This is the ultimate old Chrysler product IMHO

[DesertTortoise]

The E49 Charger. This is muscle Australian style. Dodge was working on a new seven main bearing six to replace the old Slant Six. But by the late 1960s it was easier to sell a V-8 than a six, and the small block V8s Chrysler were building were about the same power as this six, so the marketing weenies in North America canned the project fearing it would not sell against their V-8s. Chrysler of Australia then picked up the cudgle, thinking it would make a splendid engine for the Valiant variants they built at a plant in Adelaide SA.

By the time Australian engineers were through with it that in line six with polyspnerical combustion chambers (the marketing bozos in Oz called it the "Hemi Six" but technically it is a misnomer). Fitted with three 2-bbl side draft (oh, excuse me, side draught) Weber carbs and stock headers these things were putting out 302 street legal horses from 256 cubic inches. I laugh out loud every time I think about this. There was a drop in "Bathurst cam" that bumped it up to 325 horses. With modern pistons and head work you can build a reliable street motor making around 350 horses. A few people have imported these to the US (very rare even in Australia, so expect to pay 50 bills or more for a clean one), taken them to drag strips and humiliated a lot of V-8 Detroit iron (and aluminum).

It's on a Valiant chassis, so the car is light, agile and handles wonderfully. With the right cross member or mods to the existing one (there is a shop in Corona California that knows how to do this) you can drop this engine into a Dodge Dart or Plymouth Valiant. Yeah, I was on the verge of pulling the trigger on one of these when my cousin decided to sell this Audi of his I made him promise me first rights of refusal to. Still, someday, maybe .............

http://www.chargerclubofwa.asn.au/production-detail.asp?iProductionID=31

http://www.shannons.com.au/auctions/lot/X5ZMHP6765C64R30/

Light, big power but six cylinder smoothness, no wasted space or excess material, very good handling by the standards of the day and good though not great even by currnet standards. NOT some huge overstuffed wallowing luxo barge with an aircraft carrier flight deck for a hood that needs line handlers to moor the thing it's so huge and heavy. It's everything the old Chrysler 300 never was. My idea of a great car.

 

[suckolux]

Wow

 

[bagintheback]

While I'm Not Much of a Car Person..

...the history of the automotive industry I find very interesting.  Alternative fuel vehicles are especially fascinating, and one of my favorites is the Chrysler Turbine Car. While technically a prototype vehicle, they did privately sell a few, so in my opinion, this is "The ultimate old Chrysler Product". Here's a picture of one at the 1964 World's Fair. 

[this post was last edited: 9/8/2014-22:03]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chrysler_Turbine_Car

 

[super-sweeper]

Hahahaha, the joke with that car was that it ran on anything flammable, and the guys at the testing track ran it on SCOTCH! Their boss criticised them for wasting the scotch! 

 

[kenkart]

Jay Leno

Has one of the very few remaining turbine cars.

 

[DesertTortoise]

Heh, heh, heh, I'm old enough to have been a rabid car nut when those Chrysler Turbine Cars were being tested.

Leno has a motorcycle powered by a small gas turbine taken from a helicopter. A problem with both is the temperature of the exhaust. The big M-1 Abrams tank is powered by a gas turbine. For wartime use the governors are pulled and they can hit 70 mph on a flat hard packed desert. 68 tons of machinery rolling along at that kind of speed is an impressive feat. The Abrams was originally a Chrysler design. Chrysler was the US Army's traditional tank producer. Do you remember the government loan guarantees to Chrysler in the 1970's? Do you know why the government did that? At that time the Soviets had tanks that they demonstrated could run at 70 mph (they took a tank column down a German autobahn at that speed and got everyone's attention in a big way) and they outgunned every western tank with a big 125 mm gun where the west was using a British made Vickers 105 mm gun. The Abrams was our answer to those new Soviet tanks, but right about the time the Abrams was finishing Operational Testing and entering full rate production, their builder Chrysler was edging into bankruptcy. Those loan guarantees kept Chrysler afloat long enough for the Army to get the Abrams built and fielded in Germany while they arranged for Chryslers military side to be purchased by General Dynamics.

