I'm not  going to open  an engine up. Don't have a vehicle nowdays, so that pretty much rules that out. An old MGB GT would be nice though ! I was just talking about designing an engine on CAD, pretty safe ! This is what I am doing at my university  for my final yaer project on and hence wanted to look into varaible valve timing mechanisms http://www-cdr.stanford.edu/dynamic/hcci_control/index.html . Oh, and I have just managed to get my hands on  ADAMS, for another project. What did you mean, when you said that ADAMS was force based ? Let me know please !

Say if you were to start designing an engine, what would be the first thing you would design ? Valves, maybe ?

You don't need to be sorry,  I understand that keeping in touch on what can only be described as facebook for engineers is rather cumbersome, talking over a fancy VOIP  thing would be so much more easier.

I am  trying to convince  RM Auctions Europe to hire me as an engineering salesman who sells racing cars based on their engineering and engineering drawings, rather their on their race history alone.  The rationale here  is that it allows me to buy some time to sit for entrance examinations for  California Tech  and Ecole Polytechnique .   As a part of this, I am trying to use the 917/30 Can - Am car as an example. So, I looked up the papers on SAE and found this paper on turbos by Hans Mezger himself. In the UK, I am entitled to free copies  of most IMech E papers as a student member. Do you have something similar in States that lets you view technical  papers ?

http://papers.sae.org/780718

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Mr. Smith's books are great and are filled with an honest sense of humor, that is rather nice. Which chapters in Tune to win have you personally read ?

I spent  most of yesterday trying to learn how to make a decent pasta (  my cooking is not the stuff of legends, and I do have to subject myself to it quite often, so this non- automobile activity had to be carried out ). I will  contact the good folks at ADAMS after work tomorrow, and see if they are wiling to oblige.

No, I'm not familiar with Optimum T, but now courtesy you I am :)

Allow me to tell you more about your current predicament -  I#m currently on my placement year ( co -op year to you ) as a part of my penultimate year of  automnobile Engineering education.

Much to my amazement, most people  at my school have a rather strange attitude towards Formula Student (  Europe's answer to Formula SAE ). So, during my year away from university, I  picked up a few books on  suspensions and wings  from the IMechE ( Think of it as a European ASME  and SAE put together )  library here.These include the likes of

Tune to Win  and  Racing Suspension an Chassis Design by Carol Smith. The former with it's various wishbone layouts sent me brain into a bit of dizzy, I  looked up suspension analyis software   and met Optimum K on Google as a result.

Race Car Vehicle Dynamics and Chassis Design by MILLIKEN & MILLIKEN

I am currently reading the former as a part of my efforts to understand how suspensions are modeled mathematically  and usually sit by lakes and watch swans  to pacify my brain as I do this.

Honestly  speaking , I haven't moved a suspension either on ADAMS or MATLAB, but would love to so, if I could get my hands on the software. And , then one day I would like to take all this and apply it to a Porsche Le Mans prototype that wins. Succinctly put, that's all I want to do in my life , for now atleast.

Lena - you may enjoy checking out our Super-Car we are developing in Marble Falls, TX - Scorpion-HX which has a H2GO fuel system intergrated into the Acura engine:

www.ronnmotors.com