Quote:
Originally Posted by Big Dave
Both th R-3360 and the Sabre were maintenance nightmares.
|
If you read up on the history of turbo-compounding, though, you find that the reason it's no longer used is that it was more efficient - both thermodynamically, and from a mechanical/maintenance perspective - to get rid of the IC engine half, and just run the turbine. And thus the turbo-prop was born :-)
Quote:
|
Don't you ever bother to wonder why? Do you think that hundreds of thousands of engineers over the years were complete blockheads?
|
Sure, I wonder why. And I don't think the engineers were blockheads (especially as you can find records of plenty of engineering prototypes that worked quite well). I do think the management left a lot to be desired.
Quote:
|
Or that some deep, dark conspiracies kept thee ideas inthe shade?
|
When I look at the currrent automotive scene, the conspiracy theory seems pretty plausible. Is there a better reason why it's so hard to find even halfway decent cars? Quite aside from all these alternative powerplant ideas, the obvious way to build a fuel-efficient car (and one that's fun to drive, too) is to make it small and light. There have been a few of those over the years, but they're the MGs and Lotuses out on the margins, while the mainstream automakers spend large sums of money persuading people that big & heavy is where it's at.
I doubt the deep & dark, and I suppose the conspiracy part depends on your definition of the word. It seems more like a bunch of short-sighted idiots blundering through life than an actual conspiracy, but it'd be a piss-poor excuse for an engineer who couldn't do better than anything has comes out of Detroit since the end of WWII.