• DudeBoy@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    The explaination of how differentials work was painfully wrong. An I lost confidence in this author’s ability to explain the topic.

        • caseyweederman@lemmy.ca
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          1 year ago

          Apparently I can watch that video every couple months and still be equally amazed by it.
          Please remind me to watch this again in a few months, it’s super cool.

          • BearOfaTime@lemm.ee
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            1 year ago

            Right?

            I’m continually blown away at what 19th-century engineers understood and could do.

          • BearOfaTime@lemm.ee
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            1 year ago

            There’s a bunch of old training vids like that on YouTube. Lots of people could learn how to present from them - they’re so much better than most stuff on YouTube.

          • snooggums@kbin.social
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            1 year ago

            There are a lot of these from back in the couple of decades after WWII when society actually cared about science and knowledge and companies used the spreading of knowledge as a selling point.

      • towerful
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        1 year ago

        https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3e/Around_the_Corner_(1937)_24fps_selection.webm

        Wiki to the rescue!
        It’s a great video from 1937.

        How the automobile differential allows a vehicle to turn a corner while keeping the wheels from skidding. Reverse telecine & introduction edited out.

        And the article has info as well https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Differential_(mechanical_device)

        Modern cars have “traction control”, which detects when a wheel turns more than the other wheel. If it turns too much more, it will engage a “diff lock” and lock the differential which makes each wheel turn with the same power/speed/energy as if the differential was just a solid axle.

        The long & the short of it is that a differential is only “1 wheel drive” when the differential “thinks” (it’s not smart) it should put all the power into 1 wheel - which is when the cars computer locks the differential.

        • BearOfaTime@lemm.ee
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          1 year ago

          That’s only some cars.

          Many today still use open diffs. Some use open diffs and braking to produce a result that looks like traction control or a torque biasing diff.

          Some cars use electronically-controlled diffs that can vary pressure on clutches using simple electric servos to bias torque - Bendix is a big supplier of such things to companies like Honda.

          Others use hydraulics, similar to torque converters, to bias torque (e.g. Audi’s original Quattro system).

          And others use gearing to bias torque, such as Quaife differentials.

          Factory systems (with rare exceptions) don’t use locking diffs (GM has one as an option, others may).