Gas turbines are not very fussy about the fuel they burn. The US Navy powers most of it's combat ships with them and they will burn everything from thick stinky bunker oil to nice clean kerosene and various jet fuels. We mostly run diesel fuels in them (because it's cheap and available) with preservatives for long term storage but we have even run them on soy blends. Electric power utiities have big gas turbine "peakers" they fire up to handle high peak loads during summer afternoons that run on natural gas.

 

[tolivac]

The Solar Divison of Caterpillar makes Gas turbine gensets for very large power users-as standby power,load management power,and yes,peaking power for utilities.These turbine gensets range from 4.5 Mw to 30Mw.Sure would be nice for our transmitter plant rather than the 1.8 MW diesel Cat genset we have to "baby" it to prevent its breakers from tripping from our load.And at Black Hills Power and Light-they have some of the gas turbine gensets mounted on trailers so they can also be used for portable power use-was handy in the flood of '72-they were brand new at that time.The sets are stationed at the Ben French power station for Peak use-and when they are running you can carry a conversation in normal voice tones when the unit is about 50 yds from you quieter than diesel.
Another thing about the turbine motor in the M1 Abrams tank-it can be removed or installed in like less than an hour by technicians in the feild.The tank has a 120MM German built smoothbore gun.It can fire armor peircing sabot rounds or rockets.And anti personell rounds-then its like a GIANT shotgun!!Those loads have Flechette type projectiles in them.

 

[tolivac]

EMD Division used to make 4500 and 6200 HP turbine locomotives-they were great for hauling large coal trains from Wyoming thru the Dakotas and southward.The turbine locomotive looked sort of like an equivelant diesel-but had a tender car following it carrying fuel and lube oil.Seeing a turbine pulled coal train at 75+MPH was a cool and impressive sight!When the train runs by you-almost sounds like an airplane!!The engine EMD used from Allison-was like those used in C130 airplanes!The turbine locos are no longer used-turns out the Diesels are cheaper to purchase and run for train operation.Amtrack had a breif interest in them for pulling passenger trains.The route has to be long and fast for them to pay off.So-its Diesels and electrics for Amtrack-lower cost.

 

[DesertTortoise]

Actually the guns on the Abrams are manufactured in the US but to a German 120 mm design. We use a different caliber gun than used in German tanks (in artillery speak, the "caliber" is a measure of barrel length, a 52 caliber gun for example has a barrel length that is 52 time the barrel diameter, naval guns use the same measure) Our ammo is very different than the German ammo, much higher energy propellant and our penetrators are depleted uranium while the Germans and everyone else use tungsten. Because our propellant is hotter we don't use as long a barrel as the Germans use on their Leopard 2's but we still get more muzzle velocity. Add the DU penetrator and our rounds can defeat the best Russian reactive armor while the German round probably cannot (but our best round to my knowledge still cannot defeat the armor on an Abrams, in Iraq when one of our tanks was disabled by an IUD and we could not recover it safely, the only weapon we had that could reliably blow an Abrams up was a Maverick missile, neither a Hellfire or Javelin anti tank-round or another Abrams could do the job, pretty amazing)

Btw, those German tank crews can drop that MAN V-12 diesel in under half an hour. Pretty much everyone's modern tank uses a "power pack" that allows a complete engine to be yanked in the field in half an hour or less. That is by design. On our destroyers the gas turbines are raised and lowered through the exhaust stacks. New technologies in superconducting electric motors and AC power generation are allowing naval architects to locate the gas turbines and AC generator sets in the superstructure (gas turbines are light so stability is not harmed), reducing the space consumed by big turbine intakes and exhausts (those eat up a lot of space in a ship if you put the gas turbines down inside the hull so they can operate reduction gears to the shafts) and locate the electric motors right at the shaft. You get more space for weapons, and you don't have big voids in the hull for engineering spaces so the hull can be better compartmented to absorb combat damage. You can use light weight composite armors to protect the gas turbines and locating them in the superstucture makes them simple to remove. The Coast Guard icebreaker Healy has it's diesels located in the superstructure where they can be slid out sideways on skids. Instead of having to do complex overhauls on port in a cramped engine room you can swap diesels in a few hours pier side and the overhaul is accomplished in a shop.

