What Have You Learned from Tech?

[Newold1]

Over the years I have definitely learned three or four major things.

One,
I don't know nearly half of what I should or would like to learn!
Two,
Don't believe or trust most of what you are given in tech articles or online!
Three,
There are a few souls out there you can know are really experts and very smart at their craft!
Four<
There are a lot of those out there who don't have a fu*king clue, just a lot of useless opinions!

Boil it all down and that's about the whole of it! JMHO

[psychomotors]

Through Chiltons, Petersons Big Book of Auto Repair circa 1982 and various mags such as PHR, Super Chevy,Chevy High Performance, I learned the basics of swapping intakes,carbs, cams etc. The Petersons book taught me how to rebuild a rearend and transmission back in the early 90's.

[SchmidtMotorWorks]

I learned more from experimenting with 1D software like Eng Mod 4T and Dynomation than everything I have read combined.

Coding a cam design software developed a lot of understanding.

Designing castings and foundry tooling in CAD is a game changer when it comes to understanding and engine and all the compromises involved. It makes the arguments about Ford vs Chevy and who copied who seem idiotic.

Working for OEMs helped me understand why they make the decisions they do, and makes the comments that mechanics make about "stupid engineers" sound ignorant.

Working at Honda HPD taught me that about a long list of the things people worry about when they build engines are unimportant or counterproductive to winning races by putting effort into the wrong priorities.

[GARY C]

To some extent I would have to say I learned everything from mag articles.

Not so much following what they did but by being challenged to test their theory and see what works and what doesn't.

In the late 80's, early 90's with no interweb and $7.00 per hour there was not a lot of info available. The good part was there were a lot of publications and most were owned by different company's so you could get 2 or 3 different articles on a subject that were done by different people where now you get 3 versions of the same article.

The best info was usually an interview with a top engine, chassis or drive train builder or a write up on a winning car to get an idea of what they were doing.

If you read enough you could form trends on what was needed for your application like carb, head, intake, header and cam as well as shocks and springs to get you in the ball park in a time when dyno testing was next to impossible and paying a chassis guy wasn't even a thought at our level.

We did mostly street racing or grudge racing so you were more likely to get a race if your car didn't look fast so learning how to make a car fast with a Vac Secondary carb, HEI ignition, stock fuel line diameter, out of date intake, slapper bars or no visible traction aid what so ever made you look like a sitting duck... this was 400 or less cube SBC 1/8 mile mid to low 6 second 3200 to 3400 lb stuff.

[midnightbluS10]

bill,
my friend pete Adema over in LA hooked me up with a two year subscription of RET
magazine just finished going to say it a excellent magazine unfortuntly
90% way over my head
i actually started surfing through speedtalk from page 695 heading towards 1
i will let you guys know how i go in 20 years or so

You're not the only one. I do it regularly. Unfortunately, there's those random threads where I forget I'm in a thread from 2007 and post a reply, only to immediately notice I screwed up.

[midnightbluS10]

I agree, the amount of knowledge at hand is amazing.
Although I must admit I'm gettin' too old to be drinking beer 24 hours a day.

Ken

I have learned about more tech HERE in 5 years than I retained from 50 years of the combined reading of all the magazines in my past.
Although, there is a lot of crap here, too.

+1

I have particularly enjoyed posts by (in no order) Darin Morgan, Larry Meaux, Calvin Elston, Mike Jones, Harold Brookshire, Neels Vannik, Clint Grey, Jon Schmidt, Bill Jones, and many more. I find the camshaft topics most interesting and we were lucky to have the discussions we did with guys like Harold while they were around. I started at this site in 2005 while in high school - I'm lucky in that regard.

Holy crap. I never imagined you were younger than I. Wow! That just makes me have that much more respect for you. I graduated in 1999. Started big in forums around 1997 as a sophomore in high school when I had my first S10. I didn't really participate until around 2001 when I registered at the GMC Syclone & Typhoon forum, syty.net, and s-series.org, the original S10 forum.

[GARY C]

You kids are lucky...You have 800 horse factory street cars...H#ll when I was a kid we had to push our 72 Toyota to school, up hill, both ways... in the snow, with no shoes!

[Newold1]

Geez Gary, that was a brutal time when you consider they didn't even start putting shoes on us school kids until the late seventies!!

[GARY C]

Geez Gary, that was a brutal time when you consider they didn't even start putting shoes on us school kids until the late seventies!!

We got no respect I tell you...

[Casper393W]

I'm just 38 years old and I can see a major difference at the local 1/8th mile track Shadyside Dragway vs back in 1995. In those days if you had a 7 sec street car you were top of the list....back in those days Everyone used open trailers and only the top guys had the enclosed trailers....

We didn't have the internet.... It was magazines and books... To me life was so much more simple in those days....I believe the internet has pushed the sport forward but now it seems everyone is a keyboard racers! Lol

[Dave Koehler]

I'm just 38 years old and I can see a major difference at the local 1/8th mile track Shadyside Dragway vs back in 1995. In those days if you had a 7 sec street car you were top of the list....back in those days Everyone used open trailers and only the top guys had the enclosed trailers....

