Category Archives: Misc
Cows and Chickens and Pigs, Oh My!
What do the US Navy, Mazda and Alamo & National Rental Car all have in common? They use animal fat (like beef tallow, chicken guts and pork lard) as fuel. These fats that would normally end up in the garbage are used to make an ultra-clean synthetic diesel. Mazda is going to give this fuel a trial on January 26th during the 2013 Rolex 24 endurance race at Daytona where they will have three Mazda6 race cars using it (chicken coupes?).
Other interesting alternative fuel sources in the works but still on the experimental side include:
1. Chemical engineers at UC Berkeley are using a sugar fermentation process that was used in World War I to make explosives to create a new, cleaner fuel.
2. Coskata is using garbage to make ethanol which would make Marty McFly proud.
3. A small British company called Air Fuel Synthesis is actually making fuel out of thin air. It uses air and electricity and it’s already gotten to the point where they’ve test driven a Lotus with their “carbon neutral” gasoline.
4. The US Air Force has been using a 50-50 blend of jet fuel and biodiesel derived from camelina plants (weeds) in their F-16s. They say there is no difference in performance and are looking into using this fuel for everything by 2016.
Let’s not forget Steven Hyde of “That 70s Show” who was convinced someone somewhere had invented a car that ran on water. Wait, was that just a drug induced haze or……?
Still looking good, Corvette.
January 17: “On this day in 1953, a prototype Chevrolet Corvette sports car makes its debut at General Motors’ (GM) Motorama auto show at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York City. The Corvette, named for a fast type of naval warship, would eventually become an iconic American muscle car and remains in production today.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ZssvK0tjgU
Back to the Future on a Monocycle
On our December 13, 2012 facebook post, we were looking at the Hammacher-Schlemmer Motorized Monocycle and wondering if they had been watching Men In Black movies when they got the idea for it. Now I keep seeing pictures of monocycles and it seems like it wasn’t reverse engineering after all but these have been around since the late 1800s. Click here to go to a site that has a great gallery of pictures and rundown on the evolution of the monocycle. There really is nothing new under the sun.
If you build it, they will come.
In a shed located in a garden in the back of a normal house on a normal street in a little town in England you’ll find Kevin Thomas working on his car. What’s so unusual about that you might say, seeing the same thing plays out just about everywhere around the world on any given day? Ahh, but you see, Mr. Thomas is building a Formula 1 car. You heard that right – with parts he’s cobbled together from ebay, memorabilia sites and a network of contacts, he’s putting together as best he can a 2001 BAR003. Yes, some things are going to have to be parceled out because they are beyond his expertise, but he is doing the bulk of the construction himself and as a do-it-yourselfer myself, I say more power to him. (I’ve built a few project cars including a 1966 GTO and more recently a 1987 Chevy Silverado but nothing along the lines of what he’s tackling.)
I don’t think he would’ve been able to get as far as he has without the use of the internet. It’s a beautiful thing when it comes to locating hard-to-find auto parts and I’ve even been dipping my toe in the water lately learning how to search and purchase things that are hard to find locally. If I can do it, anyone can but my hat’s off to Mr. Thomas for taking this to the ultimate extreme. He’s built a shed of dreams that have all the gear-heads out there rethinking some ideas they’ve put on the back-burner. If I lived in England, I would certainly be beating a path to his back door to have a look-see.
Cell phone airbags?
Yup, you read that right. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos has just been awarded a patent for a smartphone airbag. Love the fact that the issue of frail cellphones is being addressed and kudos to Mr. Bezos for coming up with any idea that might eventually pan out. Here’s the guts of the patent per the article: “It starts with a safety monitoring system that would use a gyroscope, camera, infrared beam, radar or other sensors to detect such things as motion, orientation and distance from other objects — then determine in a split second if the device is at risk of damage from impact.” Apparently the device could deploy either airbags or springs with an added propulsion system that would guide the phone to a soft landing. Pretty sci-fi if you ask me but hey, the patent office says it’s ok. I just hope they don’t come with an idiot light.
WWII Vets
This isn’t car related, but we’d just like to give a shout-out to all the WWII vets out there seeing it’s Pearl Harbor Day. Thanks Dad.