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William D. Bond (born January 2, 1931) is an American inventor and mechanical engineer who retired from General Motors after spending his entire career with the car maker. He is most noted for his innovative work on intake manifolds, a three-wheeled concept car, and early electric cars in the 1960s.
William Dale Bond was born January 2, 1931, in Winterset, Iowa to Dale Bond, an entrepreneur and Myrtle Swedlund Bond, a music teacher. He graduated from Iowa State University in 1960 with a BS degree in Engineering and is a member of the Iowa State University chapter of Tau Beta Pi, an engineering society for academic excellence. In the early 1950s, he raced on the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah. He was one of the charter members of the Ames, Iowa hot rod club and the Night Crawlers in the mid-1950s. Bond served as a ballistic meteorologist for the National Guard during the Korean War era.
A member of the engineering staff, Bond worked for General Motors (GM) from July 1960 until his retirement in February 1993. His early work involved one of GM's earliest electric cars, the Electrovair II, a 1966 Corvair Monza sedan powered by silver-zinc batteries. The battery pack gave the Electrovair II a similar performance to that of the conventional gasoline powered Corvair which the car was based on with a top speed of 80 mph. As the project manager of the Electrovair II, Bond served as the spokesperson and driver when the car was demonstrated to the press in October 1966. It is the oldest historic vehicle on display at the GM Heritage Center in Sterling Heights, Michigan. Bond then worked with the Electrovan, which is credited as the world's first hydrogen fuel cell powered vehicle. The Electrovan had a top speed of 70 mph, was able to accelerate from 0-60 mph in 30 seconds and had a range of 120 to 150 miles. It is currently on display at the GM Heritage Center in Sterling Heights, Michigan.
Bond received his first patent in 1968 for a Mounting and Cooling Apparatus for Semiconductor Devices. [1] [2] This apparatus cools the electrical switching device. He was featured on the cover of August 15, 1972, issue of Automotive Industries magazine in a feature story about Early Fuel Evaporation which General Motors received a patent [3] for in 1973. In 1975, he received a patent for a Quick Warm-up Intake Manifold. [4] [5] This is a temperature control system that allows the heat to be directed to the intake manifold when the engine is cold. [6]
In an internal combustion engine, a turbocharger is a forced induction device that is powered by the flow of exhaust gases. It uses this energy to compress the intake air, forcing more air into the engine in order to produce more power for a given displacement.
The Wankel engine is a type of internal combustion engine using an eccentric rotary design to convert pressure into rotating motion. The concept was invented and proven by German engineer Felix Wankel, and the commercially feasible engine designed by German engineer Hanns-Dieter Paschke. The Wankel engine's rotor, which creates the turning motion, is similar in shape to a Reuleaux triangle, with the sides having less curvature. The rotor rotates inside a figure-eight-like epitrochoidal housing, around a fixed toothed gearing. The midpoint of the rotor moves in a circle around the output shaft, spinning the shaft via a cam.
Fuel injection is the introduction of fuel in an internal combustion engine, most commonly automotive engines, by the means of an injector. This article focuses on fuel injection in reciprocating piston and Wankel rotary engines.
A carburetor is a device used by an internal combustion engine to control and mix air and fuel entering the engine. The primary method of adding fuel to the intake air is through the Venturi tube in the main metering circuit, though various other components are also used to provide extra fuel or air in specific circumstances.
A gas turbine, also called a combustion turbine, is a type of continuous flow internal combustion engine. The main parts common to all gas turbine engines form the power-producing part and are, in the direction of flow:
The Chevrolet Corvair is a compact car manufactured by Chevrolet for model years 1960–1969 in two generations. A response to the Volkswagen Beetle, it remains the only American-designed, mass-produced passenger car with a rear-mounted, air-cooled engine. The Corvair was manufactured and marketed in 4-door sedan, 2-door coupe, convertible, 4-door station wagon, passenger van, commercial van, and pickup truck body styles in its first generation (1960–1964) and as a 2-door coupe, convertible or 4-door hardtop in its second (1965–1969) – with a total production of approximately 1.8 million from 1960 until 1969.
Ignition systems are used by heat engines to initiate combustion by igniting the fuel-air mixture. In a spark ignition versions of the internal combustion engine, the ignition system creates a spark to ignite the fuel-air mixture just before each combustion stroke. Gas turbine engines and rocket engines normally use an ignition system only during start-up.
The Northstar engine is a family of high-performance 90° V engines produced by General Motors between 1993 and 2011. Regarded as GM's most technically complex engine, the original double overhead cam, four valve per cylinder, aluminum block/aluminum head V8 design was developed by Oldsmobile R&D, but is most associated with Cadillac's Northstar series.
The Chevrolet small-block engine is a series of gasoline-powered, V-8 automobile engines, produced by the Chevrolet division of General Motors between 1954 and 2003, using the same basic engine block. Referred to as a "small-block" for its size relative to the physically much larger Chevrolet big-block engines, the small block family spanned from 262 cu in (4.3 L) to 400 cu in (6.6 L) in displacement. Engineer Ed Cole is credited with leading the design for this engine. The engine block and cylinder heads were cast at Saginaw Metal Casting Operations in Saginaw, Michigan.
The GM High Feature engine is a family of modern DOHC V6 engines produced by General Motors. The series was introduced in 2004 with the Cadillac CTS and the Holden Commodore (VZ).
The Chevrolet Turbo-Air 6 is a flat-six air-cooled automobile engine developed by General Motors (GM) in the late 1950s for use in the rear-engined Chevrolet Corvair of the 1960s. It was used in the entire Corvair line, as well as a wide variety of other applications.
Gasoline direct injection (GDI), also known as petrol direct injection (PDI), is a mixture formation system for internal combustion engines that run on gasoline (petrol), where fuel is injected into the combustion chamber. This is distinct from manifold injection systems, which inject fuel into the intake manifold.
The name Chevrolet Greenbrier was used by Chevrolet for two vehicles. The first vehicles were a six to nine passenger window van version of the Corvair 95 van. The Corvair 95 series also included the Loadside pickup truck and Rampside pickup truck that featured a mid-body ramp on the right side. All used the Corvair powertrain in a truck body and were produced in the model years 1961 to 1965.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to automobiles:
Holley Performance Products is an automotive performance company based in Bowling Green, Kentucky. It was founded in 1896 in Bradford, Pennsylvania, by George Holley and Earl Holley. When the company was based in Michigan it was a major producer of carburetors for many Detroit-built automobiles.
Automotive air conditioning systems use air conditioning to cool the air in a vehicle.
An internal combustion engine is a heat engine in which the combustion of a fuel occurs with an oxidizer in a combustion chamber that is an integral part of the working fluid flow circuit. In an internal combustion engine, the expansion of the high-temperature and high-pressure gases produced by combustion applies direct force to some component of the engine. The force is typically applied to pistons, turbine blades, a rotor, or a nozzle. This force moves the component over a distance, transforming chemical energy into kinetic energy which is used to propel, move or power whatever the engine is attached to.
David W. Garside is an inventor and former project engineer at BSA's Umberslade Hall research facility. He is notable for having developed an air-cooled twin-rotor Wankel motorcycle engine which powered the Norton Classic road bike. Although the Classic was not the first production rotary-engined bike, it was significantly lighter, smoother, more powerful and better-handling than the contemporary Suzuki RE5.
The Chevrolet Testudo is a concept car built by Bertone on a modified Chevrolet Corvair Monza platform. The name comes from the Latin word for "Turtle". The car debuted at the 1963 Geneva Motor Show.