AC Aceca
The Aceca is a closed coupé from the British AC Cars company, produced from 1954 until 1963. The car had an AC engine but the similar Bristol-engined Aceca-Bristol was available alongside the original from 1956 to 1963 when production of the engine ceased. A few cars were built from 1961 to 1963 with a 2553 cc tuned Ford Zephyr engine and sold as the Aceca 2.6. Based on the open two-seat AC Ace, the Aceca was a hand-built grand tourer in the British tradition, with ash wood and steel tubing used in their construction. One notable feature was the hatchback at the rear, making the Aceca only the second car, after the 1953 Aston Martin DB2/4, to incorporate this element. 151 Acecas, 169 Aceca-Bristols and 8 Ford-engined models had been built when production halted in 1963. The main difference between the Aceca and Aceca-Bristol was the engine. Both used a straight-6 unit, but the Aceca shared its 90 hp, 1,991 cc overhead camshaft AC engine with the lighter AC Ace, while the Aceca-Bristol used a 125 hp "D-Type" 2.0 L unit sourced from Bristol Cars.
The Aceca-Bristol was available with a milder "B-Type" Bristol engine of 105 hp. The Bristol specification added $1000 to the Aceca's $5,400 price tag in the United States. In the UK, the basic car cost £1722; the front-end styling of the Ace and Aceca traces back to a design done by Pinin Farina for AC in the late 1940s. An alternative theory is; the car is rather light owing to aluminium engine block and aluminium body panels. Large 16" spoked road wheels and near 50/50 weight distribution allowed exceptional handling on substandard road surfaces. Acecas feature front-wheel disc brakes, while all share transverse leaf spring IRS, articulated rear half-axles, worm-gear steering, an optional overdrive on 2nd, 3rd and 4th gears, curved windscreen, leather-covered bucket seats; the suspension is independent at the rear using transverse leaf springs. The AC Aceca featured in the UK "Car SOS" programme; the in-line six Bristol engine fitted to the Aceca-Bristol was based on a design from BMW with cast iron block and aluminium cylinder head.
It has a single camshaft with pushrods running vertically to a rocker shaft on the inlet side of the engine and further horizontal pushrods running in 6 tubes over the top of the engine in order to reach the exhaust rockers. The two inclined rocker covers give the engine a similar appearance to an overhead - camshaft arrangement. Three inline Solex downdraft carburettors were bolted directly to the cylinder head casting using small adaptor plates. Http://www.conceptcarz.com/vehicle/z16796/AC-Aceca.aspx
Weber carburetor
Weber is an Italian company which produces carburetors. A., in turn part of the Fiat Group. Carburetor production in Italy ended in 1992 when Weber shifted carburetor production to Madrid, where it continues today. Edoardo Weber began his automotive career working for Fiat, first at their Turin plant and at a dealership in Bologna. After the war, with gasoline prices high, he reached a certain success in selling conversion kits for running trucks on kerosene instead; the company was established as Fabbrica Italiana Carburatori Weber in 1923 when Weber produced carburetors as part of a conversion kit for Fiats. Weber pioneered the use of two-stage twin barrel carburetors, with two venturis of different sizes, the smaller one for low speed running and the larger one optimised for high speed use. In the 1930s Weber began producing twin-barrel carburetors for motor racing where two barrels of the same size were used; these were arranged. These carburetors found use in Alfa Romeo racing cars. Twin updraught Webers fed superchargers on the 1938 Alfa Romeo 8C competition vehicles.
After Weber's death in 1945, Fiat assumed control of the company in 1952. In time, Weber carburetors were fitted to standard production cars and factory racing applications on automotive marques such as Abarth, Alfa Romeo, Aston Martin, BMW, Ferrari, Ford, IKA, Lancia, Maserati, Porsche, Renault and Volkswagen. In 1986, Fiat took control of Weber's competitor Solex, merged the two into a single company; this was reorganized as Magneti Marelli Powertrain S.p. A. in 2001. Genuine Weber carburetors were produced in Bologna, Italy, up until 1992, when production was transferred to Madrid, where they continue to be produced today. Weber Carburetors are sold for both street and off-road use, with the twin choke sidedraught DCOE being the most common one, they are sold in. A Weber conversion kit is a complete package of Weber Carburetor, intake manifold or manifold adapter, throttle linkage, air filter and all of the necessary hardware needed to install the Weber on a vehicle. In modern times, fuel injection has replaced carburetors in both production cars and most modern motor racing, although Weber carburetors are still used extensively in classic and historic racing.
