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Followup

Drive Time

…on last week’s post about Porsche and its runaway wheels, Reader Al R. writes:

Regarding why knock-off wheel locks went away, it was the fault of the US Congress. In October 1966 the Department of Transportation was created by it. The new DOT immediately started dictating changes to automobiles to justify its existence. One of the first diktats of the DOT was the outlawing of the Rudge-Whitworth center lock, aka the knock-off.
Since 50% of British sports cars were sold in the USA and it made economic sense to build only one car for all markets the knock-off wheel was no longer provided.

But wait!  There’s MOAR!  On the topic of Gummint foolishness:

Also in the case of the E-type, the faired headlights were outlawed and the bumpers had to be raised, marring the beauty of the design. The DOT would continue to legislate stupidity with the 5mph bumper law that mandated the ungainly “diving board” bumpers of the ’70s and ’80s. The worst example of this law’s effect was the rubber bumper MGB.

I currently have a 1984 380SL project car that I am restoring and am considering spending about $3,000 (which I don’t have, alas) for Euro headlights and bumpers just because they look so much better than the DOT compliant lights and bumpers. If I don’t scrape up the money from somewhere I’ll have to look at those ungainly bumpers until the day I die.

And I think I should include Reader GT3Ted’s comment from the post, because he knows so much more about cars than I do.  First, from Reader Vonz:

“Center-lock wheel bolts and components were manufactured out of specification by a supplier, creating a risk of fracturing and wheel detachment.”

To which Ted replied:

Right, that’s the issue as I understand it as well. A specific batch of 2024 wheel nuts were not properly heat treated or possibly there was a problem with the alloy of Unobtainium they were made from that causes the nut to shatter after a number of heat cycles. When driven aggressively the wheel nut gets very hot.

But rest assured, those wheel nuts on the center lock equipped GT Cars are properly German over-engineered. They need 444 Lb-ft of torque to be properly tightened and new special wheel nut high-temp wheel grease each time they are changed. The nut itself (@ $450.00 each) has an internal locking mechanism that you are supposed to check for proper function after torquing the wheel. The little flap door inside the wheel center is supposed to freely move when pressed, then the wheel center cap goes on making sure that the grove on the cap is aligned with the bump on the wheel so that the pointy part of the Porsche crest is aligned and points to the valve stem.

[Kim’s 25,000-word rant about over-complication deleted]

Now on the race cars like my friend’s 935 that I crewed for, it’s a little different. You just throw the new wheel and tire on, making sure that you start the wheel nut in the correct direction by hand (each side is different) so you don’t cross thread it, then hit it with the nitrogen-powered wheel gun until it stops turning. Release the air jacks and send him back out.

My only comment on the above is a response to this statement:  “When driven aggressively the wheel nut gets very hot.”

I can understand the issue if you’re tracking your GT3 RS.  I can’t understand that heat problem occurring in typical day-to-day driving.  (There are those who can’t understand why anyone would use a GT3 RS for a daily drive, I among them.)

I literally cannot see how the “hot nut” thing could occur in the non-track 718 and 911 models, unless the Unobtanium treatment was really that bad — in which case it’s time Porsche reevaluated their relationship with the supplier.

This, by the way, is one of my problems with the high-performance cars of today:  they’re just too much for ordinary drivers (i.e. about 98% of their owners).  Engines that can rev at 10,000rpm, engine power that exceeds 600hp, when few people can handle power as low as 300 horsepower.  If you want proof of this hypothesis, just do a search on EeeeewwwChoob for stories of wrecked supercars — Lambos, Ferraris, Bugattis and Paganis, most costing in excess of $600,000.  (Mat Armstrong repaired one such car which had 57 miles on the odometer:  the new owner crashed it on the way home from the dealership.)

I’m not suggesting any kind of Gummint intervention, of course.  I just want a little more sanity injected into this market;  but I doubt it will ever happen, because there’s just too much Stupid Money around.  That bullet has well and truly gone through the church, and there’s no recalling it… more’s the pity.

That’s the Pagani Zonda R Evolution [sic]:  yours for a measly $6.5 million.

it has a 6-liter AMG engine, putting out 789hp and a top speed in excess of 230mph, and Pagani made only ten (10) of them.  Just the thing, then, for a trip to the supermarket, or church, or the range (as long as you’re only shooting handguns — or more realistically, only one handgun).

Except:

“Most Zonda Rs are hidden away in private collections, making public appearances of them exceedingly rare. It’ll certainly sound – and look – way better than any dubiously-shaped billionaire space rocket, that’s for sure.”

Phooey.

