1937 Alvis Speed 25

In the golden days of pre-war motorsport, when the scent of high-octane fuel lingered like a promise in the air, Richard Rowlands’ 1937 Alvis Speed 25 was a monarch of the racetrack. Its sleek lines and roaring engine had once danced on the edge of possibility, leaving competitors trailing in its thunderous wake.

But fate, fickle as the British weather, had a cruel jest in store for the Alvis’s mighty heart, a powerhouse that had propelled it to countless victories, finally succumbed to the relentless beatings of the racetrack. The once-proud engine gasped its last breath, leaving the great racer stranded in a realm of silence.

Fast forward 7 years, and the legend is on the cusp of resurrection. Binkley Butterskew, with his keen eye for detail and passion for unraveling tales, chronicles the saga of the Alvis’s restoration. Every nut and bolt, every sigh of the welder’s torch, and the rhythmic pounding of the craftsman’s hammer becomes the notes of a symphony heralding the return of a racing icon.

In a dimly lit garage in France, beneath the watchful eyes of Socks, the workshop cat, the Alvis is undergoing a metamorphosis. Fueled with equal parts determination and nostalgia, sparing no effort to breathe life back into the iconic car. Each day, as the sun dips below the French countryside,  long shadows cast over the workshop where the Alvis lias, patiently awaiting its rebirth.

The Gloucestershire Spoke Benders Association holds its collective breath as the momentous day approaches. Binkley Butterskew, ever the wordsmith, is painting a vivid picture of anticipation that hangs like a mist over the racing community. The Alvis, cautiously stalks its resurrection, now gleamed with a renewed vigor, its engine  approaching the promise of redemption. Not far to go now, explains Maximus as he wipes his brow with an oily rag, not far now..

And so, after the long period of pandemic stalemate, the calendar turns to 2024, the pre-war racing scene bracing itself for the return of a prodigal son. With Richard Rowlands top peddler, Maximus Throttle behind the wheel of his resurrected opus, the Alvis would once again weave through the twists and turns of the racetrack, carrying with it the echoes of a bygone era and the hopes of those who believed in the timeless spirit of racing.

Binkley Butterskew, pen in hand and fedora tilted at a rakish angle, is preparing to capture the unfolding chapter in the annals of motorsport history. The resurrection of this Alvis was not merely a mechanical feat; it is a testament to Richard Rowlands indomitable spirit that refuses the Alvis to be silenced by the passage of time. The racetrack, it seems, is about to witness the triumphant return of a legend.

Binkley Butterskew

Joined-up writer for the Acrington Stanley Spoke Benders Associaion

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The Shocking Naked Truth

A VERY INTERESTING READ…..MAKES ONE REALLY THINK DEEPLY ABOUT GREEN ENERGY

By Bruce Haedrich

When I saw the title of this lecture, especially with the picture of the scantily clad model, I couldn’t resist attending. The packed auditorium was abuzz with questions about the address; nobody seemed to know what to expect. The only hint was a large aluminum block sitting on a sturdy table on the stage.

When the crowd settled down, a scholarly-looking man walked out and put his hand on the shiny block, “Good evening,” he said, “I am here to introduce NMC532-X,” and he patted the block, “we call him NM for short,” and the man smiled proudly. “NM is a typical electric vehicle (EV) car battery in every way except one; we programmed him to send signals of the internal movements of his electrons when charging, discharging, and in several other conditions. We wanted to know what it feels like to be a battery. We don’t know how it happened, but NM began to talk after we downloaded the program.

Despite this ability, we put him in a car for a year and then asked him if he’d like to  do presentations about batteries. He readily agreed on the condition he could say whatever he wanted. We thought that was fine, and so, without further ado, I’ll turn the floor over to NM,” the man turned and walked off the stage.    

“Good evening,” NM said. He had a slightly affected accent, and when he spoke, he lit up in different colors. “That cheeky woman on the marquee was my idea,” he said. “Were she not there, along with ‘naked’ in the title, I’d likely be speaking to an empty auditorium! I also had them add ‘shocking’ because it’s a favorite word amongst us batteries.” He flashed a light blue color as he laughed. 

“Sorry,” NM giggled then continued, “three days ago, at the start of my last lecture,  three people walked out. I suppose they were disappointed there would be no dancing girls. But here is what I noticed about them. One was wearing a battery-powered hearing aid, one tapped on his battery-powered cell phone as he left, and a third got into his car, which would not start without a battery. So I’d like you to think about your day for a moment; how many batteries do you rely on?” 

