>> ^Ryjkyj:
Do you ride to work in the rain? Because nobody I know rides their bike in the rain. So what then, call in sick every time it rains?

Rain, snow, lightning, fog, hail, tumbleweeds, crazy drivers. The weather here ranges from -10 F to 105F and yes I ride every day no matter what. Riding in the rain isn't that big of a deal if you have a waterproof helmet, jacket, pants, gloves, and boots.

You can buy a used dirt bike for about $1000 - in fact my very first motorcycle was a used Ninja 250 (sport bike) which I bought for $1400. Gets 70 MPG. As far as maintenance on my current bike goes; spark plugs are about $2 (single cylinder) and an oil change is what $10? Mine was $7000 brand new, but I don't make minimum wage. Most people spend what, 10, 20, 30 thousand on a new car? Why would you spend $20,000 on a car? They are slow, dangerous, get terrible gas mileage, and can't even ride down single track

Thing is, if you are making minimum wage, why would you need a car to commute in the first place? Theres a McDonalds on every block and used bicycles are like $30. Anyone working less than 10 miles from their house could easily ride a bicycle to work. One of my coworkers does it every day (14 miles) ...yes in the rain and snow too.

Its not a question of "can" its a question of "will." People in America think (know?) they need a car yet theres really no need for it.

As far as TAXES go...you know I'm a libertarian right? I don't believe in taxation...so that part is on you...if you want to steal 20% from someone making minimum wage thats on you, not me

I wish they'd used an actual Prius in their "what to do" segment. You can't shift them into neutral while they're at speed. The car just beeps at you if you try it. Ditto for park and reverse.

The e-brake in a Prius is very much set up as a parking brake. You push the pedal in, and it locks in place. I wouldn't recommend that you try to use it to slow down at highway speeds (or hardly any speed at all).

I haven't tried it, but I don't think you can even shut off the ignition at speed, either.

I'm not sure why people act like the Prius is an especially slow car. It's the same as a normal 4-cylinder mid-size sedan. Not a rocket, but easily capable of hitting 100mph, getting up to speed on highway ramps, overtaking dickheads who're only going 75 in the left-hand lane...I can vouch for all those personally.

Yes, I own a Prius. I'm sure everyone's shocked.

>> ^cybrbeast:
Why did the technology die with him? Surely more could be built?


One person with extraordinary vision, coupled with technological know-how, engineering brilliance and the ability to get his hands dirty and plain-and-simple build what he imagines is a rare thing.

In the case of the Britten bike, this is a partial list of what made his bike special:

1) Partial girder-link front suspension with adjustable anti-dive properties.
-fork-type suspensions compress under braking and extend during acceleration, changing the geometry and handling characteristics of the machine quite drastically during the different driving modes. Britten's suspension design allowed him to control pretty much all variables of suspension geometry under changing load, making the bike behave however the rider wished.
- The rear suspension, while perhaps not as revolutionary, was a beautiful piece. It was essentially a carbon-fibre banana swing-arm with a linkage to the adjustable shock/spring assembly. If you look at the bike you'll see that there's no spring/shock assembly near the rear suspension, rather note the spring/shock assembly directly behind the front wheel- this is for the rear suspension! The front shock assembly is hidden in the front suspension linkage and cowling.

2) The engine itself was a stressed-member.
-While certainly not unheard of, Britten took the concept to an extreme, essentially eliminating the frame from the motorcycle. The front and rear suspensions essentially bolted directly to the engine, thus saving many kilos over contemporary designs. Take a look at any current MotoGP or Superbike- most use the engine as a partial stressed-member, but they all have frame members linking the engine, steering heads and seat-assemblies. Britten really only had a vestigial sub-frame for the rider's seat.

