This Aircooled Honda F1 Was Insanely Dangerous
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- Опубліковано 26 січ 2024
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This video is fair use under U.S. copyright law because it is transformative in nature, uses no more of the original than necessary and has no adverse effect on the market for the original work.
- Credits -
“1968 Mexican GP Highlights” by The Fastlane
• 1968 Mexican GP Highli...
“Honda RA272 - Special Sound” by wingpartners
• Honda RA272 - Special ...
“Honda F1 Race Vintage Mexico GP (1965)” by H-Tune
• Honda F1 Race Vintage ...
“F1 Honda RA300 V-12 John Surtees 1967” by HideTunedEngines
• F1 Honda RA300 V-12 Jo...
“HONDA RA272 RA300 RA301 Suzuka 50th Anniversary TEST Day” by めんま たんたん
• HONDA RA272 RA300 RA30...
“Honda RA301 unveiled for Goodwood Festival of Speed 2018” by HondaVideo
• Honda RA301 unveiled f...
“Formel 1 1968 Rouen - Highlights @ ORF” by F1 Classics
• Formel 1 1968 Rouen - ...
“The French Grand Prix: Crash Kills Driver Jo Schlesser (1968) | British Pathé” by British Pathé
• The French Grand Prix:... - Авто та транспорт
I worked with magnesium back in 2005. I used air powered tools to grind molded engine cases for jackhammers made out of magnesium. Nobody else dared to perform this work because of the safety risk. We often had to check the pressure lines and air compression system for water deposits. Any small amount of gas developed in that small room could cause an explosion. I was shown much appraisal for my dedicated work and got bonuses from my workplace and the company that I did the work for. I'm positive that I'm never doing that kind of work again though. Any time you were grinding over some slag trapped in the material you got a tiny firework display (yay?). A room full of magnesium dust can quickly turn into an inferno.
Wowza! Even in this video, one can see how dangerous magnesium is, especially when hit with water. There were other race cars made of magnesium way back when that burned really badly, killing the driver. I'm pretty sure Mercedes-Benz was one in Grand Prix way before this Honda.
As a side note, I have a friend who used to be able to get a crap load of magnesium shavings/dust from a machine shop. We used to twist it tightly in heavy paper and duct tape. It didn't make a huge "bang" but man did it flare up well!
Yet we have magnesium supplement tablets.
@@klaseronen7535 Yes, but the amounts required in the human body are miniscule.
@@klaseronen7535that's irrelevant
You were used as a magnesium lab guinea pig as well!
I drove a car with an air-cooled magnesium engine block for years. It's called a VW Beetle. I never blew up or bnurned down. But I do remember people throwing chunks of broken cases onto campfires. It was crazy intense, like a 360 degree spotlight.
Magnesium alloy, it wasn't that dangerous.
@@erikheijden9828it is spectacular in a campfire, nevertheless... It always puts an instant smile on my face when I find a broken VW boxer block at my local junkyard.
Vobble Wagen crankcases up to the mid 60s had a moderate mag content. 1300 up it was not strong enough. As for those cars catching fire,, as a CFS volounteer I put out 3 by myself over a few years. And yes those old fatigiued cases burn really well.
Add a magnesium body and things change.
The great John Surtees who helped Honda develop their F1 project would not entertain a car with so much Magnesium in its construction,The great champion of two and four wheels was as brave as a lion,also a skilled engineer who knew the pitfalls
The video does it's viewer and certainly the driver, a great disservice by not stating the fact that the driver was killed.
Agree.
How unbelievably tragic that such decisions could even be made in Formula One. What a different time it was. Marshalls didn’t even know how or have the equipment necessary to save the driver. It is one of the most sickening things I’ve ever seen in auto racing.
Interestingly, we are seeing similar "unpreparedness" today, when it comes to EVs burning. The standard techniques just don't work.
@@UncleKennysPlace battery powered cars have been around for over a decade (Nissan Leaf, Tesla Model S). Firefighters know better these days.
@@nizm0man Fire Fighters may be trained to handle EV fires different, but that doesn't mean the department is equipped with the proper tools. I was only a few cars away from an EV that caught fire on an expressway in a town of 50,000. The police and fire department arrived, but they had nothing to fight the fire other than stop traffic and let it burn itself out. Fortunately, my wife didn't see them remove the driver from the scene.