 

[tolivac]

DU ammo-these are now being phased out becuase of radioactivity and toxins after the round has been fired into a target.The idea is to try to go back to tungsten.the Navy is discontinuing use of DU products.At my workplace there are several guys that used to work for the Navy-some of the things they couldn't discuss.They talked a lot about the gas Turbine engines.Interesting info about the Abram gun.The Germans had discarding sabot AP ammo even during WW2!!they used them primarily to defeat the concrete pillboxes at that time.I remember seeing an article about a pillbox that was penetrated by a German discarding sabot round-3 Ft reinforced concrete-then another 20ft into the dirt pillbox floor.Now similar ammo is available for shotguns and even airguns.The bullets or pellets are lead,zinc,or copper.I have some sabot shotgun shells and they do shoot well!And even accurate to 100 yds.
New container ships use very large diesels-up to 50,000 Hp.Like the turbine better.Now if we could only get one of those Solar turbine gensets for our transmtter site-would be nice-wouldn't have to baby the Diesel we now have.I have suggested it many times about the turbine-they don't want to spend the money.

 

[DesertTortoise]

My work is in the weapons world. DU has indeed been phased out of the Navy inventory except for the 120 mm APFSDS round fired by the M-1A1s and A2s or the Marine Corps. For defeating tank armor, especially the latest generations of reactive armor like Kactus, DU is still preferred. Tungsten does not self sharpen like DU. The tip of a tungsten penetrator mushrooms as it digs through enemy armor, slowing the penetrator and dissipating it's energy before it can penetrate fully, which it has to do to defeat the enemy tank. Only when the penetrator comes through the other side does it create the spalling and hot jet of superheated gases that kill the crew and set the tank on fire. Without penetration, nothing bad happens. DU self sharpens as it digs into enemy armor and has much greater penetration for a given weight penetrator and impact velocity. The risks of using DU are outweighed by the tactical advantages it endows. For defeating other tanks, tungsten is not as effective. This is part of the reason the Germans use a higher caliber (longer barrel) main gun on their latest Leopard variants than we do on the M-1A2. They are hoping the extra muzzle velocity overcomes a weaker penetrator. The energetics (explosive materials ) of their propellant charges are not as advanced as ours either so they are not getting the muzzle velocities we are.

It was the Russians who pioneered discard sabot rounds as I understand it, during WWII.

 

[DesertTortoise]

Sulzer builds container ship diesel engines with as much as 108,000 shp on a single shaft at 80-105 rpm. Eight or nine cylinders in line with bores of around 3 meters and strokes in the neighborhood of ten meters. One such engine is used to power single shaft container ships up to 150,000 tons, 50% more tonnage than a Nimitz class CVN. The prop turns at crank rpm. No reduction gears are used. To reverse the ship the engine has to be stopped and gearing to the cam manually reversed to turn the engine the other direction, then the engine has to be restarted. They are designed for a narrow speed range in the mid to high 20s knots. The newest designs can use both liquid fuels and LNG. As container ships increase in size, the time it takes to load and unload them has increased in kind. To maintain existing schedules with longer in port turn around times, transit times have had to decrease, demanding higher speeds out of container ships. The newest and largest of these have really magnificent high speed hull designs and cruise as high as 25-27 knots, which is moving right along by cargo ship standards.

 

[tolivac]

Looks like DU is now only going to be used for tank rounds.This makes sense.Good info there,DT.Good that someone else is interersted in weapons.They are designed to destroy-but as machines very interesting.
Glad you remembered the brand of Diesels the new container ships carry.SULZER!!Could not remember that last night-and the HP of these is increasing.And the diesel motor turns at prop RPM-so no intermediate gearing required.Interesting on how these are reversed.A process you can't do instantly.Of course a 150,000 ton ship will not manuever or stop on a dime!!To bad so many hobbyist boaters don't understand that and don't stay out of ships way.
And on the tank guns--interesting how the kinetic energy projectiles are still with us--"solid shot"!THEY WORK!!!!You have a hard,dense,heavy peice of metal flying at a target at high speeds-the target will give--essentually modern AP loads can be considered a high speed flying cold chisel!The APDS round can be considred a tankers WORST nightmare!no place to hide when the round strikes!!!no place to go!!!

