Bamford special..

[empip]

http://motoring.independent.co.uk/features/article359902.ece
JCB goes for diesel, wheel driven, speed record..... Hope the travel pin is fitted !

 

[Nige F]

Bet the engine`s not British

 

[empip]

Bet the engine`s not British

Not too sure, but looking good ...
........ In 2003, JCB announced an £80 million investment to develop and manufacture its own diesel engines. A new company - JCB Power Systems Ltd - was formed to produce the engines and production has now begun at a new plant in Derbyshire, England.

..... The JCB444 engine - four cylinders, 4.4 litres, designed by the British engineering consultancy Ricardo

........The resulting JCB444-LSR engines exhibit many of the technologies which are likely to form the basis of the next generation of high performance, low-emissions diesel engines in both automotive as well as heavy-duty applications. The results are truly impressive and the headline figures speak for themselves: with each delivering peak power of 750hp and torque of 1500Nm the engines are over five times the power of the production version and at 150hp/litre, they exceed even motorsports applications as the world's highest specific power diesels.

Leading the project, codenamed, H1, is Dr. Tim Leverton, JCB Group Engineering Director, who put together a world-class design team with extensive experience of Formula One, Le Mans, advanced diesel technology and transmissions.

Mentor to the project has been Richard Noble, the former land speed record holder, who encouraged the JCB team to aim for 300 mph; the existing record stands at 235.756mph.

Sir Anthony Bamford, Chairman of privately owned JCB, is very clear why he wanted to build a JCB record-breaker "I am passionate about the importance of engineering excellence to Britain and I see using the JCB engine for this record attempt as a fantastic way of showcasing what British engineers can do. The JCB444 has been acknowledged as a remarkable piece of engineering, and this programme to build the world's fastest diesel-powered automobile is precisely the sort of technical challenge that we should rise to."

Andy Green JCB DIESELMAX Driver, who set the first-ever supersonic world land speed record at 763.035 mph in ThrustSSC on the Black Rock Desert on 15 October 1997, is thrilled to have been given another opportunity to enter the record books. He said: "We will be following in the tradition of British record breakers by running at the sport's spiritual home, the remarkable Bonneville Salt Flats. I am really looking forward to driving another British entry in the '300 mph Club,' and a diesel-engined, wheel-driven one at that."

JCB is the world's fifth largest manufacturer of construction equipment

The current diesel-powered land speed record stands at 235.756 mph to Virgil W. Snyder and the Thermo King Streamliner and dates back to 25 August 1973.

http://www.jcbdieselmax.com/html/news.php