Jun2008
Click on a category or a specific title to automatically scroll down this long page to that thought:
Miscellaneous Thoughts Earthquake Rescue Tool Let's Kill All The Animals So Much Trouble to Make Bread My Own Home Air Filter A Different Chili Cookoff The Real Use of Nutritional Supplements Caption Contest! Worms in the Grocery Store Michael Jackson's Trial	Automotive Thoughts: Your Car Has Tiny Brakes Air Bag Advertising Energy Path for an Hydraulic Liftgate A Car's Transmission is a Band-Aid Automatic Trans Parts Helped the Mini Cooper Five Speeds for the Mini Automatic Big Block Chevy Intake Port Design Quicker Acceleration With a Traction Rocket Lower Elapsed Times With Clockwork Backup Alarm Revenge ESPN's Amazing Games
Miscellaneous Thoughts
Earthquake Rescue Tool
I watched a TV documentary on the latest rescue technologies. For finding buried victims in earthquake rubble, someone had invented and developed a long, narrow, jointed robot that could wriggle through debris and find a trapped person. It was equipped with a light, camera, microphone, and speaker. So picture this: You're under tons of concrete, convinced you're going to die, this thing burrows into your air pocket, stares at you, and its operator sings to you, "The worms crawl in, the worms crawl out, the worms play pinochle on your snout. They eat your eyes, they eat your nose..."
Let's Kill All The Animals
When I moved from the big city to the country, I went to a local hardware store to get a dryer hose. I noticed that one entire aisle was devoted to removing the local wildlife. There were mouse traps, rat poisons, wasp traps, mosquito sprays, mole traps, deer repellant, owl scarecrows, and much more. If it could be branded a "pest", they had something to deter it or murder it. If the hardware store's charter included selling firearms, they would've had the larger animals like bears and wolves covered too. Gee, people move to the country and all they want to do is kill all the critters and make it like the city?
So Much Trouble to Make Bread
Have you ever noticed how much effort we go to to make bread? The grain is harvested, ground, mixed with other ingredients, formed into a happy shape, baked, sliced, and then we eat it. How come we can't eat the grain directly like the other animals? Wouldn't that be more efficient?    I bought a box of potato flakes. The potatoes had been harvested, ground up, formed into a happy flakes shape, boxed, then shipped to me so I could mix it with other ingredients, cook it and eat it.    Well, OK, except check out the recipe at the right that was on the back of the box. We're supposed to go through a number of additional steps to make "Potato Rolls" out of the potato flakes. What do the completed potato rolls look like? THEY LOOK JUST LIKE POTATOES. What was wrong with the original potatoes that they had to go through all this?!
My Own Home Air Filter
I have observed a plethora of home air purifier commercials on television. I think the one I built years ago is better. I used to operate a computer that had a disc drive as big (and noisy) as a washing machine. The brand name was Century Data, as I recall. It had what was called an "absolute filter" so that very clean air could be blown over the stack of disks to remove dust. Every so often, the filter would be replaced by the maintenance people, and I saved one. I adapted an electronics cooling fan to the filter's outlet, and used it for a variety of purposes including taking tobacco smoke out of the air. These days, it sits next to my PC helping keep the dust down. The filter has a large capacity, and after about 15 years, it still flows well. It filters out all particles down to about .03 microns in size.    The tag on the side of the filter says Memorex Corporation part number 211880 EC3991, 100 CFM @ 1 inch of water pressure drop, minimum efficiency 99.97%, manufactured by Alfco, Carpinteria, California, model 9FP. The fan is a 3 inch German System Papst model 8500 from Pamotor in Burlingame, California. Made in USA!    At the Tektronix Country Store in the mid 1980's, there were stove- and refrigerator-size absolute filters for sale cheap that had been used for industrial clean rooms. I always thought I should've bought a few to build a whole-house fan.
