Interesting thought. Although before WWII you would typically see the well to do being chubby if not outright fat and underdeveloped while the farm kids (exception for the the ones in the dust bowl) ate good food and got plenty of exercise. These farm kids are the ones that are currently living to be 100+ a perfect example is my great aunt Pearl who is 96 and still goes bowling twice a week and my grandmother who is 91 and doing great and is basically a full time volunteer at the nature center near her house where she leads nature walks. Granted they are sisters so there is probably some genetics but they both grew up out on the farm and both stayed active their whole lives aren't overweight. My great aunt Pearl lived on a farm her whole life and now leases the land but still lives in the farm house while my grandmother went to college and became a chemist and stayed active even living in the cities. Now with modern medicine, exercise and current cultural norms we now see the fit and healthy being the upper and middle classes while the unhealthy and unfit being the poor. The poor as a group also tend to be less educated so we may very well be heading towards a split society.
As far a good quality food buying direct from the farmer is much cheaper than even buying the crap they have at the grocery store or even worse fast food. I get good quality (not quite organic as the farmer will give a cow antibiotics if it gets sick) beef from a farmer I know that hasn't been fed ground up animals, pumped full of hormones, and stuck in a feed lot, and only paid $3.24 a pound for the meat and that includes everything from ground beef to rib roasts. I get eggs, and chickens from a farmer near my house, eggs are $0.99 a dozen and a whole live chicken is $7 (you butcher it), and organic bison from a friend of my step mom for $3.71 a pound. Add in a small garden plot in my backyard to grow corn, tomatoes, peppers, squash and beans with a pear tree and a patch of wild raspberries and the weekly grocery bill in the summer is around $30 and in the winter is about $60 for a family of 4. Granted you need to have a large chest freezer (I have 1/8 of a cow and 1/8 of a bison along with pounds of beans, squash, raspberries, and peppers) and know how to can food (I canned 15 gallons of chile and 4 gallons of tomatoes a couple of weekends ago.) but you can eat well on not much money (it looks like I spend less on food for my family of 4 than the maximum benefit for a family of 4 on food stamps in Illinois).
Did you go whole hog and get the supercharger from them?
Well according to fueleconomy.gov my old 540 also qualified as a cash for clunkers (18 mpg combined) and I have never gotten that bad of mileage, even last year when we had 2 bad snow storms in 1 week so that my drive home took 2 hours. I am surprised that yours with a manual and the next generation engine gets a claimed 16 mpg combined. The must have finally decided to put an aggressive set of cams in it as the M62 engine I have has some very mild cams with no overlap so it doesn't even need an EGR valve and no VANOS (yours probably has the Valvetronic system with double VANOS).
And that has overhead cams, probably has aluminum alloy pistons, probably has a smaller displacement, and probably isn't a stroker setup. I am not knocking the Audi engine, just pointing out that it is easier to get high RPMs with a more modern setup. My dad's race engine is still a push-rod engine, setup as a stroker, with the steel pistons.
There are stretches of road out there where you think "If I have car trouble here, I'll die before another car comes along." Only a slight exaggeration heh heh heh.
And that 645 is probably better in every way. That surprises me as my '97 540 with 223,000 miles on it gets 22-23 mpg in rush hour traffic, and 27-29 mpg on open highway and the engine in your vehicle is the next generation of my engine.
It's about smoothness, not quietness. Engine harmonics. For the same reason a straight six is preferable to a V6.
A V6 can be very smooth unless it is one of the many American V6s that are just a V8 with 2 cylinders chopped off. Those American V6s have a 90 degree offset between the banks while a V6 that isn't derived from a V8 block uses the correct 60 degree offset between the banks. An inline 4 without balance bars (these spin at 2x the engine rpm) can never be smooth running. On smaller inline 4 cylinder engines they can usually dampen most of the vibration using the frame and motor mounts without balance bars.
Cars these days are like people these days: they all need to go on a diet. Lose some damn weight!
