Carbon fiber composite honeycomb about 3/4 of an inch thick or thicker would
be both stiff in torsion and in bending.

Paul Lamar

So this assymble would be moving inside a housing of some sort right?  
The housing would be sealed
at the non moving tube?

Tom Webber

Right. My idea is better of course :) No precise alignment
of the tubes is necessary
as each is self contained, self guided  and self actuated.

Paul, A thick plate could be used to hold all the tubes and form one side of the 
containment. simply slide the base plate to the end of the outer tubes and make 
it bigger to be one plenum side. My only reluctance to your better idea, (were 
those flying pigs I just saw?) :)  is the seal surface needed in the tight tube. 
My experience with o-ring surfaces used in sliding seals is that they require 
excellent finishes. The bores would need to be real true as well. The last nit 
is that the inside would be a step-in. I would prefer a step out. Though to be 
honest for a second, that would only require making the downwind tube the single 
wall and the bell end the cylinder, no harder to do. Bill Jepson

Sure I can step it the other way. Good idea.

I was going to make them in two pieces. Inner and outer and braze
them together. Easier to get good finishes and to make.  As far as the sliding 
O-rings are concerned that is were the teflon encapsulated silicone comes in. 
Teflon has a low coef. of friction needless to say.
Just about all hydraulic cylinders have sliding O-rings.

IMHO this is a brilliant design and a major breakthrough in infinitely variable
length tuned intake manifolds if I have to say so myself :)

BTW the European car racing organizations like the FAI have banned
variable length tuned intake manifolds for some strange reason.
Does anybody know the rationale for that?

Also BTW to blow my own horn a bit all annular cylinder hydraulic clutch 
throw out bearings universally used on production manual transmissions
cars today were invented by me in 1973. Tilton Engineering
used to be known as Lamar Engineering when I sold it to Mac Tilton
in the early seventies. Tilton started selling my clutch throw design
to the race car builders and as soon as the car manufacturers
discovered it was not patented they jumped on the idea.

Paul Lamar
 
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