Thankyou VR, amazing and interesting story. Love the beautiful exhaust setup.
Interesting history, keep up with the good work 🙂
Apparently Honda was so ashamed of this whole episode, that they did not give permission to use (even) the RA300 in the 1998 Formula 1 simulation game Grand Prix Legends (which tries to recreate the 1967 season), the car then appeared as a fantasy team "Murasama Motors" (fanmade patches fixed that eventually when upgrading the originally very crude car graphics anyway).
(also Cooper was missing but I think late John Cooper or his estate later said that it has been just some kind of an misunderstanding. Notably the game also has the Ferrari 312, but there's no mention about in the manual (which contains pages of history on Lotus, Brabham, Eagle and BRM) so I guess the permission from team red also came very late in the project)
Strikes me as an unbelievable ignorance of the events in 1955 at Le Sarthe. Magnesium is bad when it’s on fire. Short memories?
Japanese work ethic is said to be very different, after all they have a word for death by overworking.
I guess it wasn't much different back then add to that "the good old times" were safety wasn't taken into consideration much if at all and you get this recipe for destruction.
In a time where mechanic commonly seen smoking while putting fuel into the car? Nah, just a different times
A magnesium bodied Mercedes-Benz mowed down 80 spectators at Lemans, and the news never got to Japan?
It wouldn't surprise me if the 1955 Le Mans disaster was just a widely ignored matter in Japan.
Back then, Japan's automotive industry had been largely crippled thanks to the damage caused by World War 2. With the popular Japanese car brands focused on rebuilding the industry, in a country devastated by war, and with a strong foreigner resentment... Yeah, you can probably see where I'm going.
The Le Mans disaster made the headlines in Europe, and maybe even in America to some degree. But in Japan, it may just have been one of these small articles on the bottom left corner of a page, with less lines dedicated to it than this UA-cam comment. Maybe Honda really didn't know. Or maybe they did, but they just couldn't care all that much, given the times.
But that said, none of this excuses their ignorance and carelessness. Jo Schlesser's death could, and should, have been avoided. "We didn't know" is not an excuse.
Maybe this new approach to lightening the car was their response to the fact they couldn't lighten their previous car any further.
The RA300/301 was still a bit over the minimum allowed weight (though massively improved over the RA273); I imagine the RA302 was not.
10/10 video as always
5:06 I always knew the engine seized. Engine seizure in a very fast part of the track plus a wet surface plus a full tank plus a magnesum coffin really gave poor Jo Schlesser no chance at all.
Another great video!!
Magical video.
Thanks again
Magnesium fires are no joke. A factory northwest of me in Eaton Rapids had a magnesium fire a few years ago, and they were casting parts for Ford, and the fire forced both the factory and Ford to have the casting dies airlifted to a Ford owned casting plant in England.
Looking at the air-cooled engine, it doesn't seem to have a lot of cooling fins and looks like they were relying upon ram air vs fan for cooling. With 2 oil coolers it was probably partially oil-cooled, but that thing must have ran hot.
I think it's not really oil cooled like Suzuki GSXR/bandit SACS or aircraft engines but more by the volume of oil
@@ThePontiacgto65I was coming here to wonder the same about it being more related to volume. Have to agree with you on that. Combining thermal mass with as minimal cooling as possible could have worked pretty well, I'd say.
Think of a Porsche flat six. I know mine used 3 gallons of oil in the tank. I never had any heat issues, of course I never raced it, but they have proven to cool well enough over the years. On mine, the cooler mounted flat up front wasn't very large either.
Every internal combustion engine is at least partially oil cooled.
@@CaptHollister agreed but this is primary vs secondary cooling in this case. All engines get some cooling from air, but it's not usually the primary cooling scheme so we generally don't mention it because it's heat removing capacity is so minimal compared to the other cooling methods implemented.
So while I don't disagree, I also don't see the point. Maybe I'm missing something.
Dam I want one to drive everyday ! Good lookin !
First it was Ferdinand Porsche and then Honda, stealing ideas from Tatra...
Air-cooled V8s are not a Tatra invention. At any rate, Honda had enormous experience with multi-cylinder air-cooled engines. Building this V8 was a just a natural progression. Hans Ledwinka was an automotive genius and Porsche unquestionably stole ideas from him, but Honda not so much.
