Club Arnage

Has any body seen the picture of an aston martin on this years calendar, have you noticed  a strange pipe thingamagigy poking verticaly outa the rear of the right hand side of the bonnet ( just behind the vent and about 18" long) does any body know what it is or does???? either that or a mechanic has left his idle adjusting gizmo in the orfice !!!

Its a pitot tube, like you would find on aircraft. Its used to provide accurate information as a speedometer.

There you go, theres your answer.

 :-* :-* :-*

Having a blonde moment Mr Bongo - glad I knew what of of them is ;)

Aaaaaaahhhhhhhh ........it did make me wonder, thats a bit old school innit? what with all the electronics available these days any sat nav will tell them how fast they are going ???? less drag too !  Cheers

Checkout an F1-car, how many tubes there are still sticking out in front of the driver. It's not only a speedometer, but also measures humidity and airtemperature for the engine.

The pitot tube can be used to determine the air flow velocity, pressure, temperature and humidity to calculate the correct density.

As the tube is fitted to the vehicle it will be providing the engineers with real time information to allow alterations to the engine settings.

And what happens when the GPS system goes down (which it sometimes does) or the sats momentarily go out of allignment? Nothing should ever rely on one core system only.

Also it wil give the cars speed through the air, rather than over the ground, something of prime importance to an aerodynamicyst / setup engineer.