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X-Prize Aztec?
Jim’s (jameswlinck@hotmail.com) got an interesting first-generation Fiberfab Aztec for sale, with an asking price of $3,000. If you’re wondering why the wheel wells are filled in, he was prepping this car to compete in the automotive X Prize (building a high MPG production vehicle). He decided to drop out though, explaining,
This car is an early Aztec which claimed 100 mph on 40 bhp. It has a very low drag factor and with some extreme clean up is as good as anything entered in the Xprize with the same frontal area. It is well known that a conventional car that is very light and clean with a small motor will get over 100 miles per gallon. One established that at 114 miles per gallon in 1984 and is entered in the Xprize. I can’t decide to spend the time and money to enter since the rules are not established and they can easily favor hybrids or battery power cars, meaning you can not win with a conventional car, which makes the contest look foolish. I have an experimental water lubricated/cooled carbon motor concept I wanted to try and demonstrate in the contest, but its getting too late to throw all of this together without the formula. So I am thinking about selling the car and just making a proof of concept motor and letting it go to patents, which it has to at some point anyhow.
He’s located in Atlantic Beach, Florida. The car is on a VW pan with the Fiberfab subframe, but does not come with papers and is not currently running.
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CAN YOU PLEASE SEND ME MORE PHOTO’S
frankly, I’m more interested in new motor concepts. Are we talking a composite engine block? I know there were attempts at ceramics not too long ago either. But, other than lighter weight (which ain’t to be sneezed at either) what other benefits, if any, are to be gained?
Hey- I was just checking out the Toys website and saw some questions about my car. How do I answer and send pictures? The carbon motor is an attempt to make a carbon crank and rods and eventually a carbon block. Every pound lighter the engine(or any component)is you can take 5 pounds out of the chassis. I think I have some sponsorship cooking and may get the X-5 in the contest. jim
A company called Polymotor, based in New Jersey (?) built a working carbon composite engine 10 to 20 years ago, if I recall correctly. It was a very high output engine, and ran at very high temperature. I guess it wasn’t successful as there are no production composite engines today that I know of….
[...] an update on Jim’s “X-Prize Aztec” — looks like three new front-wings have been added… I mean no offense to [...]
Hi- I am familuar with the Polymotor composite engine. It used a resin called, I think, Torlon. The problem with it was it required long (20-100 hr)curing times in an autoclave to get cross linking and is not very strong compared to epoxes, and was very expensive since there was no volume use of it. Nano filiments in epoxy with hight end carbon are yielding lab samples 40x that of steel! The problem is heat and how to extract it from the engine core, which I think I can solve in a unique way.