They are supplied as high quality replacements for problematic OEM carburetors. Weber fuel system components are distributed by Magneti Marelli, Webcon UK Ltd. and, in North America, by several organizations, including Worldpac, marketing under the Redline name. Other suppliers include Pierce Manifolds. Weber carburetors are marked with a model code on the mounting flange, the body, or on the cover of the float-chamber; this begins with a number which indicated the diameter of the throttle bore, but lost this significance. If this number has a single pair of digits, both chokes are of the same diameter and operate together; these numbers are followed by a group of letters, which indicates various features: the DCOE is a sidedraught unit, all others being downdraught. After the letters there will be a further number, which may be followed by a letter, e.g. 4B, 13A. The full designation might be 45 DCOE 9, etc.. List of Italian companies Weber Carburettors Owners Workshop Manual, Haynes Publishing, ISBN 0-85696-393-3 Weber Carburetors, Pat Braden, ISBN 0-89586-377-4 Weber Tuning Manual, available from Webcon UK Ltd
Raymond Mays
Thomas Raymond Mays, CBE was an auto racing driver and entrepreneur from Bourne, England. He attended Oundle School, where he met Amherst Villiers, leaving at the end of 1917. After army service in the Grenadier Guards in France, he attended Cambridge. Mays enjoyed the London theatre and watching Jean Borotra play tennis. Mays was one of the principal people behind the development of the motor racing stables of English Racing Automobiles and British Racing Motors; the workshops of each firm were established, in turn, in The Maltings adjacent to the Spalding road, behind "Eastgate House", the family home on Eastgate road in Bourne. His lifelong ambition was to see his country succeed at the top level of international motor sport; this ambition was not always matched by his technical or financial resources and a low point was reached with the failure of the BRM V16 project, before BRM won the Constructors' World Championship in 1962. Mays raced for some thirty years, competing in various cars: a Speed-model 1½-litre Hillman, two 1½-litre Bugattis, an unsuccessful supercharged AC, the Vauxhall-Villiers, Invictas, Rileys and ERAs.
Mays was renowned for competing at Shelsley Walsh, racing there in the early 1920s with a pair of Brescia Bugattis, known as'Cordon Bleu' and'Cordon Rouge'. A famous picture was taken of'Cordon Bleu' at the Caerphilly mountain hill-climb in 1924 showing a rear wheel escaping from the car with the driver looking at it over his shoulder, he developed his cars with superchargers through Amherst Villiers and this association continued from AC to the Vauxhall-Villiers and the famous'White Riley', that became the starting point for ERA. In 1929, Raymond Mays entered the Vauxhall-Villiers at Shelsley Walsh fitted with twin rear wheels, he broke the hill record and this innovation was copied in the years to come. Mays made his mark on the track in such events as the 1935 German Grand Prix, sharing his ERA with Ernst von Delius; the ribbon which came with the wreath, part of the prize for this event is to be seen at the Raymond Mays room in Bourne Heritage Centre. Mays was one of ERA's most notable drivers, winning the British Hill Climb Championship in its first two years, 1947 and 1948 and the Brighton Speed Trials in 1946, 1947, 1948 and 1950 in his black ERA R4D.
He stopped driving racing cars at the end of the 1950 season. In the 1950s and 1960s Mays produced and marketed tuning equipment for British Ford four- and six-cylinder engines, including an alloy cylinder head designed by Mays's ERA and BRM associate Peter Berthon; these parts were fitted to Ford, A. C. and Reliant cars. Mays described these events and others to Roy Plomley in Desert Island Discs on 25 October 1969. Mays wrote Split Seconds, BRM and At Speed. Split Seconds: My Racing Years by Raymond Mays "ghosted" by Dennis May, G. T. Foulis & Co. Ltd. 1951. 306 pages. B. R. M. by Raymond Mays and Peter Roberts. 1962. 240 pages. Kenny, Paul; the Man Who Supercharged Bond: The Extraordinary Story of Charles Amherst Villiers. Sparkford: Haynes Publishing. ISBN 978-1-84425-468-2. ERA R4D - The Autobiography of R4D by Mac Hulbert The Bourne web site Raymond Mays history site The Raymond Mays Room Photograph from 1956 on flickr: T W Mays & Son Limited, Bourne
AC 2-Litre
The AC 2-Litre is an automobile, produced by AC of Thames Ditton in Surrey, England between 1947 and 1956. Two and, from 1952, four-door saloons were sold. In addition, as from 1949, a small number of drophead coupés and "Buckland" tourers were produced; the car's wetliner, aluminium cylinder block, six-cylinder 1991 cc engine was the unit first offered by the company in the AC 16, back in 1922. However, by 1947 the engine was fed by three SU carburettors, boasted a power output of 74 bhp, increased again in 1951 to 85 bhp, more than twice the 35 bhp claimed for engine's original commercial application; the aluminium-panelled body on a wood frame was fitted to a conventional steel chassis with rigid axles front and rear with semi-elliptic leaf springs with, for the first time on an AC, hydraulic dampers. Until 1951 the car had a hybrid braking system, hydraulic at the front and cable at the rear with 12 in drums; the car changed little during its ten-year production run, though the wheel size did increase to 16 in in 1951.
