Been doing several small projects lately appreciate old school engineering
 

Lately Ive done several small projects on the 930: fixed broken spring in parking brake, rebuilt odometer gear, replaced recirc valve gaskets, spark plugs, and a few other small items.

I have definately done alot more work on modern cars. Its been really fun to contrast the engineering of these cars particularly the delicate little lotus.

i continue to be amazed at how all the brackets and substantial hardware hold everything together. WHere porsche uses 4 m10 bolts, a modern car would use a plastic clip. I think the trailing arms would be adaquate for a farm tractor!

I was really apreciating this last night when i had the recirc assembly and airbox off. I think that airbox would cost 3000$ to make today. The recirc assembly is massive and not an ideal setup. However as an object to appreciate, it is impressive. i wonder how they decided they needed a 2" piston and a 18" long spring?

Anyways, just having a good time and I want to discuss something other than politics :)


Happy motoring

aaron

Yep, these babies are over-engineered in many places, and if you can ignore or correct the under-engineered/idiotic design areas then you've got a car that is built to last.

Yeah, that recirc assembly is a piece of work in itself, but being made of magnesium it's worth something just for the metal (I cut mine up for a really obnoxious and unorthadox modification to allow the use of a short neck IC and an aftermarket BOV combination).

These cars are really very simple in design and can be a lot of fun to work on. The only real challenges are dealing with failing electronic gizzmos that were added to satisfy emissions requirements for importation to the US. All that crap causes no end of frustration for those that don't fully understand the inner workings or haven't yanked it all out eventually.

I am also into 1970s Honda motorcycles, (CB750s, etc.), and these cars I think, share an engineering similarity to those bikes, being essentially of the same era.

The 911, and later 930 were designed in an era before computers took over design/engineering elements on vehicles. Back then, an engineer designed a component partially by the rule of "if it looks right, it IS right".

Going back to the Hondas, if you look at a modern 2012 Honda CBR, you'll look at a part like the brake caliper bracket, and it will have been designed by a computer to be as small and light as possible, while being JUST strong enough to do the job it was asked to do. Long-term durability is measured as "will it make it to the lease term, or warranty expiration?"

If you look at the brake caliper bracket on my '69 CB750, it is MASSIVE, and WAAAAY to big and strong for the job it is asked to do. And it's still doing its thing 43 years later.

That's the reason I'm still riding a motorcycle built in 1969 which retains the same rideability and durability as a 2012 Honda. It's the same reason I'm driving a 1985 930, which is a car born in the 1970s, based on a 1960s platform, but can still be daily driven without complaint.

I don't think those 2012 Hondas or Porsches are gonna be able to be used as daily drivers/riders in 35-40 years. Ours can be.

I often think about how current modern cars will be appreciated in the future. I cant imagine a do it yourselfer trying to restore a gtr or a panamera. I suppose future car guys will be a bit more sophisticated, but I still dont see it.

I think it is similar to the audiophile hobby in the seventies. It wasnt uncommon for people to build or repair their own stereo components. Now you just throw away your failed I-whatever.

I guess that is progress, but it is a little sad. The older I get the less interested I am in sophisticated or even super fast cars. I was turned on to cars an engineering when I was just 10 years old. I loved to build and race remote control car kits. I learned so much about mechanics and simple electronics, which I carry with me today. Today most hobby cars and models are RTF (ready to fly) or rtr (ready to run). What will facinate our future engineers? I suppose developing apps and computer stuff.

just some more ranting!

I recently removed my recirculating valve in the process of installing a longneck. It's an amazing piece of work especially considering its a proprietary part on a very low volume car. Must have set Porsche back a few bucks.

Software vs. Hardware.

Sci-fi authors of the 1930s and '40s saw the future in terms of advances in mechanical engineering. The comics and novels of that era are rife with this vision. The reality has been advances in software and computer technology.

Way less cool and way less inspiring.

I'm a hardware guy, computers and software creeps me out.

On a completely different theme to cars, but still on the same tangent, I work for a rather large IT outfit, beginning with "I" ending with "M"...we've just acquired a fairly niche storage vendor called Texas Memory System (TMS) - they specialise in THE fastest storage platform comprised (originally) of DRAM, and latterly with modern advances, FLASH memory, called RamSAN.

I was in a meeting yesterday, where we're all being briefed on the technology....there are no bells-and-whistle in terms of a manual full of software functions....it's a hardware device. My colleague's just returned from a week in Austin, learning all about it; apparently the mantra from the original TMS engineering team is that if it adds latency, it's binned...."everything we do, is done at a hardware level" (wherever poss)....hardware rules and software sucks, it adds complexity, adds latency. Of course, this is true, but hardware is far costlier to engineer/re-engineer, update, fix if there's bugs in the firmware, etc....but it is better for what this product does. One of our competitors uses the exact opposite argument....."we've got MILLIONS of lines of code to get the performance". I'll let you guys decide which is probably the most likely way forward :D

It was thoroughly refreshing to hear this...proper old-skool design ethos (if not the underlying technology of course!). [FaceBook mode=on] "Like" [FaceBook mode=off]