Slashdot Mirror
Wrong Fuel Chokes Presidential Limo
An anonymous reader writes "Fueling your car with the wrong type of fuel happens even to POTUS. This happens when you put gasoline instead of diesel in the tank. ...." And Yes, the presidential limo really is a diesel. What about clean, renewable solar?
The link is to a story which says the correct fuel was used.
Ran into this a couple of times in the Army before we eliminated all gasoline vehicles. Not fun.
Why aren't diesel spouts square?
Mostly random stuff.
The presidential limo is much heavier than a standard limo due to the extra protection it offers. There isn't enough room on the thing to get enough solar power to move it anywhere, let alone a detail like wanting to move it at night. Adding enough batteries to provide reasonable drive time would mean making it even bigger.
There are some problems that solar can't solve. You'd think an editor here would know that.
-- "So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated." - Bill Gates
I know I'm breaking the convention of reading before posting, however to quote TFA "the mechanical problem had nothing to do with the type of fuel used, as first reported."
That group of bovine standing over there appears quite portentous. That's right it's an ominous cow herd.
The first link says it wasn't the wrong fuel. The second link says they speculate it's diesel. WTF people, can't you read?
Given that that's possibly the shortest Slashdot story ever, it manages to make only two assertions, both of which are confirmed as false (by the linked articles themselves, no less).
And I heard about this story about 6 hours ago on my way in to work and, honestly, didn't care then.
No longer "News for Nerds"
Now "Inaccurate insights for imbeciles".
Why oh why is this a story on Slashdot?
"We're gonna need a bigger boat"
No, but Kansas might go to hell if he couldn't leave.
Not trolling; the few times the POTUS has been here in town, traffic gets messed up all day. It's obnoxious. About 20 minutes after Air Force One is wheels-up, things are back to normal, and people can get from place to place.
Better for the environment but not better for people. Diesel exhaust causes asthma.
As it turns out, gasoline vehicles emit plenty of soot, and the soot they release is more dangerous because it is finer. The finer soot is more difficult to expel from the lungs. If you can blame asthma on transportation fuel, it's gasoline exhaust causing it. We burn more of it (on the roads, that is) and more of it is burned in poorly regulated vehicles, and finally the soot that is produced is more hazardous. Further, since gasoline is more volatile than diesel fuel, when it is sprayed into the atmosphere unburned (as all vehicles tend to do shortly after start) it is more hazardous then as well.
Signed,
Asthmatic owner of two indirectly-injected diesels, whose asthma is readily activated by gasoline vehicles, but not by diesels, as repeatedly demonstrated when I have to move my lady's Astro and one of my diesels around on the same morning.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Cars *used* to be immune from EMP. Modern cars have electronic fuel injection completely controlled by solid-state microprocessors. EMP will stop them cold.
What about clean, renewable solar?
For those who don't remember, $535 million was given to the Obama endorsed solar panel manufacturer - Solyndra, which went bankrupt.
"Lame" - Galaxar
Here's sort of an abstract that points to another report.
http://www.survivalblog.com/2010/08/real_world_emp_effects_on_moto.html
It is not true that cars are completely immune, but most vehicles (90%) only show minor anomalous behavior like blinking indicators, and when the cars do stall, they can be restarted immediately.
This could cause accidents, of course, but won't paralyze land transport.
This is not a President who leads by example; he's one who leads by rhetoric and simple mind-capturing speaking methods.
If a solar vehicle were actually to be used by the P-rez, it's hard to say what effect it would have on the public, but my gut feeling is it would encourage heavy-pocketed individuals to try and 'catch up' to what the top dogs (gov't) are doing.
Trickle-down behavior ensues. Just a theory.
I think the effect it would have on the public is to wonder why he is putting the country at risk by eschewing his expensive protective limo and is instead riding around in a glorified bicycle that provides no protection at all from gunfire or explosives, while being surrounded by a half dozen 8 MPG SUV's.
Or if you're suggesting that he should suspend the laws of physics to allow his current limo to be solar powered (even at night), then yeah, I think he should do that.
I'm not sure if I'm missing your sarcasm, but I'm fairly certain he wasn't being sarcastic. The big V-8s in American trucks produce more torque at low revs than smaller engines, but less power at high revs. They could easily have smaller diesel engines, with the same torque, more power, and less fuel consumption. The older Fords with the 7.3 L diesel show that it can be done (albeit with far more engine than most pickup drivers need.)
Is 1563649 a prime number?
They're utilizing data from a 1962 study done at Sandia Lab. Those cars had no electronics.
Modern cars' electronic ignition systems get completely fried by EMP. Any car built since probably the early 1980s would be completely bricked by an EMP.
As demonstrated in this documentary.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
I'm European. I spent 11 years driving Diesels. Now I'm back in a petrol / gasoline vehicle and intending to convert it to run on LPG autogas. My reasons? Modern diesel engines.
the 3 diesel cars I ran all had one thing in common - the same 90-horsepower 1753cc Ford 8-valve diesel turbo engine. It was ludicrously simple, noisy, rough-running, but produced LOTS of torque at fairly low revs and in a fairly narrow band when the turbocharger was online and in full boost had a fairly impressive ability to sprint.. it required lots of gear changes but could keep up with fast-accelerating traffic. Oil changes were at 10,000 mile intervals and only required 5w30 semi-synthetic, which is cheap. Engine life was 200,000 miles.
When my last one died of extreme old age I started looking around and found that all the replacement vehicles available at my price point and feature requirements had dual-mass flywheels, high-pressure / commonrail fuel injection, variable geometry turbochargers - and seriously reduced life expectancy. The 1990s cars I owned were designed for simplicity, reliability and economy (45 miles per UK gallon average efficiency, 55+mpg on longer runs). Their replaements were designed as drop-in replacements for petrol drivers with comparable performance, and the compromises and complexity required to give that extra urgency had a bad effect on the long term reliability and costs. My 2-litre 2001-model Volvo V40 is screamingly insane in performance comparisons, and probably far more reliable. Unlike the new diesels it will probably also last 180,000 miles. And with the LPG conversion will be cheaper to run than a diesel.
I have been a user for about 10 years. This ends Feb 2014. The site's been ruined. I'm off. Dice, FU