The AC 2-litre was outlived by its engine, which continued to be offered in other AC models until 1963. A 2-door saloon car tested by The Motor magazine in 1948 had a top speed of 80 mph and could accelerate from 0-60 mph in 19.9 seconds. A fuel consumption of 23 miles per imperial gallon was recorded; the test car cost £1277 including taxes. Media related to AC 2-Litre at Wikimedia Commons
Sports car
A sports car, or sportscar, is a small two-seater automobile designed for spirited performance and nimble handling. The term "sports car" was used in The Times, London in 1919. According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, USA's first known use of the term was in 1928. Sports cars started to become popular during the 1920s. Sports cars may be spartan or luxurious. Sports cars are aerodynamically shaped, have a lower center of gravity than standard models. Steering and suspension are designed for precise control at high speeds. Traditionally sports cars were open roadsters, but closed coupés started to become popular during the 1930s, the distinction between a sports car and a grand tourer is not absolute. Attributing the definition of'sports car' to any particular model can be controversial or the subject of debate among enthusiasts. Authors and experts have contributed their own ideas to capture a definition. A car may be a sporting automobile without being a sports car. Performance modifications of regular, production cars, such as sport compacts, sports sedans, muscle cars, pony cars and hot hatches are not considered sports cars, yet share traits common to sports cars.
Certain models can "appeal to both muscle car and sports car enthusiasts, two camps that acknowledged each other's existences." Some models are called "sports cars" for marketing purposes to take advantage of greater marketplace acceptance and for promotional purposes. High-performance cars of various configurations are grouped as Sports and Grand tourer cars or just as performance cars; the drivetrain and engine layout influences the handling characteristics of an automobile, is crucially important in the design of a sports car. The front-engine, rear-wheel-drive layout is common to sports cars of any era and has survived longer in sports cars than in mainstream automobiles. Examples include the Caterham 7, Mazda MX-5, the Chevrolet Corvette. More many such sports cars have a front mid-engine, rear-wheel drive layout, with the centre of mass of the engine between the front axle and the firewall. In search of improved handling and weight distribution, other layouts are sometimes used; the rear mid-engine, rear-wheel-drive layout is found only in sports cars—the motor is centre-mounted in the chassis, powers only the rear wheels.
Some high-performance sports car manufacturers, such as Ferrari and Lamborghini have preferred this layout. Porsche is one of the few remaining manufacturers using the rear-wheel-drive layout; the motor's distributed weight across the wheels, in a Porsche 911, provides excellent traction, but the significant mass behind the rear wheels makes it more prone to oversteer in some situations. Porsche has continuously refined the design and in recent years added electronic stability control to counteract these inherent design shortcomings; the front-engine, front-wheel-drive layout layout, the most common in sport compacts and hot hatches, modern production cars in general, is not used for sports cars. This layout is advantageous for small, lower power sports cars, as it avoids the extra weight, increased transmission power loss, packaging problems of a long driveshaft and longitudinal engine of FR vehicles. However, its conservative handling effect understeer, the fact that many drivers believe rear wheel drive is a more desirable layout for a sports car count against it.
The Fiat Barchetta, Saab Sonett, Berkeley cars are sports cars with this layout. Before the 1980s few sports cars used four-wheel drive, which had traditionally added a lot of weight. With its improvement in traction in adverse weather conditions, four-wheel drive is no longer uncommon in high-powered sports cars, e.g. Porsche and the Bugatti Veyron. Traditional sports cars were two-seat roadsters. Although the first sports cars were derived from fast tourers, early sporting regulations demanded four seats, two seats became common from about the mid-1920s. Modern sports cars may have small back seats that are really only suitable for luggage or small children. Over the years, some manufacturers of sports cars have sought to increase the practicality of their vehicles by increasing the seating room. One method is to place the driver's seat in the center of the car, which allows two full-sized passenger seats on each side and behind the driver; the arrangement was considered for the Lamborghini Miura, but abandoned as impractical because of the difficulty for the driver to enter/exit the vehicle.
