off topic - rotating wheel hubs
 

Of course wheel hubs rotate! So what? But these were different. There I was
sitting in a queue waiting to get onto the Magic Roundabout (Park Square,
Sheffield -- a junction of such layrinthine complexity that although I take the
same route every day I have not in 20 years taken exactly the same course in
terms of which lane I'm in at any given point) when I looked up and saw this
BMW waiting at the lights in the next lane to my right. Vision takes place in
the brain rather than in the eyes and what I saw -- what I thought I saw -- was
a stationary car with the front wheels turning slowly and the rear wheels
turning rather faster. I thought he must be on a patch of diesel or something
and that the car must be a 4x4 and that he had no traction. But the wheels
seemed to be slowing slightly, and when the lights changed the car set off
quite normally. As it accelerated the car's speed sort of matched the wheels'
speed, then the wheels accelerated with the car in the normal way. Goggle-eyed
I pursued the BMW around the Magic Roundabout, and I concluded that the wheel
hubs were mounted on axles that allowed them to rotate freely. I also
hypothesised that they were weighted near their edges to give them more
momentum, and that they had a ratchet mechanism so that when the car slowed
down or stopped the hubs kept turning for some time. The BMW sped off up
towards t'Wicker and I wanted to go towards t'Railway Station, so I lost him.
My friend Nick is a fool for anything new and/or
flashy/flashing/expensive/trendy, especially if it burns petrol, so I asked
him. "Ohh, I've never heard of that, but I must have one! I wonder how much
they are," was his response. I asked a lorry driver friend if he's ever seen
anything like it and he said that the Somerfields lorries have stationary
hubcaps. As do Rolls Royces (so the badge is always legible). Rotating hubcaps
though? Has anyone esle seen this phenomenon?

Bill


http://www.wrightsaerials.tv/index.html