Too true, but most people won't give up the safety and convenience features they have become accustomed to. This is why I am in the process of restoring a 68 MG Midget. I have most of the parts I want to run with and with a modern suspension in it they can handle as good or better than a Lotus Eliese and since that old A-Series engine was never fully developed there is lots of room for improvement and lots of supplies providing those improvements.
Also belts are quieter than the chain and gear setup. Granted the modern nylon covered gears are quieter than the old ones that weren't but a belt is still quieter.
True, you can build some very high revving piston engines and not I don't mean those model airplane engines either. The car my dad is currently racing is a 1975 Chevy Nova with a 350 c.i. engine in it (5.7 liters for those of you in the rest of the world) that will rev to 8500 without issue.
If you like the smell of burning oil you should check out some of the old little British roadsters (MG, Triumph, Austin, Morris, Sunbeam,...). You can do a lot with them and so long as you have a valid VIN plate you can basically build a new one from parts made from the original tool and die sets. These are simple cars to work on.
Not really. They hand them out like candy and make sure that you know green means go and red means stop. Other than that it isn't too difficult to get one.
Good all season or snow tires do wonders. I drive an over powered sports sedan with rear wheel drive and don't have many problems. Granted when you get 8-12 inches of snow overnight that car isn't making it out but my junk truck will even without putting it in 4WD. Most of the time people who think they need AWD or 4WD really just need high clearance. I prefer the performance tires on the alloy wheels in the non snowy months and a set of nice snow/ice tires in the winter. If you are out and get stuck in a bad storm (had this happen when I was out in Oregon going over Mt. Hood) a set of tire chains will make your vehicle go like a tank. I was pushing snow up and over the hood. As others have mentioned adding weight in back also does wonders to increase traction to the driving wheels. Another beneficial option is to have a posi/ls or locking differential instead of the open differential (know as old peg leg in the racing world) that most vehicles have (especially FWD cars). Once you master RWD vehicles in snow and ice you will never go back as they are fun as hell.
When running a rotary engine in drag racing the NHRA has a conversion to put the vehicle in the proper class. Typically rotary engines are put in a category with vehicles that have close 2x the engine displacement of the rotary. They make more power per unit volume but consume more fuel per unit power than a reciprocating piston engine.
Sounds like my sister, except the accelerator and brake in her mind are combined into one unit, she is either full on the gas or full on the brake. If one is willing to drive like a normal human being you can get good mileage from even a large powerful vehicle. My 97 BMW 540i typically gets 22-23 mpg in rush hour traffic and on the open highway I typically get between 27-29 mpg. The front brake pads on the car last about 100,000 miles while the rear ones last almost 200,000.
Actually if you want to be stupid with your car you should go out to a race track. The people who race stoplight to stoplight or road race down a highway are a danger to everyone else out on the road. Most of these people would never go to a real race track as that would still require following rules and passing a tech inspection. If they wanted to do road racing like what the SCCA does it also requires getting a license and driver training where as NHRA or IHRA drag racing only requires passing a tech inspection and following the track rules. If you really want to learn how to push your car to the limits I highly recommend taking a SCCA driver training course.
I actually wouldn't mind one breaker controlling one thing, but there are 4 rooms on 2 floors (not near each other) that are on 1 breaker, the light in the garage and one of the 3 exterior lights are on another breaker while the other 2 exterior lights and garage door are on another. The rest of the house is similarly wired. There is no rhyme or reason for how it is wired. I would love to have 1 room 1 breaker with major appliances like the fridge, stove, chest freezer, etc.. on their own circuit, and a 220v circuit in the garage. It isn't that big of a house to justify the about of wire that is in it given the number of outlets and appliances. I have a gas dryer, gas furnace, and gas water heater.
They probably already have a phone line that was run out to the property ages ago, but running a cable company line would cost $15k, which is not the cost for putting the correct piece of equipment at the other end of the line. That is what he is talking about. Also the phone company would probably also charge him the cost of a technician to install the thing which would be another $50 to $100 but still entirely reasonable.
