Turboglide Automobile Transmission

Why 2 Letters KILLED Chevrolet's MOST ADVANCED Transmission!
Muscle Car Masters

That's a nice story, but it doesn't satisfy my inner techno-geek. So we go looking for more.

Chevrolet Turboglide Transmission
Arpit Thakur

The diagram got me here, it shows up at the 12:12 mark and Arpit goes thru the diagram bit by tedious bit, and there's a more than a few bits. He's a little hard to understand, but he repeats himself and uses a pointer effectively. I dunno what the rest of the video is about.

Torque Converter – How Does It Work? (3D Animation)
CARinfo3d (En)

Nice, simplified explanation of how torque convertors work. I still wonder who came up with this idea, how they made the prototypes, and how they make them now. Probably won't be satisfied until I see the equations for fluid flow and that's probably pointless because I probably wouldn't understand them. Well, I probably could if I spent a couple months studying up. It would take me at least that long because I only get about an hour's worth of actual work done a day. Anyway, here's some Turboglide pictures.

Turboglide Simplified Schematic

Figure 41. Reverse Power Flow

Turboglide Cross Section

Key for Turboglide Cross Section:

1. Needle Bearing and Races

2. Converter Cover Hub Bushing

3. First Turbine Hub Bushing (Serviced)

4. Caged Needle Bearings

5. Converter Cover (Serviced as an Assembly with Item 7)

6. Third Turbine Assembly

7. Stator Assembly

8. Transmission Case

9. Second Turbine Assembly

10. First Turbine Assembly

11. Stator Rear Thrust Pod

12. Needle Bearing and Race

13. Converter Pump (Serviced as an Assembly with Item 4)

14. Front Pump Oil Seal

15. Front Pump Assembly

16. Frant Pump Cover (Stator Support)

17. Reverse Piston

18. Reverse Piston Spring

19. Thruster Washer (Selective)

20. Neutral Clutch Hub

21. Neutral Clutch Piston

22. Neutral Clutch Piston Return Spring (16)

23. Neutral Clutch Drive Plates (3) and Driven Plates (3)

24. Neutral Clutch Piston Return Spring Reluiner

25. Neutral Clutch Rear Drive Plate

26. Front Ring Gear Hub

27. Front Ring Gear

28. Front Planet Carrier Assembly

29. Front Sun Gear Front Bushings (Serviced)

30. Forward Clutch Freewheel Sprag Race

31. Forward Clutch Freewheel Sprag (Outer Sprag)

32. Rear Ring Gear Freewheel Sprag (Inner Sprog)

33. Front Sun Gear

34. Forward Piston

35. Forward and Brake Piston Support

36. Forward and Brake Piston Return Spring

37. Forward ond Brake Piston Return

Spring Seat 38. Brake Piston

39. Rear Ring Gear Assembly

40. Broke Drive Plates (3) and Reactor Plates (2 Inner and 2 Outer)

41. Rear Planet Carrier Assembly (includes Output Shaft)

42. Transmission Case Bushing (Serviced)

43. Rear Oil Pump Gear Spocer

44. Rear Oil Pump Assembly 45. Rear Oil Pump Drive Pin

46. Vent Assembly

47. Oil Deflector

48. Transmission Extension

49. Oil Seal Assembly

50. Speedometer Driven Gear

51. Speedometer Drive Gear

52. Rear Oil Pump Bushing (Serviced)

53. Needle Thrust Bearing Assembly

54. Valve Body Assembly

55. Needle Bearing Assembly

56. Oil Pressure Tube (2)

57. Retainer Ring

58. Forward Clutch Drive Plates (4) and Reaction Plates (4)

59. Forward Clutch Pressure Plate

60. Retainer Ring

61. Needle Bearing Assembly

62. Needle Bearing Assembly and Race

63. Front Planet Carrier Thrust Washer

64. Reverse Clutch Reaction Insert

65. Reverse Rear Pressure Plate

66. Reverse Drive Plates (3) and Reaction Plates (2)

67. Reverse Front Pressure Plate (Selective)

68. Oil Pan

69. Oil Seal Rings

70. Stator Support Shaft (Part of Stator Support)

71. Second Turbine Shaft (Part of Front Ring Gear Hub)

72. Third Turbine Shaft (Part of Neutral Clutch Hub)

73. First Turbine Shaft (Port of First Turbine Assembly)

Google was able to extract the next from a jpg of the original, poorly printed version.

1923 Ford vs 2023 Tesla

1923 Ford vs 2023 Tesla
SuperfastMatt

100 years seems like a perfect time to compare the old and new, even if I am three years late. I'm slowly getting adjusted to the idea of an electric car, but I'm still gonna wait until they come up with a better battery, one that doesn't weigh a thousand pounds and catch fire when it's unhappy.