@@CaptHollister, thank you!
The Boeing B29 also had air cooled magnesium engines.
As did every VW beetle and Bus until 72 or so.
which were also notorious for randomly catching fire. They had to get NACA(NASA precursor) to help them fix the things.
@@lancepharker absolutely
Some aircraft had magnesium wheels and an elderly scrap merchant obtained one. He decided to burn the tyre off it. Hmmmm that was spectacular!
A scrap dealer mate of my late father did exactly the same thing with a set of aircraft wheels/tyres he bought off an airline at Gatwick airport, here in England.
Imagine if they had access to titanium. Strong as steel, light as aluminum. Not easily effected by heat.
Imagine having access to the future 🥴
@@lemonjuice6177
Honda is there.
@@retiredbore378
Sheet metal in aircraft nacelles and anywhere heat becomes an issue in aircraft. Yes, I work with it. Nice material. Makes the prettiest sparkler white sparks when ground on! Hard to deburr the HiLock holes.
@upsidedowndog1256 after dealing with Honda while working on the motorcycle industry, I can firmly say Honda is no longer superior. They got ahead decades ago, then got lazy and arrogant. Now, they're no better than any other Japanese brand.
Titanium has a density between that of aluminium and steel. It's Young's modulus also falls in between the two. It's strength is also between most aluminiums and many heat treated steels. It has it's uses but it is not a 'wonder' material for most applications.
The VP of the International Aeronautic & Machinist Association uonion died in a fire on my local airport runway called Baldwin field they couldn't put the fire out because of the magnesium content of that craft and it damaged the run way.. my father was a member. Pure magnesium is the devil. very special conditions and methods are required to put it to use and handle you really have to know what you are doing to use it. yes folk dome metals are a fuel in the right circumstances
Poor Jo Schlesser had to become guinea pig for honda magnesium lab experiments 😢
THEY DON'T EVEN BOTHER SAYING THAT
@@danweyant4909 i havent and will never ride a honda again, always been a suzuki meow!
Toyota is better anyways @@fidelcatsro6948
Nobody forced him to drive.
Jo at his death was forty, the point at which many racing drivers would had retired and the year before he had been driving F2 cars (sometimes in F1 races) and often Matras. In 1968 Matra went to work with Jackie Stewart and Ken Tyrell. Therefore racing in a works F1 Honda on a circuit Jo knew well was one that he was unlikely to turn down.
It's crazy that Honda put Jo Schlesser in that car, it's almost manslaughter.
Front and rear double-wishbones are what made Honda/Acura the legends they are today.
Acura Legends? ;)
And losing their ball joints. ;)
@@joshfoley8862 Acura Integra. I don't like them (and I HATE to hear them), but they're amazing-driving cars for FWDs. In fact, the old Prelude SI, Integra, and Civic SI drove just as well (in a slightly different way, obviously) as my Solstice and my NB Miata. Same could be said for my '05 Focus ST, somehow. Similar year GTIs are trash by comparison.
@@joshfoley8862 Double wishbone cars handle REALLY well. Very predictable.
The tragedy of the 55 LeMans race should have been uppermost in the engineers mind.
The win at any cost mentality has cost too many driver's lives.
And yes, I know the AAR Eagles were also magnesium chassis
I think there was a magnesium alloy called Elektron, which had been more widely used in F1 - including in the championship-winning BRM in 1962. Am I right ?
Yes. Some sports racing cars had elektron body panels too.
@@stephenscholes4758my '74 Harley Sportster has Elektron rims.
The Elektron alloy was also used in the Mercedes 300 SLR's bodywork, most notably at Le Mans in 1955... And we all know how that went.
Magnesium? Flammable?
I mean
We already have Mercedes first flying car anyway. Those thing literally made from same material as explosive part of 1.2 tons Japanese anti-aircrafts bullet. And it kill more ppl than those Japanese anti aircraft bullet did in WW2.
Like, the only thing that stopped this dangerous magnesium build car was relatively insanely more strict safety enforcement
What?
@@Flies2FLL wait
You guys forget about Le Mans 1955?
I used to follow F1 closely but this is the first time I’ve ever heard that the Honda engine was air cooled.