He paused for a full minute which gave us time to count our batteries.  Then he went on, “Now, it is not elementary to ask, ‘what is a battery?’ I think Tesla said it best when they called us Energy Storage Systems. That’s important. We do not make electricity – we store electricity produced elsewhere, primarily by coal, uranium, natural gas-powered plants, or diesel-fueled generators. So to say an EV is a zero-emission vehicle is not at all valid. Also, since forty percent of the electricity generated in the U.S. is from coal-fired plants, it follows that forty percent of the EVs on the road are coal-powered, n’est-ce pas?”

He flashed blue again. “Einstein’s formula, E=MC2, tells us it takes the same amount of energy to move a five thousand pound gasoline-driven automobile a mile as it does an electric one. The only question again is what produces the power? To reiterate, it does not come from the battery; the battery is only the storage device, like a gas tank in a car.”  

He lit up red when he said that, and I sensed he was smiling. Then he continued in blue and orange. “Mr. Elkay introduced me as NMC532. If I were the battery from your computer mouse, Elkay would introduce me as double-A, if from your cell phone as CR2032, and so on. We batteries all have the same name depending on our design. By the way, the ‘X’ in my name stands for ‘experimental.’   

There are two orders of batteries, rechargeable, and single-use. The most common single-use batteries are A, AA, AAA, C, D. 9V, and lantern types. Those dry-cell species use zinc, manganese, lithium, silver oxide, or zinc and carbon to store electricity chemically. Please note they all contain toxic, heavy metals.

Rechargeable batteries only differ in their internal materials, usually lithium-ion, nickel-metal oxide, and nickel-cadmium.

The United States uses three billion of these two battery types a year, and most are not recycled; they end up in landfills. California is the only state which requires all batteries be recycled. If you throw your small, used batteries in the trash, here is what happens to them.

All batteries are self-discharging. That means even when not in use, they leak tiny amounts of energy. You have likely ruined a flashlight or two from an old ruptured battery. When a battery runs down and can no longer power a toy or light, you think of it as dead; well, it is not. It continues to leak small amounts of electricity. As the chemicals inside it run out, pressure builds inside the battery’s metal casing, and eventually, it cracks. The metals left inside then ooze out. The ooze in your ruined flashlight is toxic, and so is the ooze that will inevitably leak from every battery in a landfill. All batteries eventually rupture; it just takes rechargeable batteries longer to end up in the landfill. 

In addition to dry cell batteries, there are also wet cell ones used in automobiles, boats, and motorcycles. The good thing about those is, ninety percent of them are recycled. Unfortunately, we do not yet know how to recycle batteries like me or care to dispose of single-use ones properly.

But that is not half of it. For those of you excited about electric cars and a green revolution, I want you to take a closer look at batteries and also windmills and solar panels. These three technologies share what we call environmentally destructive embedded costs.”

NM got redder as he spoke. “Everything manufactured has two costs associated with it, embedded costs and operating costs. I will explain embedded costs using a can of baked beans as my subject. 

In this scenario, baked beans are on sale, so you jump in your car and head for the grocery store. Sure enough, there they are on the shelf for $1.75 a can. As you head to the checkout, you begin to think about the embedded costs in the can of beans.

The first cost is the diesel fuel the farmer used to plow the field, till the ground, harvest the beans, and transport them to the food processor. Not only is his diesel fuel an embedded cost, so are the costs to build the tractors, combines, and trucks. In addition, the farmer might use a nitrogen fertilizer made from natural gas. 

Next is the energy costs of cooking the beans, heating the building, transporting the  workers, and paying for the vast amounts of electricity used to run the plant. The steel can holding the beans is also an embedded cost Making the steel can requires mining taconite, shipping it by boat, extracting the iron, placing it in a coal-fired blast furnace, and adding carbon Then it’s back on another truck to take the beans to the grocery store. Finally, add in the cost of the gasoline for your car. 

But wait – can you guess one of the highest but rarely acknowledged embedded costs?” NM said, then gave us about thirty seconds to make our guesses. Then he flashed his lights and said, “It’s the depreciation on the 5000 pound car you used to transport one pound of canned beans!”

NM took on a golden glow, and I thought he might have winked. He said, “But that  can of beans is nothing compared to me! I am hundreds of times more complicated. My embedded costs not only come in the form of energy use; they come as environmental destruction, pollution, disease, child labor, and the inability to be recycled.”

He paused, “I weigh one thousand pounds, and as you see, I am about the size of a travel trunk.” NM’s lights showed he was serious. “I contain twenty-five pounds of lithium, sixty pounds of nickel, 44 pounds of manganese, 30 pounds cobalt, 200 pounds of copper, and 400 pounds of aluminum, steel, and plastic. Inside me are 6,831 individual lithium-ion cells.

