Cars with strange mechanics

[Guest]

Was that car at the Brill Show a year or so back? Was an X1/9 there in exactly that colour with that interior there.

Its a Gran Finale- limited run out edition for 1989. Only in Mica red or Mica Blue with that interior.

[richardmorris]

Was that car at the Brill Show a year or so back? Was an X1/9 there in exactly that colour with that interior there.

 

Not me - there are one or two about with the original interior. Mine was the only one at Brooklands last month though. It's been on the grid at Goodwood breakfast club a few times and at local car shows.

[richardmorris]

Its a Gran Finale- limited run out edition for 1989. Only in Mica red or Mica Blue with that interior.

 

Point of order - mine is a 1988 Special Edition which became the GF in March 1989 with three extra plastic badges.

[richardmorris]

LOL, I was tech advisor for the club for a time, probably got more phonecalls about THAT spring than anything else! I had a way of doing it with vice grips that I found easy, but it's impossible to describe... Some people use 2p's!

 

Yep, I think locking vice grips were used.

[Christine]

When Bernie Ecclestone owned Brabham,  one of the mechanics was Ron Dennis . He's a bit strange  

[Tadhg Tiogar]

..... three extra plastic badges.

 

As many as that?

[forddeliveryboy]

The centrifugal 'trafficlutch' as fitted to many 2cv and Dyanes was hugely practical, disengaging the drive as the revs fell below 1000rpm or so. You stuck them in first or second in crawling traffic and let the springs do the rest, leaving your clutch foot free to taken its chance with your passenger in the Frenchest way possible.

 

Even with the miniscule 21hp 435cc the fastest traffic light grid launches were possible, provided the car wasn't laden.

It always surprised me just how far it would take other participants to pass, especially if you managed one of those super-rapide changes up into second.

 

 

Maybe it might have been better with the 2.5litre, but agree that a 4th/overdrive would have been useful. It's certainly needed on the ZF auto.

 

 

Perhaps three long gears and the turbocharged 2.5 would've made for an even more satisfying drive than the manual, which when breathed on (only about 260hp, some were taken beyond 300) was probably the most awesome motor car I've ever driven, let alone owned. It was capable of achieving journey times very alike those of an RS Audi, but with the comfort of a Flying Fifteen on the plane allied with steering and cornering as accurate as no other.

[Noel Tidybeard]

Not a car engine but the Commer TS3 was pretty weird. Two stroke, three cylinders, six pistons, no valves and a big supercharger. I've heard one in action and it makes a very GOOD noise.

 

 

EFA

[Inspector Morose]

Yup.

[sierraman]

There was absolutely no sense to the Commer 2 stroke but they sounded ace and were quick by all accounts.

[Asimo]

Seeing that Mg engine using the dynamo as a drive shaft to the camshaft put me in mind of something contemporary: the Ford-built engine that Land Rover and Volvo use.

 

 

Inside that alloy casting to the right of the alternator are a couple of gears and a camchain sprocket. The alternator is driven from the intermediate gears and the other side of the same gear pair carries a pulley which drives the accessory belt. There is an inline toothed rubber coupling that drives the alternator (and wears out regularly.) Allegedly.

 

 

Note just how complex that cam drive is. The crankshaft gear is formed on one of the crank webs.** Al of this done just to save the width of a cam belt from making the engine a wee bit too wide for it's transverse installation. Daft.

 

As any Wolseley Six or Mk1 Volvo S80 / 2.9 fan would agree, the correct place for the gearbox is parallel to the crankshaft in a transverse engined car, and not in line with the crankshaft.

 

**Which puts me in mind of the multi-headed VM engines and their rather special bottom-end.

 

Edited

to remove my major errors. Doh, look at the drawings first!

[andy18s]

Land Rover TD5 engines that fired most of the engine oil through the wiring loom.

 

EFA

[Fabergé Greggs]

I’ve always been a fan of the pivoting engine in a mobylette.

 

[barrett]

A friend of mine drove a 425cc 2cv across the Sahara back in the '60s. It was fitted with a trafficlutch and he would often walk alongside the car, trickling along at walking pace, when he got tired of driving. He said it was great for getting the car unstuck from soft sand as it could accelerate away slowly but without the added weight of a body on board

[Zelandeth]

How about the old rear engined Skodas.  Their engines were a bit odd.

 

Nice modern ally block with wet liners...and a stinking heavy great cast iron head.  Canted over at 45 degrees as well to ensure that it does everything possible to immediately flip itself upside down the moment you try to remove it from the car.

[iainrcz]

Can I include the ingeniously located spark plugs on Subaru boxer engines?

 

Sent from my VFD 710 using Tapatalk

[Mrcento]

EFA

To be fair, it was a cracking design. Sure, it can short them out and make them junk, but not one ECU has ever corroded thanks to the supply of oil it eventually receives.