There is so much stuff that we don't know and the history hides somewhere to be revealed. I am often stunned what was developed and engineered back in the time.
Only that Honda engine, not on the 272, 273, 300 etc.
@@erikheijden9828 is that the one Surtees won the race with?
I think if they had sorted out the handling before sending it to the track it might have become legendary, maybe even changed the course of history.
If you go out there and start winning a lot of races, people are going to copy your ideas and designs no matter how stupid they are. Honda could have gotten a championship, but it also would have caused a lot of cars built out of magnesium on the grid. Fire back then was a regular occurrence, so I can hardly imagine what would happen if you had an accident with multiple cars and one of those things burst into flames...
The chassis design was forward thinking - with the driver being moved ahead - the magnesium material was gross negligence.
@@mirrorblue100 no argument there
Oval pistons pneumatic gas valves springless
The oval pistons were just a way of building a V8 when the rules mandated a maximum of 4 cylinders. They resulted in a slow and unreliable race bike and a mediocre street bike.
my dad changed a lot of tires back in the day you wouldn't believe the damage magnesium wheels cause they banned them for a good reason I'm not for taking things away from people forcibly' thats not ok but I can live with it in this case. we have better aloys today Anyway, metallurgy has come along way, and polymers today are stronger than steel but thank to carlessness the ban set a big time gap in the wheel industry / many years passed before something better was available to the pulic.
"they banned them for a good reason" Even in the 00's, OZ Racing wheels were often still magnesium alloy though? There was even "Magnesio" lettering on them, unless that was just a marketing term, I'm not sure. The Formula 2 website claims that the current 18" OZ control wheels are still magnesium alloy. While for Formula 1, "From the start of the 2022 season, F1 wheels were increased in size from 13 inches to 18 inches. At the same time, it was decided there would be a single supplier, and BBS forged magnesium wheels were selected in the tender." Unless that's a mistake, it sounds like F1 is still current using magnesium wheels?
Edit -- The 2015 Yamaha R1 road bike comes standard with magnesium alloy wheels too. So it seems even recently magnesium wheels are not uncommon in road bike applications, although perhaps not as common in exotic sportscars as they used to be.
Notification gang
Theyre all busy in Gaza covering the jenocide events..
imagine being the poor bastard that drove it. deathtrap disguised as a present while being burned to death
super cool.... get it ;)
Well obviously 😅
The Japanese always had problems with race track handling in both cars and bikes. This was because of their culture of not questioning the decisions of the bosses and not bringing in non Japanese experts even when their knowledge of chassis dynamics was woefully deficient.
Given the era, I can almost somewhat understand their hesitance to bring in outsiders and possibly sacrifice the tech they did have a leg up on.
@@goosenotmaverick1156 Even now, many Japanese Companies are Extremely Xenophobic and will not allow any non-Japanese workers onto their Books, many Japanese Citizens to this very day also frequently call for closed Borders and the mandatory Expulsion of all non Japanese out of sheer Hatred for "Foreigners" of any Kind. Things have not changed much there at all. The Japanese Government itself is also well known for its Hostility towards the West, one example of which was Tokyo Drift having to be Filmed in Los Angeles as the Japanese Government Refused to Grant Filming Permits to Universal as they did not want "Westerners" making the Film in their Country.
Honda just straight up murdered that driver.
According to that logic Collin Chapman and Enzo Ferrari would also be serial murders. Ridicilous.
Honda engineers were adamantly AGAINST this design and these materials, Mr Honda forced them to go ahead. Mr Honda fell into the Chapman, Ferrari mindset to the sad death of a driver.
✋🏼🇦🇺👍🏼
This guy needs subtitles as his English is difficult to understand. Kudos for trying but yeah.. need clearer narration.
You know what? UA-cam has pretty good automatic closed captions. Try it!
As brilliant as it is dangerous, the match on wheels🔥💀! I am French and Jo Schlesser is a legend, a great champion. During the accident the Honda had 200l of gasoline in its tank . Dramatic🥲. thank you for talking about him. Always a good video on your channel.👍🏻
Almost all the firebombs used in World War 2 were comprised of magnesium - it was bloody stupid - if not downright criminal - to use magnesium in an F1 car in the 60s.