McLaren used the design in their F1. Another British manufacturer, TVR, took a different approach in their Cerbera model; the interior was designed in such a way that the dashboard on the passenger side swept toward the front of the car, which allowed the passenger to sit farther forward than the driver. This gave the rear seat passenger extra room and made the arrangement suitable for three adult passengers and one child seated behind the driver; some Matra sports cars had three seats squeezed next to each other. The definition of a sports car is not precise, but from the earliest first automobiles "people have found ways to make them go faster, round corners better, look more beautiful" than the ordinary models inspiring an "emotional relationship" with a car, fun to drive and use for the sake of driving; the basis for the sports car is traced to the early 20th century touring cars a
Microcar
Microcar is a term used for the smallest size of cars, with three or four wheels and an engine smaller than 700 cc. Specific types of microcars include bubble cars, cycle cars and voiturettes, the Japanese equivalent is the kei car. Microcars are covered by separate regulations to normal cars, having relaxed requirements for registration and licensing. Most microcars are powered by petrol or diesel engines, however electric-powered microcars have become more common in recent years. Voiturette is a term used by some small cars and tricycles manufactured from 1895 to 1910. Cyclecars are a type of small and inexpensive car manufactured between 1910 and the late 1920s; the first cars to be described as microcars were built in the United Kingdom and Germany following World War II and remained popular until the 1960s. These cars were called minicars, however they became known as microcars. France produced large numbers of similar tiny vehicles called voiturettes, however these were sold abroad. A common characteristic of these microcars is an engine displacement of less than 700 cc, although several cars with engines up to 1,000 cc are considered to be microcars.
The engine was designed for a motorcycle. Microcars have four wheels; the origin of these microcars is in the years following World War II. To provide better weather protection, three-wheeled microcars began increasing in popularity in the United Kingdom, where they could be driven using a motorcycle licence. Microcars became popular in Europe, due to their greater fuel efficiency than larger cars. One of the first microcars was the 1949 Bond Minicar. Micro cars became popular in Europe at that time as a demand for cheap personal motorised transport emerged and fuel prices were high due in part to the 1956 Suez Crisis. Most of them were three-wheelers, which in many places qualified them for inexpensive taxes and licensing as motorcycles; the microcar boom lasted until the late 1950s, when larger cars regained popularity The 1959 introduction of the Mini, which provided greater size and performance at an affordable price, contributed to the decline in popularity of microcars. Production of microcars had ceased by the end of the 1960s, due to competition from the Mini, Citroen 2CV, Fiat 500 and Renault 4.
Several microcars of the 1950s and 1960s— produced in Germany— were nicknamed bubble cars. This was due to the aircraft-style bubble canopies of cars like the Messerschmitt KR175, Messerschmitt KR200 and the FMR Tg500. Other microcars, such as the Isetta had a bubble-like appearance. German manufacturers bubble cars included former military aircraft manufacturers Messerschmitt and Heinkel. BMW manufactured the Italian Iso Rivolta Isetta under licence, using an engine from one of their own motorcycles; the United Kingdom had licence-built right-hand drive versions of the Isetta. The British version of the Isetta was built with only one rear wheel instead of the narrow-tracked pair of wheels in the normal Isetta design in order to take advantage of the three-wheel vehicle laws in the United Kingdom. There were indigenous British three-wheeled microcars, including the Peel Trident. Examples include the Citroën Prototype C, FMR Tg500, Heinkel Kabine, Messerschmitt KR175, Messerschmitt KR200, Peel P50, Peel Trident and Trojan 200.
Kleinschnittger F125. Recent microcars include the 2001 Aixam 5xx series; the Smart Fortwo is called a microcar in the United States. Electric-powered microcars which have reached production include the 1987 CityEl, the 1990 Automobiles ERAD Spacia, the 1999 Corbin Sparrow, the 2001 REVAi, the 2009 Tazzari Zero and the 2011 Peel P50; the European Union introduced the quadricycle category in 1992. In several European countries since microcars are classified by governments separately to normal cars, sometimes using the same regulations as motorcycles or mopeds. Therefore, compared with normal cars, microcars have relaxed requirements for registration and licensing, can be subject to lower taxes and insurance costs. Kei car is the Japanese legal category for the smallest and most limited power, highway-legal motor vehicles, including passenger cars and Kei trucks. There are a variety of microcar trucks of the "forward control" or van style to provide more cargo room; these might be used for local deliveries on narrow streets.
