Mudslinger's Corner

YouTube – 10 Things I Hate About Commandments

Superconducting maglev toy train

b3ta.com links

b3ta.com links

Way back in 1968, the long-defunct American Motors company showed an interesting prototype called the Amitron. Besides being, in my ever-humble opinion, one of the cooler-looking electric prototypes I have seen, it also had some interesting claims and features.

A dual-battery arrangement, with nickel-cadmium and lithium-nickel-fluoride batteries, made possible a claimed range of 150 miles (241 km) per charge, with a top speed of 50 mph (80 kph). This with a total battery weight of only 200 pounds (91 kg) which is pretty light for an electric car. Regenerative braking was also part of the deal. The small battery pack just in front of the car in the first picture is the whole thing, and was claimed to have the capacity of the entire wall of lead-acid batteries visible in back (behind the 60’s chick in miniskirt and go-go boots).

1968: AMC’s Amazing Amitron Electric Car – Retro Thing

From the site:
Zero Pollution Motors claims that the new and improved air car can now leapfrog any known battery technology. The company’s Web site says, in fact, that its pneumatic vehicle can travel 848 miles (with the equivalent of 106 miles per gallon) on one tank of air, though an asterisk indicates this is “estimated performance and subject to change.”

The Air Car Blows Back Into the Picture – Wheels Blog – NYTimes.com

It was being speculated for a long time that Tata Motors would launch its compressed air car by the end of this year. The company ended all such speculations on Tuesday stating that the compressed air car engine technology is still in its nascent stage and a “launch in near future is ruled out”.

“The technology for an automobile engine that runs on compressed air is still in the development stage and launch of cars fitted with such engines from the Tata Motors stable in the near future is ruled out,” Rajiv Dube, President, Passenger Cars.

Tata Compressed Air Car To Take Time | CarTradeIndia.com

For almost two years, Canadian Marcelo da Luz has been driving his solar-powered car, the Power of 1 (Xof1 for short) across North America in an attempt to set a world distance record for a solar vehicle. When he reached Alaska earlier this week, the admittedly off-the-wall looking car was spotted by a concerned citizen, who dialled 911 to report a UFO sighting. Alaskan police quickly took off in hot pursuit, and pulled poor Marcelo over for interrogation.

Luckily for the bemused Canadian solar pioneer, the police decided not to take the matter any further although, amazingly, this is the seventh time that saucer-shaped vehicle has been pulled over during its odyssey across Canada

Alaska Police Pull Over Solar Powered Car, Think It’s a UFO : Gas 2.0

It’s been a while since my last outing and also have forgotten to post it. But anyways – this time we went for an area out near Captains Flat.

Somewhere deep in the hills is some fancy looking weather station! At the time being part of winter we even found a little snow.

So we mucked about a little bit and then buggered off again.

Here is a pic of my cliff-jumping buddy….

Another nearby road had got a little interesting. So I took this video because it was sooo fun because the road was a bit lumpy!

Which got my little echo a bit on the dirty side – but hey that’s half the fun of these drives – coming back into town showing more mud & dirt than most 4WDcars will ever see in their lifespan!

And here’s a few more clips just for the sake of it!

YouTube – Kitty plays red light green light

b3ta.com links

Here are some pics of one of my recent creations. This Observatory building was made as part of a building competition hosted by Bigpond (Australian internet provider) at a place called pondex.