Return of Powerglide

Why GM's CHEAPEST 2-Speed Was SECRETLY The Most INSANE Transmission Ever!
Muscle Car Masters

I've read many articles in car magazines disparaging GM's two-speed automatic transmission, the Powerglide, and here it has been reincarnated as the preferred transmission for drag racing. Who'd a thunk it?

China Airlines Flight 120 - 19 Years Ago

The 737 continued to burn uncontrolled until the tail collapsed to the ground - Xinhua

Uniberp came out to visit last week. He stopped in Seattle and gave us this report:

We attended an interesting presentation at the Museum of Flight, given by a retired engineer at Boeing, who worked on the investigation into the fire on China Airlines Flight 120, which caught fire on the ground and all persons escaped.

He described the design that resulted in a loose bolt from a leading edge flap puncturing the wing tank when the flap was retracted. The investigation resulted in a changed design to the flap that eliminated a micro-fine control of the flap movement, concluding the extra complexity was not worth the miniscule performance improvement.

He said "Those aerodynamicists, they use every trick they can, no matter how complex it makes it for engineering. One millimeter gap, ooooh we must do something." He was kind of dismissive of them.

Most of the docents seemed to be old retired Boeing guys.

Wikipedia has a page about this.

By the time the fire was extinguished, most of the plane had been destroyed - Mayday

Diagram of slat extension mechanism

Bolt that punctured the fuel tank

Wheeled Robot

I’m building something I probably shouldn’t...
Excessive Overkill

Great video! I don't know what this guy is planning on building, but I will definitely be checking up on him. I had a job in Houston 50 years ago (!) delivering scissor-lift work platforms, much like the one being cannibalized in the video. I did some repair work like replacing hydraulic hoses and splicing broken wires. Most were new machines so they didn't require much work. So this is kind of like old home week. 50 years ago there wasn't much in the way of robots. Times have changed.

LeTourneau

How This Radical Scraper Changed Earthmoving Forever
Heavy Machines Era

I remember reading something about LeTourneau a long while back. It was all about how he was using electric motors to drive the wheels on his machines. There was a diesel engine driving a generator which provided electrical power to the motors (obviously). And it was presented as something really great and wonderful, but it never explained what was so great and wonderful about it. Many years later I was looking diesel locomotives and I suddenly realized, or somebody told me, that the whole reason for using electric motors on the drive wheels is because you can get full torque from the motor at zero RPM. Imagine if you had a conventional manual clutch and transmission like you would have in a semi-truck, installed in a locomotive. Now you try and start from a dead stop and you have to slip the clutch a bit to get the train rolling. Yeah, the clutch will be on fire before the train even thinks about moving. A conventional clutch is not going to work. So, electric motors. Now LeTourneau's idea makes sense. And now we have a video about the history of the company and I have an excuse to tell my story.

Whitworth

Whitworths 1862 Slotting Machine
Iron Jonesy

Totally enjoyable. Jonesy takes apart an ancient machine tool and gives us a history lesson along the way. It's funny how there seems to be a sharp dividing line between people who are mechanically inclined and people who aren't.

Whitworth Wrench

I first ran into Whitworth when I bought a custom Triumph Bonneville when I lived in Houston. It had an Italian front brake, so there were some metric parts. The engine may have been older than the frame, or maybe it was vice versa. In any case some of the nuts and bolts were American and some were Whitworth. It came with a set of Whitworth wrenches, which I had never seen before, or since, for that matter.

Whitworth has pretty much gone away, but back in his day, he was a big deal.

I Have This Old Gun: Whitworth Rifle
NRApubs

UPS MD-11 Crash Investigation

A fractured spherical bearing race (center, on either side of monoball) began the chain of events that caused UPS 2976 to lose its left engine. Credit: NTSB

You might remember hearing about the giant UPS air freighter that crashed in Louisville, Kentucky, last November. Looks like the NTSB has finished their investigation. My Daily Kona has a post about this. I'm not sure if they figured out who to blame, it's kind of a long post and I didn't read the whole thing. The part that amazes me is the huge volume of records that must be kept to even allow this kind of analysis. It's frankly mind-boggling.

Toasted

Crane
Last Vestige of Industry at North End of South Waterfront

Previous photo of crane.

Mechanicking

I Was Fixing a Fuel Tank - It Did Not Go Well
Watch Wes Work

This is kind of a long video, but it moves right along. Wes doesn't have just one problem, just when you think the truck is fixed and the video is over you find out that there is another one. New fangled plastic parts appear several times. 

