I guess you could say that the first decade of the 21st century, in the world of motor sport at least, were the years of the alternative fuels. Diesel (yes, we’re talking motor sports here), bio-ethanol, RME (rape methyl esters) and even CNG (compressed natural gas) have all been used during the decade for one kind of motor racing or another but there was one type of alternative fuel going back to the eighties and which didn’t quite make the headlines, for obvious reasons - and that was toluene. C7H8 to give it its Read more…

Mention the word bioethanol to most people, even the ones who have little interest in our industry, and the chances are they will at least know that you are talking about alternative fuels. Added to gasoline fuel in amounts up to 98% of the total, the process of adding ethanol derived from bio sources to spark ignition fuels can reduce the so-called ‘carbon footprint’ making our sport, or so we try to convince others, more politically acceptable to all. The real benefit to us performance types, as we all probably know by now, is that with higher detonation resistance and richer mixtures Read more…

I think it was the great Liverpool F. C. manager Bill Shankly who once professed that football wasn’t a matter of life and death – it was more important than that. But strangely enough, the words – ‘football’, ‘life’, and ‘oils’ have all come together recently making substantial improvements to gearbox durability especially those with sequential changes.

Transmission oils are similar, in many ways, to your typical engine crankcase product; they need excellent viscosity/temperature characteristics if at high Read more…

Love them or hate them, the two-stroke engine is in many ways far superior to its 4-stroke rival.

Specific power, specific weight, manoeuvrability, cost of manufacture, ease of maintenance, durability, NOx emissions and even fuel consumption in the case of smaller engines, can be far superior to its less controversial 4-stroke brother, but why then don’t we see more of these engines in competition?

With one strike for power and one to wear it out as Read more…

Today, we are told, is the beginning of the Low Carbon Age. The Stone Age, the Bronze Age and the Iron Age have come and gone while the Fossil Fuel Age, if you believe many of the pundits, is slowly to be phased out. Ahead of us, or so it would appear, lies the future of maintenance-free electric motors and expensive failing batteries. Setting aside the practicalities of how we actually generate this low carbon electricity, I would just like to point out that even as I write there is one fuel that is low carbon, has a higher calorific value than gasoline / diesel and is literally ‘on tap’ in the vast majority of homes Read more…

There is increasing evidence to suggest that the real fuel of the future, especially for motor sports, is methanol. Forget all this business about electric vehicles, these, in my opinion have no real place in mainstream motorsport. Alright, electric motors can pack a mean punch and I’m sure one could derive some kind of capricious pleasure out of racing these types of machines but for raw driving experience, not forgetting spectator appeal you simply cannot beat the sound and spectacle of the internal combustion engine. And if fossil fuels are on their way out then bio-fuels are the only option left. Read more…

There was a time when simply using the correct grade of oil for your engine and changing it regularly would be all that was needed. Back in the days of the nuclear family, life was simple and we knew that our cam’s lobes were protected even if a nuclear war was potentially just around the corner at ‘five minutes to midnight’. Approaching the second decade of the 21st century and while the prospect of nuclear war has almost disappeared, the threat to some of our camshafts has assumed a level unacceptable in the modern world. And as ever, this has all been achieved under the guise of ‘saving the planet’.

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It has been almost twenty years since the European Union introduced the world to E numbers. Initially seen as a somewhat crude attempt to control the use of artificial additives in food, the automatic reaction from the public was to label anything with an E number as being bad. This despite the fact that many well-known and healthy foodstuffs (for example Vitamin C – E300), are essential requirements in a well-balanced diet.

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It seems ironic to think that amid the hype of the introduction of kinetic energy recycling systems (KERS) for the 2009 season, the real ‘greening’ of our premier racing category started precisely one year before. At that time the ‘green’ debate was at its height and faced with EU legislation covering road fuels for 2010, the FIA unilaterally introduced the ruling that for 2008 a minimum of 5.75% by mass of the fuel must comprise of oxygenates ‘derived from biological sources’. The move was designed to head off criticism of the sport’s wasteful ways and to pre-empt the EU’s somewhat controversial introduction of EU Directive 2003/30/EG. Read more…