3) Well-controlled aerodynamics and fully-ducted cooling system
-Britten paid close attention to airflow over, around and through his bike. Look how cleanly the rider's body tucks into the bodywork. He paid close attention to details, notice how clean the entire assembly is- no exposed wiring, nothing dangling into the airflow, that incredibly sleek rear swing-arm and rear tire hugger. This keeps the airflow smooth and un-disturbed. Motorcycles aren't terribly aerodynamic machines in the first place, but a wise man once said God is in the details.
-The engine itself is a water cooled design, but where's the radiator? It's in a fully-sealed duct directly beneath the rider's seat. High-pressure air is inlet from the front of the bike, through the radiator and is exhausted into the low pressure area beneath the rider and above/ahead of the rear wheel. Greater cooling equals higher power potential.

4) The motor
- 999cc 60 degree V-Twin, belt-driven DOHC design, twin injectors per cylinder, sophisticated electronic ignition, hand-made carbon fibre velocity stacks, wet sump. The motor was designed to breathe hard, pumping out torque and horsepower (166 hp @ 11800 rpm- not sure about the torque figures), and run cool and reliably under racing conditions. Nothing here that any other manufacturer couldn't have figured out on their own, but Britten had the insight and the will to make the best motor in the world at the time. The 60 degree configuration was, I assume chosen for packaging reasons. Normally this configuration would have bad primary balance characteristics, but Britten engineered his to such tight tolerances that the engine ran smoothly right up to redline (12500 rpm) without using a balance shaft.
I'll also point out here that Britten wasn't above using someone else's part if it was better than he could make himself- the gearbox was from a Suzuki superbike, and the cylinder liners and voltage regulator (both of which failed at the Daytona race in '92- the latter costing Britten the win) were from Ducati.

5) Carbon Fibre
- While Carbon Fibre had been around for 2 decades or so at this point, nobody had used it so extensively. Britten used the material for bodywork, wheels, engine parts, suspension girders and the rear swing-arm. There is still no other bike, not even the current Ducati Desmosedici MotoGP bike, that uses so much of this exotic material. The stuff then, as it is now, was hugely expensive and challenging to engineer for different applications. Britten made everything himself, in his garage, figuring it out as he went. This kept the total weight of the bike to a hugely impressive 138 kg.

Keep in mind that he did all of the above in 1991 and 1992, with the help of several neighbors and one part-time machinist, in his backyard shed! He made the bodywork by hand, using a wire frame and hot melt glue, crafting the wind-cheating shape and cooling ducting purely by eye. He cast the aluminum engine parts himself, heat-treating them in his wife's pottery kiln, and cooling the heat-treated parts with water from his swimming pool!

Ducati, Honda, Kawasaki, Suzuki... any one of these manufactures could today reproduce and expand on what Britten accomplished almost single-handedly. None of them will- there's too much at stake for them. It's far safer to stick with the tried-and-true, making small evolutionary changes over the years. A true visionary achiever (to coin a term) like Britten comes along only every once in a great while.

I suppose that this is what was really lost when John Britten died... vision, engineering acuity, hands-on knowledge, and pure will. Touched with a little craziness.

In reply to this comment by cybrbeast:
Why did the technology die with him? Surely more could be built?

>> ^cybrbeast:
Why did the technology die with him? Surely more could be built?


One person with extraordinary vision, coupled with technological know-how, engineering brilliance and the ability to get his hands dirty and plain-and-simple build what he imagines is a rare thing.

In the case of the Britten bike, this is a partial list of what made his bike special:

1) Partial girder-link front suspension with adjustable anti-dive properties.
-fork-type suspensions compress under braking and extend during acceleration, changing the geometry and handling characteristics of the machine quite drastically during the different driving modes. Britten's suspension design allowed him to control pretty much all variables of suspension geometry under changing load, making the bike behave however the rider wished.
- The rear suspension, while perhaps not as revolutionary, was a beautiful piece. It was essentially a carbon-fibre banana swing-arm with a linkage to the adjustable shock/spring assembly. If you look at the bike you'll see that there's no spring/shock assembly near the rear suspension, rather note the spring/shock assembly directly behind the front wheel- this is for the rear suspension! The front shock assembly is hidden in the front suspension linkage and cowling.

