On Bad Engineering (Part II)

Previously I wrote that the Tacoma Narrows Bridge was an example of, well frankly bad luck more than anything else. Lets face it, if Barney Elliott had not been around at the time, there would have been no footage of the failure of the bridge and then the failure of the bridge would not have won the notoriety it gained.

Today I would like to look at legitimately bad design in the form of the Bugatti Veyron. Here is a thing that is utterly, completely devoid of practical use for the improvement of human life. On the contrary, because it is such a fuel guzzling, traffic inducing hog, there is nothing about this machine that justifies its existence.

Consider the achievements of this machine, it has a 1001hp or (depending on the model) 1200hp engine. Is this engine some marvel of new and novel design? No, heavens of course not, it's simply a 8L W-16 (two side-by-side V8s) with four turbo charges. In other words it's four 2L 250hp turbo charged engines that have been glued together. A marvel of cam timing, except even there, only two overhead cams, so a total of four cam shafts are required. But when you think about it, a 250hp 2L four cyclinder turbo charged engine, nothing fancy there.

Well it is true the Vayron is fast, 240km/h, except consider this, the TGV has a top speed of 320km/h and unlike the Vayron can actually sustain such a speed for prolonged periods (without a traffic citation or a blown tyre - to say nothing of the fact that there is only one oval, I know of, big enough for the Vayron to reach full speed on.)

Ah yes, but a Vayron is more direct, you have to wait for the train if you take the TGV. Well yes, but then at least the TGV only stops for scheduled passenger loading and unloading. The Vayron, well pedal to the metal will exhaust the 100L tank in 12 minutes. So really highways of the world get fleeting glances of this ludicrous machine, the Vayron's natural home is a gas station. Heck even at "normal" highway driving, it managed to suck away 18L per 100km, or 13mpg (US gallons). That means that while the 100L tank might make it a full 556km on the highway the fact is this is a function of the swollen size of the tank. A normal small car typically has a 40 or 60L tank. If we go with those numbers the 60L tank would last just 330km, and heaven knows what city driving would get.

Yes but the point of the car is speed!

Okay, conceded as a recreation for small boys and rich men with a mid-life crisis, the Veyron fills a market niche nicely. But for an engineer wishing to push the envelope, the only significant achievement in the Vayron are the $10,000 tyres. As far as I can tell the rest of the vehicle is a complete waste and in a peak oil environment, the Veyron is a criminal waste.

Thus the Veyron, for being hailed as an achievement in engineering, that it is not, for being as wasteful, more so actually, than a Ford GT (a car that won infamy on the hit BBC car review TV show Top Gear for being a gas guzzler), gets the status of second worst engineering design that I can think of!

My next post, why I believe the Space Shuttle is an example of the various worst possible design.

On Bad Engineering

Recently on the bike club website someone got all excited about an auto review of the Bugatti Veyron and that got me thinking, movements in engineering that we, well us engineers, should hang our head in shame for. Where to begin? Well clearly Tacoma Narrows has to go down in any list of bad engineering moments, for failure to account for the then unheard phenomena of aeroelastic flutter, we cannot really go gang busters on the engineering of that bridge. Lets see, there is the Bugatti Veyron, at a staggering €1.9m and gobbling up it's entire 100L of gasoline in 12minutes at full power the Vayron's natural home, the gas station, has to go down as one of the silliest ideas in engineering. But truly the worst design ever has to be the Space Shuttle.

But lets rewind for a second and review the entrants.

The Tacoma Narrows Bridge was built in the 1930s in Washington State, it opened on July 1 (Dominion Day!) 1940 and was destroyed by 42 mph (67km/h) winds on November 7 1940. The bridge lasted an entire 129 days before it failed the result of aeroelastic flutter. An area business owner shot a film of the bridge's collapse, in the book Fountains of Paradise, Arthur C. Clarke called that film the most expensive 11 minutes of movie making ever. (The book, Fountains of Paradise was written before the making of the James Cameron movie Titanic.)

Becuase there were no deaths in the failure of the bridge, and becuase the bridge failed for entirely new and novel reasons (in 1940 no one had heard of the concept of aeroelastic flutter, this bridge, Galloping Gertie as the locals called it, opened up a brand new field of study) the Tacoma Narrows Bridge does not actually represent bad engineering, just bad luck that someone happened to be around who owned a camera.

Next post, why the Bugatti Veyron is bad engineering, but not the worst.

On Club Rides and Other Details from the Lake Simcoe Ride

Yesterday's post was long. (I actually started writing it from my Blackberry at the Tim Hortons near lake Simoce, originally it was written in the present tense... yes I know, my grammar sucks, but hey this isn't the front page of the Globe and Mail, then again my grammar is better than theirs!)