A Different Chili Cookoff
When I hear the word "cookoff," I first think of the explosives and propellants definition: If a bomb or rocket is subjected to excessive heat during improper storage or a fire, it can eventually explode.    So, when I hear the phrase "Chili cookoff", I imagine a cook working over a big iron pot of chili on a fire, adding spicy ingredients as the temperature slowly increases. Eventually, there's a massive detonation leaving only a smoking crater and a shredded, blackened apron fluttering down that says "BANG-UP CHEF" on it.
The Real Use of Nutritional Supplements
I saw a television commercial for one of those canned milkshake-style nutritional supplements. The ad featured a beautiful landscape at a high-end retirement village and a healthy, handsome golden years couple sipping the product as part of an idyllic existence.    When I read the label on one such product, it said it contained all the nutrients necessary to sustain life. My skeptical mind immediately saw the most probable use for the "supplement," and that the real world might be very different. I imagined a lonely widowed parent confined to a bed in a spartan room. An offspring walks in carrying a heavy flat of nutritional supplement and drops it on the floor next to the bed. The offspring sits down momentarily, says, "Hi, how'ya doin', oops, gotta run, see ya next month!" and hurries out the door.
Caption Contest!
Why do either one of these need to be shipped diluted? Isn't this just the opposite of shipping products with much of the water removed, like concentrated orange juice, to save money since consumers usually have ready access to plain H2O? Water weighs a lot. There has to be a joke in here about the myth of consuming alcohol to stay warm in winter. I'm reminded of the song with the lyrics "I'm the man, the very fat man, who waters the workers' beer."    Send your caption ideas to
Worms in the Grocery Store
My favorite grocery store has several display stands where the featured products are presented in a bed of brown confetti, a sample of which is shown above left. En masse, the confetti looks a lot like the bowls of worms they like to make people eat on the TV show "Fear Factor." I wonder how many other customers have made this connection and if it's a disincentive to shopping there?
Michael Jackson's Trial
Michael Jackson changed himself from black to white. So would it have been improper for the judge and jury in his child molestation trial to show up in blackface?
Automotive Thoughts
Your Car Has Tiny Brakes
The current trend toward large diameter rims with low profile tires on street cars has a drawback. The usual purchaser is concerned with looks, not performance, and they don't put on larger brakes along with the larger rims. It doesn't look right. (The rims are ugly too, but that's a generational thing.) The trend was probably started by race cars for which one of the reasons they have large diameter rims is to make room for as big a brake as possible. The inevitable open-spoke design, (also from race cars, for brake cooling), means you can see the now miniature-looking brake clearly. People who live in glass houses shouldn't take their clothes off. Whenever I see a car on the street with fashionable rims, I'm tempted to say to the driver, "Your car has tiny brakes."    On a race team, one of our guys who had a high performance street car put on larger diameter rims. We razzed him about his "little brakes". He protested that the new, bigger brakes were on order, and they'd be on in less than a week.
Air Bag Advertising
When I see an automobile air bag go off on TV, I notice the bag is pretty much plain white. Why not print a picture of an attacking animal on it, to increase the adrenalin flow? Yow!    Empty white space with no advertising ... I see a business opportunity. An advertisement on an airbag would be presented at a moment when unforgettable memories are being etched into the customer's brain; excellent timing. Airbags could have ads from the "Law Offices of Madison A. Swill", "Bob's Towing", or "Acme Funeral Home".
