Pike's Peak Race - On Board

This year's winner...



The car:
Norma 2014 pikes peak unlimited division

Drivetrain: Mid Engine, RWD
Engine: 2.0L L4 Turbo Honda
Transmission: 6 Speed
Power: 450 hp
Weight: 610 kg

The winner in 1988, before the road was paved.  Definitely a much more hair-raising experience.


The car

How about on a motorbike with a professional racer?  That's pretty hair-raising too!

Four-Stroke Engines: Flatheads and OHV designs

Flathead Engines:

An early and very common valve arrangement was the "flathead" engine.

Four stroke engines - basics

On the earlier post about Two-Stroke Engines, much of the focus was on the difficulty two-strokes have with exhaust gas and intake charge flow reversal and flow-through.  There was also some discussion of engineering techniques that attempt to overcome these issues.

...about that diet...

In this post I mentioned how I go about diet and exercise.  At one point I mentioned that it's difficult to be on a ketogenic diet and perform strenuous exercise, particularly anaerobic exercises like lifting weights.

Exercise and fitness

I'm now a ways on the wrong side of 50 years old.   I've been weight training and doing light cardio for a few months now.  Progress is... not bad!  But it's also a bit slower than what I've experienced in the past.

More LED lighting

A few years ago, I had four incandescent garage lights replaced with 7 fluorescent tube lights fixtures, for a total of 14 bulbs, each 4 ft long.  I have 6 fixtures above the car bays, and one fixture by the man-door alcove.  Each bulb is 32 Watts, for a total of 448 Watts.

Over the years, I've had to replace a great number of bulbs, and they aren't cheap.  They run about $4 apiece, and I seem to be replacing 1-2 every month.  I suspect it's reduced mercury content causing the failure to ignite after a short time in service.  Also we turn them on and off quite a bit, which is hard on fluorescent bulbs.

KH500 Refurbishment - Carburetors

Before and after...

KH500 refurbishment - fuel petcock

Before and after...

KH500 refurbishment - May Update

The KH500 cylinder boring is done!  The cylinders arrived, along with the new pistons.  The center cylinder was scrap, so a replacement was found and bored to the same size.

Beer Labels

Update.  I'm working on a rather long post about four-stroke engines.  It's taking a lot of time because there's a lot of history and design to mention.

In the meantime, I've completed gluing down the beer labels on a sheet of 24"x36" acid-free paper.  I need to press it flat somehow, and then it will looks better.  There's quite a bit of color, shapes and artwork in the labels.  After I figure out how to press it flat, I will get a fiberglass resin coat on it for gloss.