The Piaggio Ape is a three-wheeled example. Car classification Economy car Neighborhood Electric Vehicle
English wheel
The English wheel, in Britain known as a wheeling machine, is a metalworking tool that enables a craftsperson to form compound curves from flat sheets of metal such as aluminium or steel. The process of using an English wheel is known as wheeling. Panels produced this way are expensive, due to the skilled and labour-intensive production method, but it has the key advantage that it can flexibly produce different panels using the same machine, it is a forming machine that works by surface stretching and is related in action to panel beating processes. It is used. English wheel production is at its highest in low-volume sports car production when more formed aluminium alloy is used. Where high-volume production runs of panels are required, the wheel is replaced by a stamping press that has a much higher capital setup cost and longer development time than using an English wheel, but each panel in the production run can be produced in a matter of seconds; this cost is defrayed across a larger production run, but a stamping press is limited to only one model of panel per set of dies.
The English wheel model shown is manually operated, but when used on thicker sheet metals such as for ship hulls the machine may be powered and much larger than the one shown here. The machine is shaped like a large, closed letter "C". At the ends of the C, there are two wheels; the wheel on the top is called the rolling wheel, while the wheel on the bottom is called the anvil wheel. The anvil wheel has a smaller radius than the rolling wheel. Although larger machines exist, the rolling wheel is 8 cm wide or less, 25 cm in diameter, or less; the rolling wheel is flat in cross section. The depth of the C-shaped frame is called the throat; the largest machines have throat sizes of 120 cm, while smaller machines have throat sizes of about 60 cm. The C is supported by a frame; the throat size determines the largest size of metal sheet that the operator can place in the machine and work easily. On some machines, the operator can turn the top wheel and anvil 90 degrees to the frame to increase the maximum size of the work piece.
Because the machine works by an amount of pressure between the wheels through the material, because that pressure changes as the material becomes thinner, the lower jaw and cradle of the frame that holds the anvil roller is adjustable. It may move with a hydraulic jack on machines designed for steel plate, or a jackscrew on machines designed for sheet metals; as the material thins, the operator must adjust the pressure to compensate. Frame designs are the most significant element of this simple device. For the most part wheels have changed little since the 19th century; the early English machines, such as Edwards, Brown and Ranalah, etc. had cast iron frames. These wheels, made during the 19th Century, had Babbitt metal plain bearings, making them difficult to push and pull the metal through when operated at high pressures; when ball bearings came into use, the machines became more suitable for hard and thick material, such as 1/8” steel. Despite the advantages of cast iron, it has less than half the stiffness of steel and sometimes must be replaced by steel when a stiffer frame is needed.
Steel frames made of solid flame-cut plate, or frames built-up of cut-and-welded plates, are common designs. Steel tubing of square section, has been used for wheeling machine frames during the past 30 years, in the US where sheet metal shaping has become a hobby as well as a business. Tube-framed machines are reasonably-priced and are available either as kit-built machines or can be built from plans; the stiffest tubular frames have a triangulated external bracing truss. They are most effective on softer materials, such as 20 ga steel or.063" aluminum. Cast frame machines, like the one pictured, are still available. A properly equipped machine has an assortment of anvil wheels. Anvil wheels, like dollies used with hammers in panel beating should be used to match the desired crown or curvature of the work piece; the operator of the machine passes the sheet metal between the rolling wheel. This process causes it to become thinner; as the material stretches, it forms a convex surface over the anvil wheel.
This surface is known as "crown". A high crown surface is curved, a low crown surface is curved; the rigidity and strength in the surface of a workpiece is provided by the high crown areas. The radius of the surface, after working, depends on the degree that the metal in the middle of the work piece stretches relative to the edge of the piece. If the middle stretches too much, the operator can recover the shape by wheeling the edge of the piece. Wheeling the edge has the same effect in correcting mis-shape due to over-stretching in the middle, as does shrinking directly on the overstretched area by the use of heat shrinking or Eckold-type shrinking; this is. Shrinking the edge prior to wheeling aids the formation of shape during wheeling, reduces the amount of stretching and thinning needed to reach the final shape. Shrinking processes reduce the surface area by thickenin