Energy Path for an Hydraulic Liftgate
I have a lift gate for my pickup truck because I'm getting old and I don't think I'll be able to lift big stuff by myself much longer. Have you thought about the efficiency of this device? Step way back and take a look at the total energy path: The sun converts 4 million tons of hydrogen per second to helium, and most of the energy emerges as light. A portion of the light reaches the earth and provides energy for plant growth. Critters eat some of the plants. The plants and critters die and a few of them take a few zillion years to make crude oil deposits. Humans find some of the deposits and they turn a lot of it into gasoline at a refinery. My truck engine burns the gasoline with oxygen and about 20% is turned into mechanical energy. The engine's generator (It's 1958 vintage) turns a percentage of the mechanical energy into electricity. The truck's battery converts the electricity into chemical energy. When I push the button on the lift gate controller, the chemical energy is turned back into electricity in the battery. The lift gate motor turns the electrical energy back into mechanical energy. Are you keeping track? There will be a short quiz next period! The lift gate's hydraulic pump turns the mechanical energy into hydraulic oil flow. An hydraulic cylinder turns the hydraulic energy into mechanical energy, lifting the gate and its cargo, turning kinetic energy into potential energy. All because I'm too old and lazy to pick an engine up 3 feet. The overall efficiency has to be astronomically low. Compare to the efficiency of a Baleen whale that eats krill and bypasses most of the usual intermediate steps in the animal food chain.
A Car's Transmission is a Band-Aid
	Most people don't realize that their car's transmission is a device to cover over the fact that the engine speed and the road speed seldom match. It's an adapter. Or an impedance matching device. Other types of prime movers don't need one to move a vehicle around at a variety of speeds. A piston engine has many advantages, but its inability to turn a road wheel directly in your car isn't one of them.
The number of different gears in a transmission goes up as the power-to-weight ratio decreases. An 18-wheeler might have 12 to 18 speeds to match the desired engine speed to the desired road speed. A locomotive would have to have a hundred gears, so instead it has an electric drive to do the matching.    The number of gears also goes up if the engine has a very narrow operating range. Decades ago, I read about the highly competitive 50cc motorcycle racing class in Japan. One manufacturer's bike had a 3-cylinder engine whose power band was between 19,500 and 20,000 RPM. It had a 13 speed transmission.    If the power-to-weight ratio is high, fewer speeds are required. Once in Oklahoma, I was riding in David Ruddell's 1949 Ford pickup that had a 440 cubic inch Chrysler engine with a 3-speed Torqueflite automatic transmission. He had just converted the trans to full manual shift, and he was worried about his wife driving the truck because she didn't know how to shift. I suggested that since the truck only weighed 3600 pounds, the transmission had a torque converter, and his wife would only be putting around, that she just leave it in high gear. I suggested he try it himself at the upcoming stop sign. He did, and the torquey truck pulled away smartly from a dead stop, no problem.    To take this to an extreme, consider John Walter Christie's V4 racing car of 1906. The engine was set sideways in the front, with the front wheels attached directly to the ends of the crankshaft. It was a bellowing crowd-pleasing car and the reason it worked was the very large engine size. 700 cubic inches. Per cylinder.
Automatic Trans Parts Helped the Mini Cooper S
The Mini Cooper S had several heavy duty improvements over the regular Mini to bring it to higher performance levels. It strikes me that several of these parts were merely borrowed from the automatic transmission cars, though some of them were upgraded. What follows are my opinions, not factory inside information. The automatic power unit uses a single large oil pump to supply both the engine and the transmission. The pump requires much more torque to turn, and the drive had to be beefed up to cope with it, starting by changing from a single row timing chain to a double row. Then the connection to the pump was changed from the pin drive to the spider drive. For the Cooper S the timing sprockets were upgraded from PM parts to billet, but I think the spider drive stayed the same. This all worked fine, except the spider drive wasn't quite up to the task in the automatic cars. I have never seen an automatic car that didn't have severe wear of the spider-to-pump shaft splines, and I've seen one Austin America where it had worn completely through. This is