Asterisk Time

Muzzies

The brilliant Kathy Gyngell outlines her skeptical opinion on Islam:

[Islam] is a religion born as an adjunct to conflict. Whereas early Christians, long before their faith had acquired political status, were prepared to die for their personal and spiritual commitment to Jesus Christ, the first followers of Mohammed rampaged through the civilised world, killing and enslaving whole populations of Christians, Jews and Persians as they imposed their power.

Even discounting the fact that religious conflict in Britain has hitherto been within the bounds of Christianity, there is something about Islam which sets it apart from the equally alien faiths of the Hindus and Sikhs: not simply its claim to be the final, incontrovertible word of God, but its apparent inability to draw a line between God and Caesar in public life.

As I’ve said many times before, Islam is not merely a religion.  It is a socio-economic system that allows no alternative, no opposition and by its very name, demands submission.  It has a system of laws (backed by religious precept) that sets out, violently, to replace whatever other system of laws exist in its proximity.

It is long past time that we drew a line in the sand, and applied an asterisk to the First Amendment.  Islam does not deserve Constitutional protection as a religion, especially as it would, if it could, abolish that very Constitution and replace it with the ultra-intolerant shari’a.

No.  Enough is enough.

It’s time for a Constitutional convention whereby we can address this issue once and for all:  ban the practice of Islam in the United States and, if necessary, implement the denaturalization and deportation of its followers.

And just so we’re clear on the concept:  my First Amendment right to express the above opinion would be subject to imprisonment and eventual execution under shari’a.  Which is precisely why we need to prevent its implementation, through our Constitutional method.

Forgetting The Basics — The Porsche Story

Corporate Fuckery, Drive Time

I had to laugh at this one.  Porsche is one of the chief sinners in the “Technik Uber Alles”  trend among car manufacturers, the trend whereby letting the engineers loose on car design is seen as more important than giving the customers what they want, at a decent (not insulting) price.  We’ll talk about Ferrari later.

But in their drive to make their cars super-whizzbang-wonderful in terms of technical gadgetry (PSM, PDT, PDK whatever), Porsche seems to have missed one of the basic tenets of car design — a feature that has been critical since the first cars were ever built:

The wheels have to stay on the car.

Except for Porsche, it seems:

There are few scenarios more frightening than pushing a 640-horsepower sports car to its limits and having one of its wheels detach, but that’s the risk facing owners of several Porsche sports cars. The German automaker has issued a new recall for multiple 718 and 911 models equipped with centerlock wheels, and the risk is so serious that a Do Not Drive Warning has been put into place until these vehicles can be inspected.

Ironic, really, for a company which prides itself on its faultless engineering.

Here’s the thing.  Centerlock wheels have been around since the beginning of time, going back to oxcarts, even.  I still recall that mallets were a vital piece of a car’s toolkit right into the 1960s, e.g. for the E-type:

(pretty, innit?)

Then, of course, the trend changed, and wheel nuts became a thing:  five, six or more bolts anchoring the wheel to the chassis.  The great thing about this was that there was safety in numbers (not to mention in its simplicity):  one or two wheel nuts could be “loose” (i.e. finger-tight) without too much consequence.

The problem was that while this was perfectly fine for the consumer market, it was far from ideal in a racing environment, where the time penalty for changing several nuts on a fresh set of tires was burdensome.  So back to centerlock we went, not just in racing but in the consumer products — and as an added bonus, car manufacturers began to mess with the design of the tightening process, creating their own customized wrenches so that changing a tire was not something that could be done by the owner on the side of the road, but required a (towed) trip to the dealer.

And now we have this situation, where whatever Porsche has done in this regard is flawed, so that hapless Porsche owners are indeed faced with the prospect of watching themselves being overtaken:  not by other cars, but by their own wheels as they detach themselves and go spinning off on their merry way.

On a car that costs anywhere from $100,000 (718) to $300,000 (911).

Another Day, Another Commie Plot

Anarchist thugs, Marxists

Looks like the FBI is on the ball for a change (as opposed to their misdeeds under President Autopen):

The FBI has arrested and charged a 17-year-old from McKinney, Texas, who the agency alleges was plotting to assassinate Republican Rep. Keith Self at an event last Saturday.

According to federal investigators, the juvenile also planned a terrorist attack in North Texas on behalf of ISIS.

This episode comes a little too close to home for me because Keith Self is my Congressman, and his activities in the U.S. House have been, for this old conservative, exemplary.

Which is no doubt the reason this scrote targeted him.

What galls me is that according to the Usual Suspects, the danger to our republic comes from so-called “dangerous conservative (MAGA)” groups — when in fact, all the evidence shows that the actual danger is coming from a concerted-but-not-really group of fucking raving loony leftoids.

Like this asshole.  I can’t wait for him to be identified.  No matter who he turns out to be, he won’t be a hate-filled conservative.

Like me.