Anyway I got tired of writing the previous post and just sort of stopped at 16'th Ave. and Ninth Line. Now I believe I noted, Ninth, below 16'th is a really crummy road, far too much traffic, at least on a Saturday, but that said, I have to wonder what a Sunday would be like.

But back to my story, the ride into the city was mostly fine. Right up until I got to Kingston and the Danforth split (just west of Midland). I was tired and rolling into a bit of a headwind, after 180km, almost all of them alone, I had decided to take things easy. I ultimately got to the traffic light by the Variety Village pool just east of Birchmount rolling along at only about 30km/h, this is a frequent sprint section where everyone in the club goes hells bells gang busters and burns whatever they have left, I basically had nothing left. Anyway I caught a red light and queued up in the traffic, just as the light changed and I started clipping in some guys from Hello Velo tore past me. I should have just ignored them.

Something about being passed, I saw red and cranked it up. Of course without a draft and 180km already done, I was in no condition to sprint, but then they caught a red light and I was far enough back that it turned green just as I arrived. I hammered and they did catch me, but not for a little bit. As they passed the second guy signalled to me to get on his wheel. So I figured, a free draft.

Just after I joined the paceline the guy in back started to pull forward, the guy in front started dropping back. Well we all know the rules, keep the gap small, so I did, I knew this would ultimately mean I'd likely have to pull soon but I recover fast. (And I was only about 2km from home now.)

Then the guy who had been in front starts dropping right behind his buddy's wheel nearly cutting me off and almost forcing me onto the sidewalk. I have to admit I was more shaken by the sheer bad handling of one of Paul Parker's guys than I was by all the bad motorists. After that fiaso I dropped back and stayed away from the two Helo Velo guys. If one is not riding among reasonably skilled riders, it is probably best to ride alone.

Sunday I could not ride long, had to be home early, but I did ride with the guys. (I'd love to rant here about one of the guys in the club, who shall remain nameless, but I'm a lot more mature than that. Don't worry, if you are reading this blog, you aren't that guy.)

Anyway here are some pictures from that ride.

On A Lake Simcoe Ride

I met QB at the Grinder at 6am Saturday (June 18) morning. The weather was supposed to be cool so after getting my cloths on I had to take it all off and put on knee warmers. I don't think QB was waiting too long he was adjusting his cadence sensor when I got to the Grinder.

QB is something powerful, I really had to push myself to keep up. (In my defence QB would only do one third of what I had planned for my own legs.) QB was also tapering, he'll be doing an Iron Man in Nice next Sunday. (Lucky #$@&!) Oh and QB if you do read this, good luck! Not that he'd need it.

QB and I went up Leslie, most of the pulling coming from th guy on the tri bike (QB). Just past 19th Ave there is a lovely little hill a tri group was climbing, we powered to the top, QB turned back and I kept going, clobbering the tri guys at a rate of six or seven a minute.

As I approached Stouffville road one of the tri guys pulled past me. I jumped on his wheel as he gradually slowed down to a painfully slow pace. I got out from behind him and powered away, after a time he surged past me and I grabbed his wheel again, yet again his strength failed him and I went out front. This silly surge and die was driving me crazy and I was loosing interest in the guy's worthless draft when we got to a technical decent with tight turns around a pond (Haynes Lake) just north of Bethesda Side Rd. I am not the most technically proficient rider out there but at least I can hold my line round a corner which was a hell of a lot more than this jerk could do. I would try to pass right, he'd suddenly weave right, no warning. I would try to pass left, he'd weave left. The hill levelled out I scrambled passed him and went gangbusters up a hill. I figured he'd surge (I'm not a particularly good hill climber) and drop me then I could ride comfortably for a while. Sadly he was a weaker climber than me!

Eventually on a rolling flat the tri guy did overtake me and I just watched him hammer past me.

Despite efforts to keep up a nice gap, I had nearly snapped all the distance between us when luckily the tri guy turned at St. John's side road. I continued to New Market and turned east on Mulock (Vivian).

I continued North on Warden, occasionally passing, cyclists. At Boyers Side I had planned to turn left (west), except Boyers was surfaced in loose gravel and looked completely unfit for road bike. Instead I went west on Base Line Road, a busier road to be sure but I only had to use it for 2km. Then I took Deer Park Drive to Varney (there's a short steep climb on Deer Park) and Varney to the south Shore of Lake Simcoe. I first saw the lake at 8:55 in the morning. I completed my run of Lake Drive not very long after and was queued up at the Tim Hortons at 9:20.

