Author Archives: Will@FluxAuto

Red Bull Terramar Race

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The circuit of Terramar is the second oldest track in Europe and the first auto track in Spain. It’s a high bank oval that hosted Formula 1 races in its prime. Red Bull took former WRC Champion and Dakar Rally winner, Carlos Sainz and current DTM driver Miguel Molina to their home country to set a new record at Terramar in the Audi R8 LMS. You would think smashing an old record around the high banked oval would be easy thanks to the 500 hp from the 5.2 liter V10 (same engine as the Lamborghini Gallardo), but  it’s not that simple. The track is old and hasn’t seen use in a long time. There are lots of potholes and crumbled concrete for the guys to avoid. You can see the R8’s getting airborne several times in the video. Will they be able to set a new record for the track? Watch and find out.


Source: Red Bull on YouTube

Depth of Speed: My Church

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If you like working on cars at all, you will like this video. It’s the latest installment in a series called Depth of Speed. The videos are mini-documentaries about people who are into cars. I enjoy them because they do a good job articulating what it is we love about wrenching and driving so much. It’s always difficult to justify what we do to people who aren’t into cars and simply don’t understand where we get our passion. This particular story is about a man named Allan who loves Datsuns. He says that going into his workshop to make parts is like his church. It’s his place of zen.


Source: Depth of Speed

Compressed Natural Gas Viability

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Jalopnik just posted this pretty comprehensive article on the viability and future of the use of Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) to fuel America’s fleet. While it is true that we have a lot natural gas here in America, most of it is being accessed through a method called fracking. In fact, fracking has been a hot topic of debate in the natural gas arena for much longer than it has been for oil. Check out Part 1 about why we should consider building electric cars to find out more about fracking and the other new environmentally destructive methods that are giving us access to new stores of fossil fuels.

The Jade Warrior Drag Motorcycle

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The Jade Warrior was built by British motorcycle racer Angus MacPhail in his garage. It’s powered by a 4 cylinder Ford Cosworth engine that has a roots type supercharger that produced an estimated 400-500 horsepower. The center of the custom frame is riveted and bonded aluminum and the front end has specially designed ground effects to keep the bike stable at 200+ mph speeds.


Head over to Dragzine.com for all the details and history of the Jade Warrior.

Sources: Dragzine.com via Jalopnik

EDWARD Electric Diwheel & Inverted Pendulum Mechatronics

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The EDWARD Electric Diwheel is a project built by mechanical engineering students at the University of Adelaide. It’s a great demonstration of what you can do with mechatronics (electric motor control). They first got the rig up and running so that it would give you basic movement in response to throttle inputs. However, there was some instability issues under power due to the balance of the vehicle. They fixed it by modelling the motion of the Diwheel and programming a motor controller that would automatically maintain stability based on feedback from position tracking sensors.


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