Pregled posta

Marketing

After an exhausting day in the city we were driving home on the Interamerican Highway, or Autopista as it is called in Panama, when a road hazard nearly caused disaster.
We were cruising along in the left lane when I saw the car in front of me pointing at a flatbed trailer loaded with concrete cylinders. In an instant a gray cylinder was rolling towards my car. I remember in that split second thinking is that a cardboard tube or something a bit harder. Then I checked my mirror and swerved only to have it roll right under my right front tire. I heard the bang, thought I had a flat and pulled over.
Turns out my tire held air but the inner side of my rim was bent. The truck pulled over and we exchanged information. His flatbed was loaded with several hundred of these cylinders, approx 4"in diameter and maybe 12-15" long. They were just piled on top of each other with nothing over them to keep them in place. I should have called the police and stayed there but we were so tired and my back was killing me and the car was drivable so we left and slowly limped home with a slight scraping whenever I turned to the right.
On Friday I removed the tire and tried banging out the dent so I could drive the car until I get a new rim.
I put this tire on the rear and put a good rim up front but there was even less clearance in the back and the car is out of commission until I get a new rim. They've got one at the dealer in the city so I'll get it on Tuesday.
Close call here, could have been a lot worse. Oh and I can now highly recommend the Pirelli Scorpion ATR as a rugged, dependable on.off road tire.

This is a turbine volute, being set up to take velocity measurements upstream of where the runner would be in a functioning turbine. It's not a very restrictive system, and the fan is pulling air through in suction, so leaks downstream of the measurements are not critical. Notice the elements of precision engineering: ventilation ductwork, a hundred year-old fan, drainage culvert pipe inlet section. Later, I made an inlet bellmouth from a 12-inch car tire inner tube, which was actually pretty sweet.