I learned a valuable lesson about myself. I need one supplemented bottle to get to Lake Simcoe and two bottles, one plain water and one supplemented to get to Stouffville. It is also important to take breaks. I stopped to rest at the Tim Hortons for about a half hour before continuing. The result was I was pretty strong for the journey south.

I set out down McCowan Road, which on a Sunday is devoid of cars, but not Saturday. Mind you, it's not like, say Kingston Road which is chalk full of cars, McCowan has some traffic, but I am talking about maybe two or three cars a minute as as one gets further south, especially below Ravenshoe Road the traffic on McCowan drops off almost completely.

I modified the route to Stoufville, instead of turning at Vivian I only took McCowan as far as Herald Rd (Green Lane to the west). Herald was almost empty, I think on my 4km trek of Herald Rd there were perhaps five encounters with cars (almost as many encounters with fellow cyclists.) The first bit of Herald, from McCowan to Highway 48 was a dense pack gravel that stuck to the pavement, it was not the most pleasant thing to ride on, but not all that bad. After highway 48 Herald was a delight, the one thing, I planed and did make my south (right) turn on Ninth Line, but one can easily overshoot Ninth Line, there is no stop sign for Herald Rd traffic (unlike Ninth Line) and the sign is very small.

Ninth Line is quiet possibly the nicest road in Ontario for a cyclist, there are no, and I really mean not a single car, except the ones going east/west on Davis and Vivian, all the way to Aurora Rd. There were a few lovely rollers, the last one before Vivian was positively brutal. Someone like Thi Ng (the mountain goat!) would have loved it, I was hurting, but it still felt pretty good.

As for the rest of the ride, I tore down Ninth below Bloomington a little above the posted Speed Limit (50km/h) and yet got passed -in more than a few cases dangerously close- by a good many cars. I was in Stoufville by about 11:30 and took Reesor Rd (or 10'th line) to 16'th Ave. There was a group of roadies there who looked lost. I asked if they needed help. They declined and I decided to try 16'th Ave. I took 16'th to Ninth Line again, unlike Ninth up near Vivian, here there was a ton of traffic, and I was happy to turn east again on 14'th Ave.

In all I rode 184.6km in about six hours 10 minutes, I averaged 29.9km/h and burned off over 7500 calories. In all I can think of few better ways to spend a Saturday morning.

On Recovery

Last week the weather was astoundingly good, up until Saturday, naturally! That said I did manage to punch in a few miles. Remarkably in the period since I started riding Abigail (just over a week ago) I've already logged nearly 350km, plus I rode to Lake Simcoe, on Sunday, I used Jordan, so in just over a week I've logged over 500km and I'm not even riding to work in Richmond Hill anymore. (Which in the nice weather is a bit of a shame, but then in the lousy weather I now have the option of transit or the beater bike.)

Of course I also rode to Simcoe with a few guys, we took, well I took the camera so there's only one picture of me, the one where the timer was used. Jason, Patrick, Ryan and I covered, well actually Jason had to go to his aunt in New Market so he only did about 150km but the rest of us did about 180km of beautiful rolling southern Ontario. I have to admit, and I'd like to think this is somewhat big of me, Jason, Pat and Ryan are all much stronger than me. Period. I've got the prettiest bikes, but at the end of the day their engines are way better than mine.

Well that was a surprisingly easy admission to make. Still upsets me when I get my rear end so seriously handed to me, I mean the guys were nice and all, they waited for me a bunch of times, but it's still upsetting to get clobbered so consistently. I want to be the nice guy who has to keep stopping to wait for someone, instead I'm the one panting and huffing and puffing to the top of the hill while everyone else is leaning on their bars watching me from the top of the aforesaid hill.

On the final part of the jouney home we rode over some railway tracks, they did horrible things to my back tyre. Ultimately I replaced both the front and back tyre. But I took some pictures when I got home, those cysts on my tyre are disturbing. From now on I will dismount to cross those tracks.



If I still worked in Richmond Hill at least I would be packing in more miles, but I guess part of the problem is this past winter my base really fell apart. I was so busy with the move and everything I just did not have time to work on my cardio strength.

Anyway Monday I rode to work. After spending 180km on Jordan Abigail just did not feel right, her saddle is too low (didn't stop me from clobbering the cars on Danforth Ave.) and the bars are too high. I raised the seatpost a little last night (Monday evening) but the weather was iffy. I woke up this morning to the sound of thunder, loud thunder.

I suppose I really ought to ride to work even in weather like this, but it's very easy in the rain to call it a recovery day. Still six bucks to get from Main and Danforth to Davisville and Mount Pleasent? Damn, I can ride that in under 15 minutes, mostly obeying traffic law, the subway took over 30 minutes and it was subway only.