Ethanol is even worse than just the mandate. There is the blenders credit that is paid to refineries for each gallon of ethanol that the blend in with fuel (I believe it is at something like $0.45 per gallon). Then you have states like Minnesota that also subsidize the construction of ethanol plants. I wish that I could get the government to mandate the usage of my product, pay someone to mix it in, and then subsidize my creation of that product. Add to it that the cost per mile with a fuel like E85 is still higher than the price per mile with gasoline and it really doesn't make sense.
I thought the bigger effect was that we bombed out most of Europe and Asia so they couldn't produce really anything. As the only real attack on the US during WWII was Pearl Harbor we managed to come out of the war with the ability to feed, cloth, and provide goods for the rest of the world that needed to rebuild, eat, and be clothed. I fear that if we want to have go back to living like we did in the 50s and 60s we will need to go and bomb out the rest of the world again, but we may not like the outcome this time as there are some other countries that can compete with us on ability to bomb people.
Also when selling the answer is always yes our product does that or has that feature. I have been on sales meetings as someone who is running a demo (no talking from me) and sales people in business are just as dodgy as those selling you a used car.
Agree full heartily. I am currently trying to create a map book geared for hunting and the outdoors in Minnesota. All of the data is freely available (the state of Minnesota has gigs of infofreelyavailable) online from various sources. Also there are open source tools to create impressive maps freely available. Add in a bit of effort and self publishing sites like Lulu.com (anyone know of other good ones I could look into) and as an amateur one can probably become successful. Do I ever expect to become rich off this effort, no. Would I mind if I ended up with enough money from this endeavor to purchase a nice 40 acre plot up in the north woods because of it, not at all. I would love it if I could sell one copy to each deer hunter in Minnesota but I doubt I will ever approach that number.
So why am I doing this? Because I looked at maps geared towards hunters and outdoor people and discovered that most of them completely suck and those that don't suck completely still suck as they have incomplete info or the wrong type of info for what a hunter would care about. Again here I am doing it because I want to have a nice spiral bound map book (saddle stitched or stapled never lays flat) for myself and I find it fun. My test maps that I take hunting and hand out to others in the party have proven incredibly useful in finding public land and knowing what to expect before you get there. I know I will probably sell a few copies, mostly to those in my hunting party but anything beyond that would just be icing on the cake.
For a cultural reference see Back to the Future II when the 1955 Doc Brown says something along the lines of "No wonder this failed, it says made in Japan" to which Marty replies "All the best stuff is made in Japan". Where I have run across this was while out hunting with my uncle having completely forgotten about the old cheap crap from japan and my uncle's pocket knife that he carries from when he was a kid was made in Japan.
Sounds similar to when I helped my dad redo his house that was built in 1921. It had the old octopus furnace in the basement, no AC, no insulation and that old fabric covered wire. The interior walls were all plaster over lath and once we had those down you could see light from outside. After spending a summer gutting the house and redoing the interior and siding it was a really nice little house that had a finished basement. It had proper insulation, good wiring, refinished oak floors, oak doors and oak cabinets, modern central heating and air and even a shower (previously it only had an old cast iron bath tub). These changes really upped the value of the house and dramatically lowered utility and insurance costs as the building is no longer a fire hazard. The improvements have probably paid from them selves in utility and insurance savings over the last 12 years.
It doesn't need to be 100 years old, but find one with the old heavy wood floor trusses and a real wood sub floor (real plywood works as well but not the cheap MDF they use now). My neighborhood was built in the late 60s early 70s and the houses are all in good condition and were made from real wood. Granted the previous owner of my house should not have ever been allowed to touch tools, but now that most of his screw ups have been corrected I haven't had any problems. I do however need to rewire the house as there is just too much wire in it as all 36 breakers in the panel are filled and each one controls something in my 1900 sq. ft. house. Also the previous owner liked to party so the sheet rock has a lot of patch work that has been done and doesn't look the greatest so when I replace that I will rewire the house and get some 10 gauge wire in it instead of the 12 gauge that is currently code for the minimum as well as running network, cable tv, and phone throughout the house.
