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Motorcycle Technology
Honda are well-known for their motorcycles
and over the last decade, their high quality cars. There's no doubt that
they can build incredible engines. As an example, they've been building
4 cylinder bike engines that rev up to 20,000rpm for years. Their bike
engines use revolutionary technology for power output, reliability and
lightness. The latter is of course, fundamental to the design of cutting
edge sports bikes. You can see this technology in their car engines. Engine design is all about compromises. Sure you can design an engine
to give high power output but usually at the expense of economy. Honda
use variable valve timing in their engines, to avoid having to make this
compromise. Variable valve timing means that at low revs, the engine can
give optimal economy and at high revs, optimal power output. All you need to know really though, is that the VTEC is an engine
designed for both road use and for racing.
Click
here for further VTEC Info
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Implementations The following
example of a round-fronted Mini with a 16v 1600cc VTEC demonstrates that
it's certainly possible to fit the VTEC and still maintain the Mini's
original looks. Note that the car doesn't even use a flip-front however, a
considerable amount of work has been done to achieve this. John (miniandme@aol.com)
managed to track down the owner of the car, Norman Gowers, via a long process of
message relays. Norman is not hooked up to the web but John was able to
speak with him for a few minutes. The car has been finished for
about 5 months now, it is a regular Mini subframe with every thing
cut off in front of the suspension towers. He used box section
tubing to fabricate what he needed from there. A relief section was
cut in the firewall, boxed and welded up to allow room for the
intake manifold. The only body modifications were opening up of the
axle holes. He's running a Wolf (http://www.wolfems.com.au)
engine management system that's programmable from a supplied keypad.
The radiator and a thermostatic fan is located on the opposite of a
stock Mini. The radiator is a custom job and new axles had to be fabricated
also. He uses 13" wheels with the largest custom brakes he
could fit. The car took a total of 6 months to build and is used for
hill-climbing and circuit racing. The car wheel-spins all the way
through 3rd gear!. More info and hopefully some pictures when it
arrives...
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