We Don’t Need No Flaming Sparky Cars

14 Replies to “We Don’t Need No Flaming Sparky Cars”

The future of electrics seems the same as the past; there will always be some interested people, most just want to get where they is going. Since 1832.

What we’d love to see is a con, where the 1000 hp Prius is painted to look stock, and a driver made up to look like Granny Clampett of the Beverly Hillbillies brings it onto the track at a major event with a couple of security guys in hot pursuit, but they can’t catch her and she takes the quarter mile in under 9 seconds.

Well, Granny carried the show, but I tuned in for Ellie May.

A 6.2 litre V8 and a 4.5 litre super charger in one engine? Is that even possible? Gear heads? In a Prius? That is 10.7 litres of something under the hood.

When a superbattery invented sometime in the near or distant future goes into uncontrolled failure mode,
ie becomes an electricity bomb,what happens to all the other superbatteries around it? In the cars next to it?
Enquiring minds want to know.

Reading that Prius-rebuild article just sent my flagging testosterone level back to “above”-normal levels. I jus want to know how they managed to install that V-8 and keep it from poking through the hood, er I mean trunk … dang! Half that engine must be sitting in the front seat!

Mmmmm Ellie May … my T-level just spiked again! Any girl who can pull off a Daisy May outfit … has got my VOTE

Steve,
The engine displacement is the total volume per cylinder – a 6.2 cubic liter V10 is a large engine by today’s standard but not it drag racing circles – which this car was designed for. It is simply a cubic inch conversion. A classic 5.0 liter Ford mustang is about 302-305 cubic inches (V8 configuration).
The 4.5 liter component of the supercharger refers to the volume of air pumped in to the engine for every revolution of the crankshaft. Keep in mind that an internal combustion engine is often referred to as simply and ‘air pump’.
In a normally aspirated engine – one without superchargers, turbochargers or nitrous oxide injection – air is simply ‘sucked in’ via a vacuum effect and mixed with fuel to be ignited and burned and then expelled to create kinetic energy.
Superchargers and turbochargers compress the air entering the engine. Superchargers run off the crankshaft (and use up energy but the benefit is still much more overall output – horsepower and torque).
Turbochargers use exhaust gasses from the engine to power a turbine that then drives what is actually a version of a supercharger. Same dynamics in play.
NOS – better known as nitrous oxide injection is typically (but not always) used without turbo or supercharging. NOS (NO2)is oxygen rich and when combined with enhanced fuel delivery increases engine output in a big way.
Bottom line is that a 100 HP Prius drag car is just that – although it would be fun to pull up to a light against pretty much any other car – especially another Prius!

Correction at the end 1000 HP not 100 HP.
Also, admirers above might want to check out Elly May these days. Didn’t end well….

and I thought this was the future of EVs, boy was I wrong
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8c/35bennettbuggy.jpg

If and when a UFO crashes into a Saskatchewan wheat field, and some curious farmer can bring the wreckage into his machine shop and figure out how the propulsion system works, then perhaps we’ll come up with a car that runs forever and never needs refuelling or recharging. Meanwhile, I’ll drive my gasoline powered Ford to and from the post office, the coffee shop and the COOP.
God bless Henry Ford.

This reminds me of an article back in the early 1980s in Road and Track. Some people in Germany made a Porsche 928 into a Volkswagen Rabbit. They fit a Rabbit body over the 928 guts, and it looked correct except that it was a bit too wide. Part of the story was them driving on the autobahn, pulling up behind some speed demon in their expensive “fast car” perhaps a BMW? They flash their lights at him in the passing lane, the lead car pulls over and then has to try to keep up as the 928/Rabbit disappears ahead of them.