Rams Eye The Track Guy

Mitsubishi Evo X GSR at Atlantic Motorsport Park - Kevin Doubleday  © If you live in Canada or the US, you'll find that plenty of people hold sacred the terms '4x4' and '4WD' to describe a 'true 4x4', where you have a butch transfer case with a low speed, perhaps a body on frame chassis, and ideally a solid axle or two. I'm not sure how that translates to the rest of the world. My extensive research into the motoring industry in Europe (which exclusively consists of watching Top Gear and The Grand Tour...) concluded that most people across the pond simply refer to any vehicle that is capable of sending any power to all four wheels as a 4WD vehicle, further muddying the waters. Where I grew up, 4x4 was more or less synonymous with 'Jeep' so that's not much help either. However, despite all various systems attempting to do the same sort of thing - distribute power between all four wheels instead of two - not all systems are created equal,...

SADOKIST's (eSports Host) E46 BMW M3 GT3 Race Car - Kevin Doubleday © Over the years, I've found that limited slip diffs (LSD's) are some of the least appreciated performance parts you could get (or upgrade) for a car. LSD's make a big difference, though, because they can vastly improve how early you can get back on the power and, therefore, how good your corner exit is. That last bit is very important if you're driving on track and want to get a good lap. You don't have to just take my word for it, though. F1 royalty Sir Jackie Stewart puts an emphasis on the importance of corner exit. When Captain Slow was sent to him to cut 20 seconds off his lap time (Top Gear Season 8 - Episode 5), Sir Jackie told him: "the exit of the corner is FAR more important than the entry of the corner, with regards to smoothness." Sir Jackie Stewart coaching James May in a TVR Tuscan - Top Gear Season 8 Episode 5 You really need to nail the exit. And to get a...

C7 Corvette Grand Sport... doing a burnout with a proper diff - Graham MacNeil  © I wrote a tech post comparing various open and limited slip diffs for a comparison and I found that a lot of people were asking questions. To simplify and make it easier to read, I decide to break them up for a future tech article about handling. Make sure to stay tuned for two posts on limited slip diffs this week!. WHY DO YOU EVEN NEED A DIFFERENTIAL? A differential's job is to allow two wheels on the same axle (or two axles in a 4WD drivetrain) to spin at different speeds so a car could smoothly go around a corner. Why do the wheels need to spin at different speeds? Each wheel on a car has to travel a different path to reach the end of the turn. You can see that for yourself every time you drive on snow covered roads or muddy trails. Four different tracks by four wheels/tires on one car going around a turn - Rams Eye The Track Guy  © If you take a turn, you'll see that each whe...

730 hp Mustang Saleen 302 Black Label - Saleen © Most people who track their cars quickly come to recognize one of the biggest enemies of speed; heat. Heat affects tires, brakes, fluids, the engine, everything. One area that gets more than its fair share of heat is the engine bay. The most efficient gasoline/petrol engines struggle to exceed 35% efficiency - meaning that more than 65% of the energy in the fuel that is burnt inside the engine is not converted into motion or 'useful energy'. Most of the non-useful energy left over is turned into heat. That means that your average hot hatch making 200 hp could easily produce around 300 kW (400 hp) of heat as a byproduct of making 200 hp. If you're having trouble wrapping your head around that number, that's enough power to heat a large home improvement store. In Canada. Some of that heat goes out the exhaust (thankfully) but a lot of it has to be dealt with in the engine bay through your radiator, and oil cooler i...