 

[DesertTortoise]

Yet our best APFSDS round won't defeat the frontal armor on an M-1A2. Nor will Hellfire or Javelin anti-tank missiles. When one of our Abrams was disabled someplace in Iraq where we could not recover it and the alternative was to destroy it, only the old reliable Maverick had enough energy to do the job.

 

[DesertTortoise]

Diesel electric propulsion overcome the inability of those big diesels to reverse quickly. Hook the diesel to big AC gen set and turn the props with an AC motor. You can reverse an AC motor rapidly while leaving the diesel run at it's most economical speed turning the AC gen set. Using azipods instead of shafts puts the motor outside the hull in a big pod with the prop. You can rotate the azipod in lieu of a rudder. Shippers want even larger container ships, implying even more shp and higher cruise speeds to maintain their schedules, but that big Sulzer engine standing five decks high has reached an engineering plateau. Now you have to go multiple shafts, basically doubling up two traditional container cargo ship power plants side by side, which gets expensive and increases staffing. You start to loose the economies of scale that way.

Homopolar DC propulsion is even more interesting, and it is definitely coming, probably first to nuclear submarines.

Btw, if you have enough horsepower and reverse pitch props you can stop a big ship in twice it's own length from speeds in excess of 40 kts. I have seen it done and it's quite dramatic. You have minty green water boiling up everywhere under the ship. As big as a Nimitz class is, they don't need miles to maneuver or stop. They turn so hard the stern is skidding out sideways and the whole ship heels a good 15 degrees. They are amazingly agile for something so big and heavy. On a deployment I was sitting five decks above the water in the helo control cab of an ammo ship with the Nimitz scheduled to come alongside for an UNREP. She was a spec on the horizon in the binoculars when I first saw her. We were cruising at about eight knots. Eight minutes later she was alongside us. She was cooking too, with a bow wave as high as her anchors until almost on us, then she slowed down smartly and came alongside us. That is some ship handling.

 

[super-sweeper]

Ah, radioactive ammunition! D.T, know if they still make Mini-Nukes for the infamous Nuclear Rifle? 

 

[DesertTortoise]

There were (maybe still are) 155 mm nuclear artillery rounds. They could be fired from any 155 mm (6.1 inch) artillery piece. That warhead, the W48, is the smallest nuclear warhead I am aware of.

Man, talk about pucker, sticking a live nuke into the barrel of a big artillery piece and lighting the fuse! Makes my rectum clench to think about it, much less actually doing it.

Briefcase nukes? Look at where uranium and plutonium are on the periodic table. Those are awfully heavy elements. You could certainly package a nuke into the size of a briefcase, but it would weigh a hundred pounds. You wouldn't bee-bop down the street with it like it was full of paper and a lap top, plus you would roast your cookies royally.

 

[tolivac]

