Just a fun thread to discuss anything trival about our Beloved Maximas.

The 1st trivial thing i would like to bring up is in the 2000 Max brochure.

"Multi-Parabola Headlamps" Did Nissan actually make this term up or have any other manufacturers use this term for basic headlamps? LOL


Dictionary:

pa·rab·o·la
Pronunciation: p&-'ra-b&-l&
Function: noun
Etymology: New Latin, from Greek parabolE, literally, comparison
1 : a plane curve generated by a point moving so that its distance from a fixed point is equal to its distance from a fixed line : the intersection of a right circular cone with a plane parallel to an element of the cone
2 : something bowl-shaped (as an antenna or microphone reflector)




This has always intrigued me in the brochure. Seemed to me they were making something out of nothing... LOL

Correct me if I am wrong.

Any other trivial things anyone else want to mention?

 

My guess would be since the 5 gen has two separate low beam and high beam housings both using a "parabola reflector" design. The headlight assembley itself is dubbed "Multi-parabola" = two parabolic reflectors per housing.

...may sound stupid yes, but sounds pretty reasonable to me.

 

Not sure if Nissan was the first to coin the term (doubt it), but I have seen it thrown around in technical as well as lay literature. I've never seen an explanation or rigorous definition for it, but I have always taken "multiple-parabola" to mean a 3-D surface constructed from 2-dimensional parabolas of multiple radii. So I wouldn't call it nothing, but whoever came up with the term could have been more creative. Imagine if "ice cubes" were called "multiple-square dihydrogen monoxide crystals."

Now this is making something of nothing: http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fu...53678061096938

 

Man, thats definitely one of the funniest blogs i've ever read. Sorry to get off topic...

 

OK, you're wrong.

"Basic headlamps" only seem simple because they are so common we don't think twice about them. Behind the "basic headlamps" is the rather complicated science of optics.

"Multi-parabola headlights" is marketing jibberish for what engineers might call a "complex surface reflector".

In older days, the parabola (bowl-shaped) reflector was the reflector shape used in most headlights. It was easy to manufacture, and the standard headlight was a 5.25" or 7" round unit that all cars used. These headlights used a parabolic reflector together with a bulb shield and fresnel lenses formed into the face of the headlight to shape the beam pattern.

As time went on, designers wanted to make headlights with different shapes, more integrated with the car body, for both aerodynamic and appearance reasons. The problem was, these headlights tended to perform poorly because they did not make full use of the light available from the bulb.

The solution to this was to change the reflector using computer-aided design. Instead of a simple stamped metal reflector, it was possible to cheaply manufacture a reflector with many reflecting surfaces, precisely shaped, from plastic and coat it with a thin reflective metal layer. Now, more of the available light from the bulb could be captured and shaped into a useful beam pattern thrown down the road.

These days, almost every manufacturer uses some variation of the complex surface reflectors. The "multi-parabola headlights" are a fairly simple version of this idea. Some newer designs have many thousands of reflecting surfaces molded into the headlights.

 

the least that unorignal bish could do is give credit to the person she jacked the rant from

http://www.thebestpageintheuniverse....treme_bull****

im sure you can figure out what 4 letter s-word replaces those stars

 

Actually that was an 'article' Maddox wrote back in '03 - http://www.thebestpageintheuniverse....treme_bull****

http://maddox.xmission.com/

 

To simplify what he is saying...

On old headlights (using single parabolic reflector) the LENS aimed the headlight making beam pattern. It did so using as he said a "fresnel" lens (the ones with all the lines in them). The reflector intensified the light at the lens, the lens then used "prism" (thats what makes it a fresnel lens) to aim the light. Prisim is like tiny triangles on the surface that bend and refract the light to another location.

With the newer housings, they now use the reflector to aim the light, thats why newer lenses are clear, they dont have to aim the light anymore!!!

If you look closely at an OEM projector they use the same techniques as early lens design to aim the light, it has prism on the front surface to aim the light and create a clean beam pattern.

 

Speaking of Max trivia, why did Nissan go from twin exhaust on the '94 SE to a puny single pipe on the '95?

Even TOYOTA had a twin-pipe exhaust on their v6 cars in '95. The Honda Accord ( then a 4-cylinder) had a twin-pipe on their EX models. Us Maxes? Nope, single pipe for us ,please. I don't get that at all....

 

cost saving

 

Yeah, I knew that, but see what happens when you try to link to the original Maddox site?

 

*shudder* Reminds me of highschool math...

 

math>me.....

 

the exhaust is the same design (differnet shape) from the manifolds all the way to the muffler.

Stick the mufflers up next to each other, and you'll see the single-tip mufflers from the 4 gen and the 3gen GXE are a single larger diameter. the dual-tip mufflers have two smaller holes in them.
same overall airflow.

it's only looks.