 

Clever thinking from Land Rover.

[Rocket88]

I've read and watched videos about this and I still can't fathom out

A: How the hell it works

B: What on earth the point of it is

 

Anyone care to elaborate in simple terms?

 

I think it's like a half arsed Lenco system...........

[cros]

The Renault Frégate was intended to be rear engined like the company's smaller cars, but late in the day they changed their mind. Perhaps because the car was competing with Citroen's 'Traction' it was felt necessary to come up with something to ginger it up, so they provided the gearbox with synchromesh on all forward gears, uncommon in 1951. 4th was an overdrive and the output was via the layshaft in order to give a lower floor. Judging by sales, its doubtful whether anyone was greatly impressed. Thats my Aunt Nelly trying to look enthusiastic about it

[barrett]

The Fregate overdrive top was actually commented upon negatively in the press at the time. Renault was the pioneer of direct drive and o/d top was considered something of a backwards step. Lots of French cars of the period used o/d top so on home turf it was nothing to shout about, despite the unusual methods employed. Citroen 2cv, Panhard and Hotchkiss all used three speeds with o/d top, for example. I think it was well suited to French roads. Talking of Hotchkiss, did you know the last ditch effort to make a go of the Gregoire was actually a Fregate? In 1952 a series of running prototypes were built with the complete H-G front end - so water cooled flat four engine, fwd, ifs with horizontal coil springs and all the other absurd jazz - was transplanted into a Fregate punt. The hope was by reducing production costs of the rest of the car - the H-G was hand built, in a mix of steel and alloy, over heavy ash frames on some sections and with the trademark cast aluminium scuttle - they could bring the price down low enough to make it competitive. You can guess the result.

[MorrisItalSLX]

The Bond Minicar.

 

 

 

Enough said.

[sierraman]

Looks like a Howard Rotavator with a glass fibre body on the top.

[Zelandeth]

The Bond Minicar.

 

 

 

Enough said.

...The lack of hose clips on that fuel system bothers me.

 

Also probably dumb question: what's the small cylindrical device attached to the cylinder head?

[jonathan_dyane]

Decompression device?

[cros]

I've led a sheltered life, so don't know if that arse-backwards Maestro clutch is commonplace or was a unique feature that took the car to even greater heights. Please help me out here, cos unless you want to buy a poxy clutch Google is useless these days.

[AMC Rebel]

I've led a sheltered life, so don't know if that arse-backwards Maestro clutch is commonplace or was a unique feature that took the car to even greater heights. Please help me out here, cos unless you want to buy a poxy clutch Google is useless these days.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-9dexAaDNDQ

 

It was a VW thing, not a BMC/Rover abortion

[AMC Rebel]

Odd Mechanisms - the OHC lump fitted to later Mantas was the one originally bound for FWD (transverse) Cavaliers and similar - in which install it had the dizzy on the end.  That wouldn't fit in the Manta so there was an extra housing with a thing like a tiny cam belt that drove the distributor.  Also found on smaller engine Carltons of the period I believe.

 

 

 

[cros]

Engines like the Commer TS3 already mentioned haven't found their way into many cars. A local scrapyard owner, John Wright, stuck one in a large pre-war chassis, but the result was probably as disagreeable as its owner.

Gobron-Brillié produced cars with this type of engine but didn't get round to doing a tdi version. I can't find a picture of the car displaying its 'works' so here's a drawing.

 

 

This thread is supposed to be about cars, but who could resist the humble Fordson pimped up with a bit of opposed-piston goodness?

Anyway its CLM diesel was produced by an offshoot of Peugeot, so I guess that they just needed to find a way to get the thing under a normal bonnet.

[Sir Snipes]

Odd Mechanisms - the OHC lump fitted to later Mantas was the one originally bound for FWD (transverse) Cavaliers and similar - in which install it had the dizzy on the end. That wouldn't fit in the Manta so there was an extra housing with a thing like a tiny cam belt that drove the distributor. Also found on smaller engine Carltons of the period I believe.

 

2.JPG

 

4.JPG

Sometimes, when people transplant the 16v XE into RWD cars, they use the Manta Distributor. It always looked a bit ropey to me - this is one of the tidier installs I've seen;

 

[forddeliveryboy]

i see you with your U Fox coveting

 

 

Yes, they're tremendous! Fast in all conditions, very comfortable, beautifully sensitive yet so stable, also not a little pur sang. Unlike anything today which is so carefully designed to appeal to the masses, Fox designed it for himself, to allow him to continue to sail a small boat through the English Channel (in particular to that yearly cricket match on Goodwin Sands).

 

1947-50 were years in which several iconic transportation devices emerged, better known than Fox's FF are the Land-Rover, 2cv, Morris Minor, XK120, Vickers Viscount, de Havilland Comet and Saab 92.