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Interesting thought. Although before WWII you would typically see the well to do being chubby if not outright fat and underdeveloped while the farm kids (exception for the the ones in the dust bowl) ate good food and got plenty of exercise. These farm kids are the ones that are currently living to be 100+ a perfect example is my great aunt Pearl who is 96 and still goes bowling twice a week and my grandmother who is 91 and doing great and is basically a full time volunteer at the nature center near her house where she leads nature walks. Granted they are sisters so there is probably some genetics but they both grew up out on the farm and both stayed active their whole lives aren't overweight. My great aunt Pearl lived on a farm her whole life and now leases the land but still lives in the farm house while my grandmother went to college and became a chemist and stayed active even living in the cities. Now with modern medicine, exercise and current cultural norms we now see the fit and healthy being the upper and middle classes while the unhealthy and unfit being the poor. The poor as a group also tend to be less educated so we may very well be heading towards a split society.
As far a good quality food buying direct from the farmer is much cheaper than even buying the crap they have at the grocery store or even worse fast food. I get good quality (not quite organic as the farmer will give a cow antibiotics if it gets sick) beef from a farmer I know that hasn't been fed ground up animals, pumped full of hormones, and stuck in a feed lot, and only paid $3.24 a pound for the meat and that includes everything from ground beef to rib roasts. I get eggs, and chickens from a farmer near my house, eggs are $0.99 a dozen and a whole live chicken is $7 (you butcher it), and organic bison from a friend of my step mom for $3.71 a pound. Add in a small garden plot in my backyard to grow corn, tomatoes, peppers, squash and beans with a pear tree and a patch of wild raspberries and the weekly grocery bill in the summer is around $30 and in the winter is about $60 for a family of 4. Granted you need to have a large chest freezer (I have 1/8 of a cow and 1/8 of a bison along with pounds of beans, squash, raspberries, and peppers) and know how to can food (I canned 15 gallons of chile and 4 gallons of tomatoes a couple of weekends ago.) but you can eat well on not much money (it looks like I spend less on food for my family of 4 than the maximum benefit for a family of 4 on food stamps in Illinois).
... maybe get into politics and run for congress. That way I could be senile, old and still get payed.
So basically you just want to be older than those currently in office.
Did you go whole hog and get the supercharger from them?
Well according to fueleconomy.gov my old 540 also qualified as a cash for clunkers (18 mpg combined) and I have never gotten that bad of mileage, even last year when we had 2 bad snow storms in 1 week so that my drive home took 2 hours. I am surprised that yours with a manual and the next generation engine gets a claimed 16 mpg combined. The must have finally decided to put an aggressive set of cams in it as the M62 engine I have has some very mild cams with no overlap so it doesn't even need an EGR valve and no VANOS (yours probably has the Valvetronic system with double VANOS).
And that has overhead cams, probably has aluminum alloy pistons, probably has a smaller displacement, and probably isn't a stroker setup. I am not knocking the Audi engine, just pointing out that it is easier to get high RPMs with a more modern setup. My dad's race engine is still a push-rod engine, setup as a stroker, with the steel pistons.
There are stretches of road out there where you think "If I have car trouble here, I'll die before another car comes along." Only a slight exaggeration heh heh heh.
I take it you have never driven US 83 through the sand hills of Nebraska.
And that 645 is probably better in every way. That surprises me as my '97 540 with 223,000 miles on it gets 22-23 mpg in rush hour traffic, and 27-29 mpg on open highway and the engine in your vehicle is the next generation of my engine.
It's about smoothness, not quietness. Engine harmonics. For the same reason a straight six is preferable to a V6.
A V6 can be very smooth unless it is one of the many American V6s that are just a V8 with 2 cylinders chopped off. Those American V6s have a 90 degree offset between the banks while a V6 that isn't derived from a V8 block uses the correct 60 degree offset between the banks. An inline 4 without balance bars (these spin at 2x the engine rpm) can never be smooth running. On smaller inline 4 cylinder engines they can usually dampen most of the vibration using the frame and motor mounts without balance bars.
Cars these days are like people these days: they all need to go on a diet. Lose some damn weight!