annoying because the rest of the pump is always in excellent condition since the automatic doesn't generate pump-destroying swarf like the manual gearbox, and replacement splined pump shafts are no longer available separately, only complete assemblies. The shaft all by itself was part number 27H6907. The number of oil pump attaching bolts was increased from 3 to 4, but I don't think this was necessary for high performance since after the automatic was discontinued, the number decreased to two. The Cooper S half shaft inner U-joints appear to be borrowed directly from the automatic. The previous rubber U-joints made for a smoother car, but their diameter was too large for the automatic transaxle, what with the larger fore-and-aft dimension of the bevel gear assembly and in spite of the greater pinion-to-crown wheel distance. Also, the rubber U-joints sometimes fail from exhaust heat and oil leaks. The automatic U-joints are more compact, and being mostly metal, survive better under racing conditions. Perhaps the equivalent smoothness was provided by the torque converter. The Cooper S half shaft outer constant velocity joints appear to be borrowed from the heavier 1100/1300 range of cars. The only difference I'm aware of is the shape of the boot lip varies. The diameters all seem to be the same. Here's a chart I made years ago when I was having difficulty ordering the correct replacement boots for various CV joints: If anybody has more info, e-mail me and I'll correct the chart or add to it.    It might have been good if the Cooper S's flywheel center bolt had the same length as in the automatic to help prevent flywheel loosening. The extra length would provide more elasticity and less torque loss as the flywheel moves around and settles further down the crankshaft taper under high performance conditions. The flywheel of a Mazda rotary engine also mounts on a taper, but Jim Miller of Miller Mazda Repair once told me there was never a problem with loosening and fretting. I wonder what the difference is? Way less torsional vibration in the stiff eccentric shaft of a rotary, along with a larger taper diameter?
Five Speeds for the Mini Automatic
I read in one book on the Mini that when the Mini automatic transaxle with its unique nested bevel reduction gears was first being developed, it was a 3-speed. Engineers noticed a fourth speed could be added with very little complication, and management said go ahead. Later, they noticed a fifth speed could be easily added, but management said keep it a four-speed.    At a United States west coast Mini meet, David Vizard and David Anton said they'd heard rumor that a Mini racer in England was getting 8 speeds out of an automatic, but the story hadn't been verified.    I was intrigued. I made a truth table of all possible clutch & band applications to find all the gears available in the production gearbox. There are 25 or 32 combinations: combination number forward clutch 2nd gear band 3rd gear band high/reverse clutch reverse band result 1 off off off off off neutral 2 off off off off on neutral 3 off off off on off neutral 4 off off off on on reverse gear 2.69 5 off off on off off neutral 6 off off on off on locked 7 off off on on off lower than first gear ~2.9 8 off off on on on locked 9 off on off off off neutral 10 off on off off on locked 11 off on off on off locked 12 off on off on on locked 13 off on on off off locked 14 off on on off on locked 15 off on on on off locked 16 off on on on on locked 17 on off off off off first gear 2.69 18 on off off off on same as first gear 2.69 19 on off off on off fourth gear 1.00 20 on off off on on locked 21 on off on off off third gear 1.46 22 on off on off on locked 23 on off on on off locked 24 on off on on on locked 25 on on off off off second gear 1.845 26 on on off off on locked 27 on on off on off locked 28 on on off on on locked 29 on on on off off locked 30 on on on off on locked 31 on on on on off locked 32 on on on on on locked combination number forward clutch 2nd gear band 3rd gear band high/reverse clutch reverse band result
Illustration courtesy Foulis & Co.
Illustration courtesy Foulis & Co.	Most of the combinations are useless because they lock up the transaxle in the vicinity of the change gears or the final drive. Somebody out there "proof read" this for me, will you? It looks like there's only one more gear available, a forward gear a reasonable distance below first at about 2.9 to 1. However, upshifting from this gear to the original first would require releasing a band & clutch and applying another clutch, an operation that would be difficult to synchronize properly. Maybe the shift could be dialed in if the transaxle were converted to modern computer control.    I speculate that the added complication to change the prototype transmission from a 3-speed to a 4-speed was to add one band.