In the last three minutes he gives an economic report which is especially interesting. I would like to blame the fact that he is in Illinois, but I don't know if that really makes any difference.

Millwright

Industrial centrifugal water pumps driven by electric motors

Busted nuckles has a fascinating post up about industrial bearing alignment. Your're thinking 'how could industrial bearing alignment be fascinating?' Go read the horror stories in the comments. You might think differently.

Cracked Propeller

Cracked Propeller

I'm watching this video and I am confused by what I see. Is this guy using some weird camera setup that is distorting the image of the propeller? Is it an AI thing? And then I notice the two pieces that go on either side of the mount and I realize the hub of this propeller is really twisted.  Who makes a twisted mount like this? And how would they do it? I think this was done before the advent of CNC. Or maybe the Brits had a secret CNC project to machine parts like this. I don't think I've ever seen anything crazier. And oh yeah, don't put that prop back on the airplane.

Inertia Starter

The inertia starter...
MrKent317

I've seen videos of these things in operation before, but I always imagined them as having big flywheels, big, like a foot or two across. I didn't think they would be this small.

Hand Cranking a Stearman
Lee Fox

Seems there are two methods of operation. One, you can crank them up by hand, or two, you can spin them up with a small electric motor.

I posted a video of starting an AN-2 using an inertial starter here.

My Name Here has compiled a YouTube playlist of inertial starter videos.

Late to Pi Day

Computing Pi For Pi Day!
Dynamically Typed

YouTube blurb:

Using my 92 year old Walther RKZ mechanical calculator to calculate Pi. 355/113 is a very good approximation for the famous constant. It's a common example for mechanical calculators but it is still fun to see.

DIY Line Boring

Waking A Forgotten Cat and Boring A Stretched Hole
Watch Wes Work

Watching Wes work is the YouTube equivalent of comfort food. It brings a feeling of calm reassurance that at least in some parts of the world, all is well.

Crazy Racing Sidecar

RYDE Sidecar Racing Chassis

Guy in the UK has built his own custom sidecar chassis along with his own four cylinder, two stroke, inline race motor.

Super-Kamiokande

Image of the Sun taken at Night

The whiz kids are constructing a mythological universe, more bizarre than anything Tolkien ever dreamed of. This is an image of neutrinos directly emitted from the core of the Sun, obtained by the Super-Kamiokande neutrino detector. Well, that's what the whiz kids say. I suspect it's a glitch in the matrix.

A model of KamiokaNDE

Super-Kamiokande is located 3,300 feet underground in the Mozumi Mine in Hida's Kamioka area [Japan]. It consists of a cylindrical stainless steel tank 136 feet tall and 129 feet in diameter holding 55,360 tons of ultrapure water. The tank volume is divided by a stainless steel superstructure into an inner detector (ID) region and outer detector (OD). Lining the inner detector are 11,146 photomultiplier tubes (PMT), each 20 inches in diameter, that face the ID and (1,885) 8 inch PMTs that face the OD. A Tyvek and blacksheet barrier attached to the superstructure optically separates the ID and OD. - Simplified from Wikipedia

Photo Multiplier Tubes

Two guys in a boat fishing inside the detector

If you are an old person (i.e. your birth year starts with 19), you may remember hearing about this minor catastrophe:

On 12 November 2001, about 6,600 of the photomultiplier tubes imploded in a chain reaction, as the shock wave from the concussion of each imploding tube cracked its neighbours. The detector was partially restored from April to October 2002 by redistributing the photomultiplier tubes which did not implode, and by adding protective acrylic shells that are hoped will prevent another chain reaction from recurring (Super-Kamiokande-II). - Wikipedia

Looking for pictures of the catastrophe, I found this excellent video:

An Engineering Fairy Tale: Cascade Failure at the Super Kamiokande
Alexander the ok

This Physics Girl video got me started.

More Thread Chasing

Seized Solid! Can We Save These CAT 24M Grader Accumulators? Part 1
Cutting Edge Engineering Australia

Previous Thread Chasing video here.

Chasing Threads

"Sir, Your Parking Brake Exploded" - Fixing a Ford
Watch Wes Work

Jack has been working on making his lathe cut 30 threads per inch. He brought a bunch of pieces to lunch yesterday for show and tell, but he put them away before I managed to take any photos. Probably have to go pay him a visit. He had to make a couple of gears, and to do that he needed a cutter to cut the gear teeth. He tried making his own cutter, but that didn't work out so well. He ended up buying a set of expensive cutters.

The Ice King

Why Cold Drinks Were Lethal before 1914
Veritasium

Now I wonder which business was bigger - the ice business or the railroad box cars cooled with ice.