Too true, but most people won't give up the safety and convenience features they have become accustomed to. This is why I am in the process of restoring a 68 MG Midget. I have most of the parts I want to run with and with a modern suspension in it they can handle as good or better than a Lotus Eliese and since that old A-Series engine was never fully developed there is lots of room for improvement and lots of supplies providing those improvements.
Also belts are quieter than the chain and gear setup. Granted the modern nylon covered gears are quieter than the old ones that weren't but a belt is still quieter.
True, you can build some very high revving piston engines and not I don't mean those model airplane engines either. The car my dad is currently racing is a 1975 Chevy Nova with a 350 c.i. engine in it (5.7 liters for those of you in the rest of the world) that will rev to 8500 without issue.
If you like the smell of burning oil you should check out some of the old little British roadsters (MG, Triumph, Austin, Morris, Sunbeam, ...). You can do a lot with them and so long as you have a valid VIN plate you can basically build a new one from parts made from the original tool and die sets. These are simple cars to work on.
Not really. They hand them out like candy and make sure that you know green means go and red means stop. Other than that it isn't too difficult to get one.
Good all season or snow tires do wonders. I drive an over powered sports sedan with rear wheel drive and don't have many problems. Granted when you get 8-12 inches of snow overnight that car isn't making it out but my junk truck will even without putting it in 4WD. Most of the time people who think they need AWD or 4WD really just need high clearance. I prefer the performance tires on the alloy wheels in the non snowy months and a set of nice snow/ice tires in the winter. If you are out and get stuck in a bad storm (had this happen when I was out in Oregon going over Mt. Hood) a set of tire chains will make your vehicle go like a tank. I was pushing snow up and over the hood. As others have mentioned adding weight in back also does wonders to increase traction to the driving wheels. Another beneficial option is to have a posi/ls or locking differential instead of the open differential (know as old peg leg in the racing world) that most vehicles have (especially FWD cars). Once you master RWD vehicles in snow and ice you will never go back as they are fun as hell.
When running a rotary engine in drag racing the NHRA has a conversion to put the vehicle in the proper class. Typically rotary engines are put in a category with vehicles that have close 2x the engine displacement of the rotary. They make more power per unit volume but consume more fuel per unit power than a reciprocating piston engine.
Sounds like my sister, except the accelerator and brake in her mind are combined into one unit, she is either full on the gas or full on the brake. If one is willing to drive like a normal human being you can get good mileage from even a large powerful vehicle. My 97 BMW 540i typically gets 22-23 mpg in rush hour traffic and on the open highway I typically get between 27-29 mpg. The front brake pads on the car last about 100,000 miles while the rear ones last almost 200,000.
Actually if you want to be stupid with your car you should go out to a race track. The people who race stoplight to stoplight or road race down a highway are a danger to everyone else out on the road. Most of these people would never go to a real race track as that would still require following rules and passing a tech inspection. If they wanted to do road racing like what the SCCA does it also requires getting a license and driver training where as NHRA or IHRA drag racing only requires passing a tech inspection and following the track rules. If you really want to learn how to push your car to the limits I highly recommend taking a SCCA driver training course.
I actually wouldn't mind one breaker controlling one thing, but there are 4 rooms on 2 floors (not near each other) that are on 1 breaker, the light in the garage and one of the 3 exterior lights are on another breaker while the other 2 exterior lights and garage door are on another. The rest of the house is similarly wired. There is no rhyme or reason for how it is wired. I would love to have 1 room 1 breaker with major appliances like the fridge, stove, chest freezer, etc.. on their own circuit, and a 220v circuit in the garage. It isn't that big of a house to justify the about of wire that is in it given the number of outlets and appliances. I have a gas dryer, gas furnace, and gas water heater.
They probably already have a phone line that was run out to the property ages ago, but running a cable company line would cost $15k, which is not the cost for putting the correct piece of equipment at the other end of the line. That is what he is talking about. Also the phone company would probably also charge him the cost of a technician to install the thing which would be another $50 to $100 but still entirely reasonable.
