car

244 Articles

’90s Ford Gets Shift Paddles And A Digital Dash Upgrade

May 12, 2022 by 7 Comments

The EA Falcon took Ford’s popular Australian sedan line into the 1990s, even if it gave way to the EB Falcon by the end of 1991. Few would call it high tech, but it introduced several innovations to the platform that were very of its time. One hacker, however, has taken a humble EA Falcon and given it a set of homebrewed modern upgrades.

The maroon EA Falcon has scored a Barra heart transplant as well as some nifty digital upgrades.

The example in question is an EA Fairmont Ghia, which featured a handful of high-tech displays in the dash cluster, which was very on trend in the late 80s and early 90s. This dash has seen much revision, however, and now features a large TFT display and a smaller OLED unit, both of which show various vital statistics for the car. The screens have been neatly hacked in, one as part of the tachometer, the other replacing the original fuel and temperature gauges. With the data displayed on the screen instead, there’s no need for the original dials. Continue reading “’90s Ford Gets Shift Paddles And A Digital Dash Upgrade” →

Tech In Plain Sight: Car Doors

March 24, 2022 by 54 Comments

There are a lot of common phrases that no longer mean what they used to. For example, you may have used the term “turn on the lights.” What are you actually turning? Where does this come from? Old gas lights had a valve that you did physically turn, and the phrase simply stuck around. Kids of the 90s have no idea why they “dial” a phone number. What about “roll up the car window”?  You don’t often encounter old-fashioned car doors with manual locks or a crank to roll up the window. These days it is all electronic. But have you ever wondered what’s going on inside there?

Let’s take a look at car doors, how they keep you safe, and how that sheet of glass slides into place, sealing against wind, rain, and noise. Of course, there are fancy car doors like suicide doors or sexy-but-impractical gull wing doors. At least one concept car even has a door that disappears under the vehicle when it opens; check out the video below. But even garden-variety doors are marvels of mechanical engineering. A compact structure that is secure and — mostly — reliable. Let’s look at how they do that.

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Lego Car Demonstrates Proper Use Of Ball Wheels

March 23, 2022 by 22 Comments

Wheels are typically just simple cylinders, though fans of I, Robot (2004) may have admired the handsome vehicle featuring ball wheels that was driven by the protagonist. YouTuber [Brick Technology] decided to evaluate the use of spherical wheels with a Lego car design.

The benefit of ball wheels is that they can turn in multiple directions when driven on different axes, with the benefit of improved maneuverability. With a set of drive rollers spring loaded with rubber bands pushing against the 52mm Duplo spheres, the ball wheels can be rotated both forward and back as well as left and right. This gives the Lego car a rather neat strafing ability, as well as the ability to spin on the spot or steer in a more traditional fashion. The car is controlled via smartphone, thanks to BuWizz modules that allow remote control of the Lego motors.

Ball wheels are unlikely to catch on in mainstream automobiles; the mechanical complexity required to drive them makes such designs impractical for cars. However, omniwheels and similar designs have found some applications on forklifts and other such slow-speed applications where the ability to move in any direction is very useful. Video after the break.

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China Loves Battery Swapping EVs, But Will They Ever Make It Here?

February 9, 2022 by 122 Comments

Electric vehicles promise efficiency gains over their gas-fuelled predecessors, but the issue of recharging remains a hurdle for many eager to jump on board with the technology. The problem is only magnified for those that regularly street park their vehicles or live in apartments, without provision to charge a vehicle overnight at home.

Battery swapping promises to solve that issue, letting drivers of EVs change out their empty battery for a freshly charged one in a matter of minutes. The technology has been widely panned and failed to gain traction in the US.

However, as it turns out, battery swapping for EVs is actually thing in China, and it’s catching on at a rapid rate.

Continue reading “China Loves Battery Swapping EVs, But Will They Ever Make It Here?” →

A Bugatti Without The Inconvenience Of Wealth

February 8, 2022 by 52 Comments

There are many of us who might have toyed with the idea of building a car, indeed perhaps more than a few readers might even have taken to the road in a machine of their own creation. Perhaps it was a design of your own, or maybe a kit car. We think that very few of you will have gone as far as [Vũ Văn Nam] and his friends in Vietnam. In their latest video they compress a year’s work into 47 minutes as they craft a beautifully built replica of a Bugatti supercar. If you haven’t got a few million dollars but you’ve got the time, this is the video for you.

The skill involved in making a scratch-built car is impressive enough, but where there guys take it to the next level is in their clay modeling to create the moulds for the fibreglass bodywork. Taking their local clay and a steel frame, they carefully hand-sculpt the car with the skill of an Italian master stylist, before clothing it in fibreglass and removing the clay. The resulting fibreglass shell can be used to make the finished bodywork, which they do with an exceptional attention to detail. It might be a steel-tube home-made spaceframe with a wheezy 4-cylinder Toyota engine behind the driver instead of a 1000 HP powerhouse, but it surely looks the part!

Looking at the construction we’re guessing it wouldn’t pass an Individual Vehicle Approval test for roadworthiness where this is being written, but at the same time it wouldn’t be impossible to incorporate the extra work as this is a proper road-going car. The video is below the break, and though the few pieces of dialogue in it are in Vietnamese you probably won’t need to turn on the auto-translate to follow it.

This isn’t their first fake supercar, there’s already a Ferrari in this particular stable. Meanwhile if you’re of a mind to make a car, consider the world’s most hackable vehicle.

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Hacking A Proper Dash Into The Tesla Model 3

January 28, 2022 by 60 Comments

The Tesla Model 3 and Model Y are popular electric vehicles that dispense with some of the usual provisions you’d expect in a typical car. Namely, there’s no dash cluster in front of the driver; instead, all information is solely displayed on the center console screen. [Nick Nguyen] wasn’t a fan of this setup, and decided to hack together a dash cluster of his own. 

The CANdash works in a simple fashion, snooping the Tesla’s CAN bus for all the information relevant to the vehicle’s operation. It’s capable of displaying everything from speed to the remaining range in the battery, while also allowing the user to keep an eye on things like coolant temperatures and whether the Tesla Autopilot system is currently available.

The build relies on a CANserver, an ESP32-based device specifically built for hooking up to the CAN bus on Tesla vehicles and sharing the data externally. The data can then be piped wirelessly to an Android phone running CANdash to display all the desired information. With the help of an aftermarket dash clip or a 3D printed custom mount, the phone can then be placed behind the steering wheel to display data in the usual location.

It’s a simple, straightforward hack that gives Tesla owners a useful feature that they’re otherwise missing from the factory. The US automakers cars are proving to be fertile ground for hackers and DIYers, with one man recently saving thousands on a battery swap with a simple mod. Video after the break.

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Does This Lead Make My Car Look Fat?

January 5, 2022 by 64 Comments

When looking at the performance of a vehicle, weight is one of the most important factors in the equation. Heavier vehicles take more energy to accelerate and are harder to stop. They’re also more difficult to control through the corners. Overall, anything that makes a vehicle heavier typically comes with a load of drawbacks to both performance and efficiency. You want your racecar as light as possible.

However, now and then, automakers have found reason to intentionally add large weights to vehicles. We’ll look at a couple of key examples, and discuss why this strange design decision can sometimes be just what the engineers ordered.

Continue reading “Does This Lead Make My Car Look Fat?” →