It should concern you that all those toxic components come from mining. For instance, to manufacture each auto battery like me, you must process 25,000 pounds of brine for the lithium, 30,000 pounds of ore for the cobalt, 5,000 pounds of ore for the nickel, and 25,000 pounds of ore for copper. All told, you dig up 500,000 pounds of the earth’s crust for just – one – battery.

He let that one sink in, then added, “I mentioned disease and child labor a moment ago. Here’s why. Sixty-eight percent of the world’s cobalt, a significant part of a battery, comes from the Congo. Their mines have no pollution controls and they employ children who die from handling this toxic material. Should we factor in these diseased kids as part of the cost of driving an electric car?”  

NM’s red and orange light made it look like he was on fire. “Finally,” he said, “I’d like to leave you with these thoughts. California is building the largest battery in the world near San Francisco, and they intend to power it from solar panels and windmills. They claim this is the ultimate in being ‘green,’ but it is not! This construction project is creating an environmental disaster. Let me tell you why.

The main problem with solar arrays is the chemicals needed to process silicate into the silicon used in the panels. To make pure enough silicon requires processing it with hydrochloric acid, sulfuric acid, nitric acid, hydrogen fluoride, trichloroethane, and acetone. In addition, they also need gallium, arsenide, copper-indium-gallium- diselenide, and cadmium-telluride, which also are highly toxic. Silicon dust is a hazard to the workers, and the panels cannot be recycled.

Windmills are the ultimate in embedded costs and environmental destruction. Each weighs 1688 tons (the equivalent of 23 houses) and contains 1300 tons of concrete, 295 tons of steel, 48 tons of iron, 24 tons of fiberglass, and the hard to extract rare earths neodymium, praseodymium, and dysprosium. Each blade weighs 81,000 pounds and will last 15 to 20 years, at which time it must be replaced. We cannot recycle used blades. Sadly, both solar arrays and windmills kill birds, bats, sea life, and migratory insects. 

NM lights dimmed, and he quietly said, “There may be a place for these technologies, but you must look beyond the myth of zero emissions. I predict EVs and windmills will be abandoned once the embedded environmental costs of making and replacing them become apparent. I’m trying to do my part with these lectures. 

Thank you for your attention, good night, and good luck.” NM’s lights went out, and he was quiet, like a regular battery.

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Supercharged

The “strap on” supercharger progress..

In the quiet recesses of a dimly lit workshop, where the scent of grease hungs thick in the air, a determined enthusiast embarks on a mechanical odyssey – the daunting task of modifying an aero-engined supercharger to mount at the front of an Alvis Speed 25. The endeavour, riddled with challenges, unfolds like a saga of wrenches, ingenuity, and the relentless pursuit of more horsepower.

The Alvis Speed 25, already a marvel of pre-war engineering, is about to undergo a transformation that would push its limits to new heights. The ambitious enthusiast, Maximus, envisioned the addition of an aero-engined supercharger as the key to unlocking unparalleled performance. Little did he know the trials awaiting him on this road less travelled.

The first hurdle presented itself in the form of spatial constraints. The Alvis’s engine bay, designed for elegance rather than the monstrous appendage of a supercharger, demanded a delicate dance of precision and adaptation. Maximus found himself elbow-deep in measurements, cursing softly as he navigated the labyrinth of pipes, belts, and gears.

Procuring an aero-engined supercharger, a relic from the skies of yesteryear, was no small feat either. Maximus scoured scrapyards, pored over dusty manuals, and exchanged letters with vintage aviation enthusiasts. Eventually, Maximus’s Mentor Richard secured him a gem with worn but promising potential – a contraption that had once harnessed the wind at altitudes where eagles dare to soar. After much 5 axis machining work carried out by Crosthwaite and Gardiner, the gurus of mechanical wind instruments of power, a perfect “blower” awaits its second coming.

Now comes the challenge of mounting. The Alvis, proud and stoic, resists the intrusion of this newfound mechanical symbiote. Custom brackets, fabricated with precision and patience, become the unsung heroes in this mechanical opera. Hours turn into days, days into months as years pass, Maximus wrestles with the challenge, coaxing it into a harmonious marriage with the Alvis’s engine.

The intricacies of airflow, fuel delivery, and tuning unveiled themselves as the next formidable foes. Maximus consulted with fellow tinkerers, delved into arcane tomes of engineering, and occasionally muttered incantations of frustration as he fine-tuned the symphony of combustion that would soon emanate from the reinvigorated Alvis.

Amidst the clangor of tools and the occasional victory shout, Maximus persists. The amalgamation of aero and automotive technology nearing completion. The Alvis, once normally aspirated is now on the cusp of a new era, a testament to the indomitable spirit of those who dare to push the boundaries of mechanical innovation.


Binkley Butterskew

Joined-up writer for the Acrington Stanley Spoke Benders Associaion

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