2) The engine itself was a stressed-member.
-While certainly not unheard of, Britten took the concept to an extreme, essentially eliminating the frame from the motorcycle. The front and rear suspensions essentially bolted directly to the engine, thus saving many kilos over contemporary designs. Take a look at any current MotoGP or Superbike- most use the engine as a partial stressed-member, but they all have frame members linking the engine, steering heads and seat-assemblies. Britten really only had a vestigial sub-frame for the rider's seat.

3) Well-controlled aerodynamics and fully-ducted cooling system
-Britten paid close attention to airflow over, around and through his bike. Look how cleanly the rider's body tucks into the bodywork. He paid close attention to details, notice how clean the entire assembly is- no exposed wiring, nothing dangling into the airflow, that incredibly sleek rear swing-arm and rear tire hugger. This keeps the airflow smooth and un-disturbed. Motorcycles aren't terribly aerodynamic machines in the first place, but a wise man once said God is in the details.
-The engine itself is a water cooled design, but where's the radiator? It's in a fully-sealed duct directly beneath the rider's seat. High-pressure air is inlet from the front of the bike, through the radiator and is exhausted into the low pressure area beneath the rider and above/ahead of the rear wheel. Greater cooling equals higher power potential.

4) The motor
- 999cc 60 degree V-Twin, belt-driven DOHC design, twin injectors per cylinder, sophisticated electronic ignition, hand-made carbon fibre velocity stacks, wet sump. The motor was designed to breathe hard, pumping out torque and horsepower (166 hp @ 11800 rpm- not sure about the torque figures), and run cool and reliably under racing conditions. Nothing here that any other manufacturer couldn't have figured out on their own, but Britten had the insight and the will to make the best motor in the world at the time. The 60 degree configuration was, I assume chosen for packaging reasons. Normally this configuration would have bad primary balance characteristics, but Britten engineered his to such tight tolerances that the engine ran smoothly right up to redline (12500 rpm) without using a balance shaft.
I'll also point out here that Britten wasn't above using someone else's part if it was better than he could make himself- the gearbox was from a Suzuki superbike, and the cylinder liners and voltage regulator (both of which failed at the Daytona race in '92- the latter costing Britten the win) were from Ducati.

5) Carbon Fibre
- While Carbon Fibre had been around for 2 decades or so at this point, nobody had used it so extensively. Britten used the material for bodywork, wheels, engine parts, suspension girders and the rear swing-arm. There is still no other bike, not even the current Ducati Desmosedici MotoGP bike, that uses so much of this exotic material. The stuff then, as it is now, was hugely expensive and challenging to engineer for different applications. Britten made everything himself, in his garage, figuring it out as he went. This kept the total weight of the bike to a hugely impressive 138 kg.

Keep in mind that he did all of the above in 1991 and 1992, with the help of several neighbors and one part-time machinist, in his backyard shed! He made the bodywork by hand, using a wire frame and hot melt glue, crafting the wind-cheating shape and cooling ducting purely by eye. He cast the aluminum engine parts himself, heat-treating them in his wife's pottery kiln, and cooling the heat-treated parts with water from his swimming pool!

Ducati, Honda, Kawasaki, Suzuki... any one of these manufactures could today reproduce and expand on what Britten accomplished almost single-handedly. None of them will- there's too much at stake for them. It's far safer to stick with the tried-and-true, making small evolutionary changes over the years. A true visionary achiever (to coin a term) like Britten comes along only every once in a great while.

I suppose that this is what was really lost when John Britten died... vision, engineering acuity, hands-on knowledge, and pure will. Touched with a little craziness.

>> ^dystopianfuturetoday:
Oh my!
nsfw

where do you work, the Vatican?

Philip Glass - Target Destruction
Slayer - Divine Intervention
Laika & The Cosmonauts - C'mon Do The Laika!
Mindless Self Indulgence - Clarissa
Fantômas - 04/15/05 That Sucks Day (USA) Day of the Sun (North Korea)
Unknown singer - wax cylinder recording of an old Finnish lullaby
Mr. Velcro Fastener - Re-beat offender
K4n - Rott
Front Line Assembly - Resist (Dislocated mix)
Polmo Polpo - Rottura

Well, this was... interesting. Nice finish though!