This is the problem with transit, you have to stop a bajillion times and it is not direct. At least I do need some recovery time, so it's not all bad, but still, the six dollars is offensively expensive. I am litterally paying $0.33/km if someone paid me that kind of money to ride, I'd quit my job and take up residence in a very nice split level in Rosedale!

On New Rides and Burning Too Fast

Lets see, where to begin? Well I got a new ride, I've got her all road worthy and damn is she fast. Here are some pictures.

So a little about my new ride, first I'm calling her Abigail, which apparently means her father's joy in Hebrew - yes I did go to Hebrew school (and got yelled at by Israeli teachers) from grade four to seven but they never did teach me the meaning of the word Abigail, that job ultimately fell to Wikipedia.

Anyway some technical specifications. First she is a Specialized S-Works Roubaix, 2011 model year. But with some serious modifications, for one thing, a careful review of the above pictures one ought to be able to see I added a chain catcher. In addition, I remove the Specialized compact (50/34) crank - I'm sorry it is pretty, but Specialized, your cranks suck! (Had one on Alex - the TT bike on the right, but the crank is not rigid and it keeps dropping the chain back to 39 when I try to up-shift to 53.) Anyway I replace the crank, since it's a BB30 bottom bracket, with a SRAM Red 53/39 crank, which is nice, but actually for anyone who buy's SRAM Red, just so you know, their cranks are actually Truvative, of course SRAM owns Truvative - or is it the other way around?- but just so you know, it says SRAM on the side, it's really Truvative.

What else? Oh yes, the wheels, notice, they are Tubular (or sew-up) Fulcrum Racing Zeros. Very fast, actually I think noticeably faster than my Clincher Fulcrum Zeros.

I will say this, having had Jordan to ride for almost a year now, I don't much care for Shimano Shifting, Shimano makes a great drive train, but I think I am going to replace the Dura-Ace shifters and rear deraileur with a SRAM Red shifter system on Abigail.

Of course none of this means I am replacing or phasing out Jordan, it's just that well, as we all well know, the number of bikes we should have is n+1, where n is the number of bikes we currently have! (I haven't decided what the next bike will be, for now, I want more aero wheels for Alex and like I said a better shifting system... oh and new bars, those Specialized bars feel like tooth picks, I want something fat!, for Abby.)

So yes Abby is getting extensively modified from the basic Specialized high end (S-Works is their top of the line) bike, but I really have to tip my hat to the engineers at Specialized, that's a sweet frame they designed. The componentry they stuffed on it, really ruins it though, but at least that is easy to fix.

Anyway even though Abby still had to be properly sized for me, I really wanted to ride her on Saturday. Then it rained in the morning. So that evening, when it became apparent that the rain had stopped and things were dry enough I called up Ian Wilcox and the two of us went went on a hammerfeast. I sprinted like it was nobodies business and had to keep stopping and waiting for Ian, yeah, Abby is fast - or maybe I'm fast when I'm all scrunched up?

Sunday morning it rained so I adjusted Abby, put on a longer, S-Works (of course) stem, and raised the seat post. Then Ian and I went for another ride in the afternoon. It was hot, really hot, and muggy. Somewhere north of the city I flatted and had to do a road side tubular swap. Turns out it actually is not all that hard to swap a tubular tyre roadside, but if you are going to use tape, carry a knife to cut the tape with! (Ooops!) By the time Ian and I got to Stouffville I was dehydrated, riding home - after quite a bit of water and juice, was tough.

Monday and Tuesday I rode Abigail to work. Tuesday on the ride home the GPS went funny and said that on what I estimate to be a 19km route I did over 440km... not bad for half-an-hour of spinning. Tuesday night I went for a club ride, the Tuesday night insanity feast. Here are some pictures.

The guys were fast, damn fast, probably does not help that I have yet to fully recover from Saturday, leave alone Sunday. But they were also more than a little jealous!

Anyway we rode about 75km in about 2 hours 40 minutes, or about an average of 28.5km/h. The Lakeshore bike trail was packed and we just could not get any speed, until we started going up Royal York.

Of course Wednesday my ride to work was painful, probably did not help that there was a gusty head wind. But I managed to get myself riding reasonably quick. On Merton I was doing 35 - a 30 zone when a car recklessly overtook me so that I could catch up with him at the red light. The driver did not look to his right when he saw me. I was so tempted to ask if he enjoyed his reckless driving and that thanks to my GPS I'll only have the cops charge him with speeding. But I have better things to do with my time, like admire a very pretty little bicycle... or three!