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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".
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.'"
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.
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