Big Block Chevy Intake Port Design
I've read a few times about the minor disadvantages of the intake port layout on the big block Chevrolet engine. There are two different port shapes and lengths, and that has been discussed by some authors as a cause of mixture distribution and head gasket problems. Some engine builders have richened 4 of the 8 cylinders and added the missing head bolt inside 4 of the ports. The cylinders with the short, straight port are surrounded by 6 head bolts and the cylinders with the long, curved port are surrounded by 5.    The big block first appeared in NASCAR racing, where it was called the "porcupine head" because of the splayed valves. I speculate that that first racing version had equally spaced, identical intake ports like Ford and the Chrysler Hemi, but that might've created mixture distribution problems in the intake manifold of production engines. The passages in the intake manifold are much longer than in the head, and take precedence. I think the port layout was changed for production so a standard dual-plane intake manifold with equal-length, equal-angle passages could be used, as on the small block Chevy.    Some years ago, one of the aftermarket high-performance cylinder head manufacturers offered equal-spacing ports for the big block and also the small block Chevy. I think it was Dart. It seems they didn't catch on.
Quicker Acceleration With a Traction Rocket
There are 3 items that lead me to think that something like a hydrogen peroxide rocket pointing up would give a shorter time-to-distance for a drag racing vehicle. In standing start drag racing, the car's horsepower tends to affect the trap speed more than the elapsed time, and the car's traction tends to affect the elapsed time more than the trap speed. An automotive journalist attended a local Saturday night drags and wrote that many of the street cars present would've had lower elapsed times if the owners had taken some of the money they spent on the engine and put it into the rear suspension. Drag cars sometimes have nitrous oxide systems installed to increase horsepower, and those systems involve a tank, hoses, valves, and nozzles.    So, why not use similar hardware to install a hydrogen peroxide rocket pointing up that pushes directly down on the rear axle? Let's say 1,000 lbs thrust for 3 or 4 seconds. That way you could really put the engine's horsepower to the ground. I think that would result in a greater initial acceleration and lower E.T. than pointing the rocket rearward. Rocket cars and jet cars have pretty good performance, but they're notoriously slow off the line. Pointing the rocket to the rear instead of up would have more of an effect on top speed.    Of course, if it's not already illegal in sanctioned drag racing, this would instantly become illegal. So put it on the street, where traction is an even worse problem, especially in rain, snow, and ice.    In an emergency situation, the system could be used for better cornering and shorter braking distances too.
Lower Elapsed Times With Clockwork
Front wheel drive automobiles are at a disadvantage in drag racing when up against equivalent rear-drive cars because of the unfavorable weight transfer. For example, one of David Vizard's Mini books says a Mini gives up a second in the quarter mile against an equivalent Spridget.    I thought of a way to cheat with the front drive car. Put big clock-type main springs inside the rear brake drums or wheels to help it launch. One-way clutches in the mechanism would disengage the springs after the launch. They would be wound up while backing up to the start line after a burnout. They could be disengaged for lengthy backups with a mechanism operated by the hand brake. Since acceleration off the line is critical for a low E.T., I think this could give a considerable advantage. Is it already illegal?
Backup Alarm Revenge
I think the quality of life is diminished overall by federally-required backup alarms on big trucks and heavy equipment because for every life that is saved, billions of quiet environments are marred by the loud BEEP BEEP BEEP sound when there's no one close enough to need the warning. A fantasy revenge I thought of is that whenever that occurs, the noise would be duplicated for every member of Congress who voted for it.    I sort of got my revenge. I was watching President Reagan's funeral on television, a solemn affair attended by much of Washington, when it was marred by a backup alarm's BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP in the background!
ESPN's Amazing Games
Back around 1992, ESPN had a show called "Amazing Games" which documented some of the least known and most bizarre sports from around the world. One episode featured a contest where riders on horseback would take turns chasing a bull. They would ride up alongside, grip the cow's tail, and veer off, sending the animal into loops. As an auto racing fan, I instantly recognized this spinning phenomenon as OVER STEER.
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