Five cylinders? O.o

It's true!
http://rides.webshots.com/photo/1175782460057350289hKaKEc

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

You're right - gee that's dumb. Fixed it. I'm not firing on all cylinders.

Horsepower... The Veyron has very little of that . Not as much as a Corvette, that's for sure.


Incorrect, sir.

A Veyron from the factory boasts 1001 HP at the rear wheels. The motor is essentially two 4.0 liter V8's wound together through a lot of engineering genius & electronic wizardry.

A stock Corvette ZR1 puts out 638hp at the rear wheels using a supercharged 6.2 liter LS9.
The Z06 model is rated at 505bhp with a 7.0 liter LS7.
A race-prepped C6.R Corvette is the lesser motor, putting out around 500bhp with the LS7.
A Callaway C16 tweaks the LS7 in different ways to jack the output to as much as 700hp.

In general, the smaller motor is preferred by road racers for the more usable powerband. The bigger motor is preferred by drag racers for the sheer displacement, but requires additional modifications to bump the HP, usually through turbocharging or supercharging.


It it possible that you were trying to drip sarcasm on us, but I saw nothing to indicate that this is nothing more than pure misinformation.


For those that care, the rating on the McLaren F1:
6.1 liter BMW S70/2 12 cylinder race motor capable of 627bhp.

They are all beasts of automobiles, to be certain. I'd gladly drive any or all of them, given the opportunity.



And yes, I registered as a sifter just for this!

It's pink. It's cylinder. It fits between the ta-tas. I'd never have guessed it was a pillow.

American planes, full of holes and wounded men and corpses, took off backwards from an airfield in England. Over France, a few German fighter planes flew at them backwards, sucked bullets and shell fragments from some of the planes and crewmen. They did the same for wrecked American bombers on the ground, and those planes flew up backwards to join the formation.

The formation flew backwards over a German city that was in flames. The bombers opened their bomb bay doors, exerted a miraculous magnetism which shrunk the fires, gathered them into cylindrical steel containers, and lifted the containers into the bellies of the planes. The Germans below had miraculous devices of their own, which were long steel tubes. They used them to suck more fragments from the crewmen and planes. But there were still a few wounded Americans, though, and some of the bombers were in bad repair. Over France, though, German fighters came up again, made everything and everybody as good as new.

When the bombers got back to their base, the steel cylinders were taken from the racks and shipped back to the United States of America, where factories were operating night and day, dismantling the cylinders, separating the dangerous contents into minerals. Touchingly, it was mainly women who did this work. The minerals were then shipped to specialists in remote areas. It was their business to put them into the ground, to hide them cleverly, so they would never hurt anybody ever again.

-Kurt Vonnegut jr., Slaughterhouse-Five


*promote

>> ^dag:
Holy crap is right.

It is a testament to the gentleman's intestinal fortitude that he is nearly killed by a prop-plane and the resulting audio remains SFW (and the resulting video in-frame).

...Or is it something more sinister? therealblankman posits that the Beaver might not be firing on all cylinders. Perhaps the videographer was prepared to use SFW language (thereby ensuring a wider viewing audience) because he had sabotaged the plane beforehand.

Having just about been run over by a De Havilland Beaver twice in my lifetime (same plane both times), I feel as qualified as any other internet engineer to say that the motor in this particular example doesn't seem to be firing on all cylinders.

Also, is it appropriate to say "run over" if the mentioned over-running is taking place on the water?

Arj is quite good normally. But this one wasn't firing on all cylinders. He seemed lost in his material at times.

Then he ended on a good note. The last joke hit well.

This video always freaks me out a little. When I was a kid, my parents owned that very same phonograph in the background (or one that looked just like it, and likely some cylinders too) as a sort of family heirloom, but I was never allowed to touch it. The thing is, my parents have been dead for ten years, and I have no idea where that thing is. It wasn't in their house, and nobody else seems to know what I'm talking about.

I smell some kind of conspiracy. I wouldn't sell it to buy beer, I promise!