We didn't have the internet.... It was magazines and books... To me life was so much more simple in those days....I believe the internet has pushed the sport forward but now it seems everyone is a keyboard racers! Lol

Sounds more like the 70s.
In the 60s...what's a trailer?

[fdicrasto]

As far as magazine articles go I can say that I did learn some good stuff back in the 80's and 90's from Circle Track when Smokie Yunick was doing tech articles and later when Jim McFarland was doing tech stuff there. I have been a drag racer since 1963 and have seen and heard a lot of useless info over the decades but can say that there have been some decent, knowledgable tech articles available if you looked hard enough. Oh by the way, Dave's question "whats a trailer" in the 60's. High tech for us was NMW tow hubs, tow bar and offset rear wheels for towing.

[andyf]

Years ago it became obvious that virtually all automotive magazines and T.V. shows were merely product placement vehicles designed to sell a certain product. The one exception appeared to be Super Stock and Drag Illustrated. Their articles at least appeared to be more about tech than product placement. Mr. Vizard's articles were part of that mix. Sadly, that lack of product placement may have led to the magazine's disappearance.

Some of the older snowmobile mags had some good tech in them, but they also soon became product placement publications also.

Here is an article that I just wrote for Car Craft: http://www.hotrod.com/articles/dyno-tes ... -fe-heads/

Is it product placement? Perhaps. I'm reviewing the new Trick Flow FE heads as well as the FAST EFI system and FAST ignition system. I also show people the SCAT rotating assembly (very nice parts BTW), and the Aviaid pan, the cool tunnel wedge intake from BBM, etc. But it isn't really a "product placement" article since it is a real engine that is owned by a guy who is going to bolt it into his '63 1/2 Galaxie. I consider it more of a story than a product placement ad. If you want to know about these parts before you spend your own money then an article like this seems like it would be helpful.

I've had a few FE guys say the dyno numbers are happy but none of them worked on the engine or were at the facility when we did the testing so I'm not sure how they know anything. We deadweighted the dyno and typed in the weather conditions. So if following the mfg instructions on how to run the dyno makes it happy then perhaps it is a happy dyno. I'm always curious how guys who didn't turn a wrench on the engine seem to know what the power should be. Guess they are just smarter than everyone else?

I write 5 or 6 magazine articles a year and I learn new stuff on every article I write. This was my first dual throttle body EFI project so that was a learning experience.

[GARY C]

As far as magazine articles go I can say that I did learn some good stuff back in the 80's and 90's from Circle Track when Smokie Yunick was doing tech articles and later when Jim McFarland was doing tech stuff there. I have been a drag racer since 1963 and have seen and heard a lot of useless info over the decades but can say that there have been some decent, knowledgable tech articles available if you looked hard enough. Oh by the way, Dave's question "whats a trailer" in the 60's. High tech for us was NMW tow hubs, tow bar and offset rear wheels for towing.

I would agree, the pic in my OP, second row to the left was one of the last subscriptions I got and had a multi part article article on head porting done with Dennis Wells of Well Racing that inspired me to play around with that and after talking with Dennis I got some pretty interesting insite... Some of which I could not afford to do but a lot of help for what I was doing.

[GARY C]

Years ago it became obvious that virtually all automotive magazines and T.V. shows were merely product placement vehicles designed to sell a certain product. The one exception appeared to be Super Stock and Drag Illustrated. Their articles at least appeared to be more about tech than product placement. Mr. Vizard's articles were part of that mix. Sadly, that lack of product placement may have led to the magazine's disappearance.

Some of the older snowmobile mags had some good tech in them, but they also soon became product placement publications also.

Here is an article that I just wrote for Car Craft: http://www.hotrod.com/articles/dyno-tes ... -fe-heads/

Is it product placement? Perhaps. I'm reviewing the new Trick Flow FE heads as well as the FAST EFI system and FAST ignition system. I also show people the SCAT rotating assembly (very nice parts BTW), and the Aviaid pan, the cool tunnel wedge intake from BBM, etc. But it isn't really a "product placement" article since it is a real engine that is owned by a guy who is going to bolt it into his '63 1/2 Galaxie. I consider it more of a story than a product placement ad. If you want to know about these parts before you spend your own money then an article like this seems like it would be helpful.

I've had a few FE guys say the dyno numbers are happy but none of them worked on the engine or were at the facility when we did the testing so I'm not sure how they know anything. We deadweighted the dyno and typed in the weather conditions. So if following the mfg instructions on how to run the dyno makes it happy then perhaps it is a happy dyno. I'm always curious how guys who didn't turn a wrench on the engine seem to know what the power should be. Guess they are just smarter than everyone else?

I write 5 or 6 magazine articles a year and I learn new stuff on every article I write. This was my first dual throttle body EFI project so that was a learning experience.

Thanks for posting that, I never had an issue with product placement as long as the test was not fudged.

I know a few people in the industry so I understand the tech writer is also having to deal with a company that has to make a living to keep bringing people publications.

It's good that tech writers are willing to come on here and share what they are doing.