Diesel electric-this has been used in the Railroad industry for a long time-from ALCO,GE and EMD.First it started with DC traction motors-now its to VFD AC traction motors.EMD has a VFD drive for each wheel truck on their locomotives,GE has a VFD set on each axle.The GE design is preferred.The gas turbine locomoitves used electric traction-the turbine engine-like the diesel-turned the generator.Would love to see the ships you described doing their emergency stops or reversing-must be an impressive sight.The locos stop by both regenerative braking and mechanical brakes.The hoods you see on top of the locos contain radiators for the engine and braking resistence grids.After a hard stop you can see the heat waves coming off the grids even with the grid fans running.And watching a pair of EMD locos starting a resting freight train is a neat site and sounds-the roar of the diesel engines-the growl of their traction motors!Each traction motor-one per axle-DC or AC is rated at 600 or 900 hp.When I used to ride the VRE commuter train to and from work in Wash DC-that sight of the freight train that paused at the commuter stop for crew change was an awesome experience!
The nuke artillery round-Have a video somewhere in my collection of one being fired-interesting-and kinda frightening!!!You hope everything goes right!!!The shell was covered by a tarp while being loaded into the breech of the gun by its crew.So you didn't get to see what it looked like.Now lets hope someone doesn't want to use that for deer hunting!!!
And the suitcase nukes-good point-since Uranium and plutonium are dense matreials-you would need your forklift to carry the "breifcase"!And you would have to have a really long delay fuse if that was going to be a MANUALLY planted device!!!NO THANKS!!!Just don't think nuclear explosives would be good or safe for that type of use.
For the train braking--emergency braking--DC motors yes the grids are going to be smokin-the train is likely to derail!!!And with AC motors-they are emergency braked by feeding DC into them-usually a bank of batteries on the loco is used for that purpose. The electric braking in locos only works at high speeds-at the very low speeds the mechanical loco and train brakes are used.Its like in older DeWalt radial arm saws-the electric brake box and button-it just simply fed rectified AC voltage into the motor to stop the blade when the brake button was pushed.
Oh yes-EMD has used their Diesel gensets for industrial,and standby use as stationary sets.Same with the "traction" motors-every thing from driving tugboats to industrial use and large winches!

 

[DesertTortoise]

The US Navy had steam electric warships before WWII. Many old WWI era battleships and the two Lexington class aircraft carriers had big DC drive motors and their steam turbines drove big DC generators. The shortcoming of electric drive motors was they could never generate as much shp in the same amount of space that geared turbines could, especially after the Navy perfected 650 psi steam plants and made them reliable (that was considered cutting edge tech in the 1930s, the Kriegsmarine tried it and had horrible reliability, the Brits and other navies never went there so their ships were slower and needed to be refueled more often than ours).

The Navy tried electric propulsion again in the 1970s with an experimental sub. It had the same water cooled reactor used in other Navy subs of that era, but the turbines drove a DC generator and the prop was turned by a DC moor. It was supremely quiet, which was the whole point, but lacked the speed required of a front line attack sub. Natural circulation reactors made this power plant unnecessary for that era.

Now as subs grow quieter, the Navy is looking to superconducting homopolar DC drive motors for submarine propulsion. My old room mate is the Program Manager at General Atomics on this project.

I am very aware of the history of diesel electric drive on locomotives. I am a little bit of a rail fan. I paid for grad school driving gasoline tank trucks. The loading rack of the Shell refinery in Wilmington CA was next to a rail line. I always got a big thrill when a string of four big SD45MAC locos powered up to drag a long string of double stack container cars out of the port. What a sound and what a feeling. Their heavy throb reverberated your whole body. Now I pass Mojave regularly watching big freights starting the long pull up Tehachapi Pass, or coasting down the hill on their dynamic brakes, whining loudly but no heavy diesel throb. It's also fun to run alongside the tracks in the flat lands after the pass, riding the motorcycle on Edison Highway pacing a big freight at 75 mph. If it's flat and the tracks are good they roll right along.

Read about the big derailment at the bottom of Cajon Grade some three decades ago. The engineer was given the wrong weight for the load he was carrying out of the chloride mine in Trona. In reality his train was 50% heavier than he thought. He did all the calcs right for the weight he thought he had, entered the grade at the right speed and used his dynamic brakes properly. Nothing would have stopped that train at that point, and it was doing over 100 mph when it came off the rails at the bottom of the grade, flattening homes and killing most of the crew in the process. The wheel brakes were worn off and flat spotted from trying in vain to slow the train. AC drive motors and AC power generation were a huge technical leap in rail roading. What is fun is the Russians still make locos using opposing piston two stroke diesels very much like a WWII era Alco locomotive, which they acquired during the war on Lend Lease. Everywhere else in the world is using a derivative of a GE or EMD locomotive, even China.