Ethanol is even worse than just the mandate. There is the blenders credit that is paid to refineries for each gallon of ethanol that the blend in with fuel (I believe it is at something like $0.45 per gallon). Then you have states like Minnesota that also subsidize the construction of ethanol plants. I wish that I could get the government to mandate the usage of my product, pay someone to mix it in, and then subsidize my creation of that product. Add to it that the cost per mile with a fuel like E85 is still higher than the price per mile with gasoline and it really doesn't make sense.
I thought the bigger effect was that we bombed out most of Europe and Asia so they couldn't produce really anything. As the only real attack on the US during WWII was Pearl Harbor we managed to come out of the war with the ability to feed, cloth, and provide goods for the rest of the world that needed to rebuild, eat, and be clothed. I fear that if we want to have go back to living like we did in the 50s and 60s we will need to go and bomb out the rest of the world again, but we may not like the outcome this time as there are some other countries that can compete with us on ability to bomb people.
Also when selling the answer is always yes our product does that or has that feature. I have been on sales meetings as someone who is running a demo (no talking from me) and sales people in business are just as dodgy as those selling you a used car.
Agree full heartily. I am currently trying to create a map book geared for hunting and the outdoors in Minnesota. All of the data is freely available (the state of Minnesota has gigs of info freely available) online from various sources. Also there are open source tools to create impressive maps freely available. Add in a bit of effort and self publishing sites like Lulu.com (anyone know of other good ones I could look into) and as an amateur one can probably become successful. Do I ever expect to become rich off this effort, no. Would I mind if I ended up with enough money from this endeavor to purchase a nice 40 acre plot up in the north woods because of it, not at all. I would love it if I could sell one copy to each deer hunter in Minnesota but I doubt I will ever approach that number.
So why am I doing this? Because I looked at maps geared towards hunters and outdoor people and discovered that most of them completely suck and those that don't suck completely still suck as they have incomplete info or the wrong type of info for what a hunter would care about. Again here I am doing it because I want to have a nice spiral bound map book (saddle stitched or stapled never lays flat) for myself and I find it fun. My test maps that I take hunting and hand out to others in the party have proven incredibly useful in finding public land and knowing what to expect before you get there. I know I will probably sell a few copies, mostly to those in my hunting party but anything beyond that would just be icing on the cake.
They are adding to a collective pile but just not the one you are thinking of. I think it might be same pile my neighbor's dog creates.
For a cultural reference see Back to the Future II when the 1955 Doc Brown says something along the lines of "No wonder this failed, it says made in Japan" to which Marty replies "All the best stuff is made in Japan". Where I have run across this was while out hunting with my uncle having completely forgotten about the old cheap crap from japan and my uncle's pocket knife that he carries from when he was a kid was made in Japan.
Sounds similar to when I helped my dad redo his house that was built in 1921. It had the old octopus furnace in the basement, no AC, no insulation and that old fabric covered wire. The interior walls were all plaster over lath and once we had those down you could see light from outside. After spending a summer gutting the house and redoing the interior and siding it was a really nice little house that had a finished basement. It had proper insulation, good wiring, refinished oak floors, oak doors and oak cabinets, modern central heating and air and even a shower (previously it only had an old cast iron bath tub). These changes really upped the value of the house and dramatically lowered utility and insurance costs as the building is no longer a fire hazard. The improvements have probably paid from them selves in utility and insurance savings over the last 12 years.
It doesn't need to be 100 years old, but find one with the old heavy wood floor trusses and a real wood sub floor (real plywood works as well but not the cheap MDF they use now). My neighborhood was built in the late 60s early 70s and the houses are all in good condition and were made from real wood. Granted the previous owner of my house should not have ever been allowed to touch tools, but now that most of his screw ups have been corrected I haven't had any problems. I do however need to rewire the house as there is just too much wire in it as all 36 breakers in the panel are filled and each one controls something in my 1900 sq. ft. house. Also the previous owner liked to party so the sheet rock has a lot of patch work that has been done and doesn't look the greatest so when I replace that I will rewire the house and get some 10 gauge wire in it instead of the 12 gauge that is currently code for the minimum as well as running network, cable tv, and phone throughout the house.