Leo Parente of DRIVE channel’s Shakedown segment conducts an absolutely fascinating interview with Ken Block. They talk about the secret of motorsports marketing success and then Ken’s rally driving career in the World Rally Championship, the Global Rallycross Championship and American rally.
This is a documentary from 2008 about one of the early pioneers of electric drag racing, The White Zombie. It’s a 1972 Datsun 1200 running custom dual brushed DC motors and a 2000 amp Zilla ZK2 controller which is a slightly smaller version of what’s on the EV West Pikes Peak E36 M3. The film crew happens to catch the White Zombie as it sets the world record (at the time) quarter mile time for an electric car. They set the record with lead acid batteries and then switch to lithium ion batteries which make more power and shed 700 pounds off of the car. The White Zombie’s current best ET is a 10.258. Head to the Plasma Boy Racing website to see the car’s current specs.
Warner Brothers had a strong presence at the 2012 Comic Con promoting both The Dark Knight Rises and a documentary on the Batmobile that will be released later this year. They had all of the Batmobiles on display and they showed this 22 minute preview of the documentary.
Ryan Tuerck and Maxxis Tires continue their excellent series of walk-through videos of the 2012 Formula D courses. Round 4 was at Wall Speedway in New Jersey. It’s pretty interesting because part of the course incorporates some oval track like the old Irwindale Speedway course did. Irwindale put high speed American style drifting on the map.
Tri-Powers and Six Packs were found on some of the most legendary muscle cars of the 60’s and 70’s. When you wanted good gas mileage and driveability, the V8 breathed through the center carburetor. When you wanted more power, the other two carburetors opened up to flow a lot more air and fuel into the engine to make ridiculous power while sounding awesome. Stacey David did this bit for his show, Gearz, on SPEED where he shows how to build your own tri-power or six pack on the cheap using 3 regular carburetors and a conversion kit. Even if you’re not building a tri-power of your own, it’s still pretty fascinating to see how these work.
Part 1: History and Theory of the Tri-Power and the start of the rebuild of the GM Rochester carburetors.