Anyone out there old enough to remember the Civic CVCC (1973)? The CVCC or Compound Vortex Controlled Combustion system burned fuel so completely that it passed California's emission standards without a catalytic converter.
Sure, CVCC was great. That extra valve, the separate swirly-port combustion chamber. It was a great idea, and I've gotta say that Honda's designers had a great concept.
Too bad they carboned up before the warranty period was up due to defective carburetor float design.
Too bad Honda's manufacturing at the time was such that all the bores on a given block were often of different sizes and even on different centers.
Too bad the early Civics and Preludes into which these motors were fitted had myriad safety deficiencies, not limited to brakes that could be activated by a passenger pressing a foot too hard on the passenger side firewall.
Too bad the steel rotted out fast enough to make people suspect the cars were made of recycled bedframes.
Too bad I've rebuilt 6 different Honda engines and not yet found one that I like even remotely as much as the clanky old 2.2L engine in K-Cars.
Too bad I'll never trust another Honda product again.
I agree with what you're saying up to the point of saying that a civic will only last 120,000 miles. This may be true if the body totally rusts out. Thin sheet metal suffers badly from rust, as you say. But well maintained honda engines will last a lot longer than that.
Most cars are not that well maintained, and therefore will not last that long. Especially few people maintain the engine and neglect the body (and vice versa). Usually, if the body is neglected, the engine is, too.
Further, in order to reduce fuel consumption and increase power per cubic inch, many Japanese engines have very small piston to bore clearances, requiring very narrow piston rings. Now, this sounds like a good thing on paper, and in many respects, it's a great thing. It's like communism - it seems like a good idea until you try it. In practice, speaking as one who has rebuilt several Japanese car engines, it sucks.
The problem is that you don't want to put the piston ring grooves too deep into the piston skirts. If you do, that increases the weight of the piston, and therefore more energy is wasted during the reciprocation of the bottom end of the engine.
So, because the piston rings are narrow, as they wear, their cross-section is reduced, and so is the spring tension that forces their faces against the insides of the bore. Since these also tend to be high-revving engines that place an enormous load on their piston rings both thermally (from friction with the bore) and caused by inertia, the erosion of the rings is very much a design concern. As that happens, more blowby gets into the crankcase, and more oil gets up into the combustion chamber. Coked-up oil (which is oil that is not changed as frequently as it should be, and virtually everyone is guilty of that occasionally) will get into the tight bore to piston clearance and often creates sludge in the oil control rings, preventing them from working properly. Oil then leaks into the combustion chambers.
One of the most famous engines for this is the Mitsubishi 3.0L V6, sold primarily in Dodge Caravans and Plymouth Voyageurs. (It was the late '80s. People thought Japanese cars were better, but wanted to be patriotic and drive a domestic, so having a Japanese engine in an American car made them feel good.) Next time you see an older Caravan or Voyageur spouting blue smoke, take a look for the little emblem on the fender: 3.0L V6. Note that very few of the Caravans/Voyageurs with American-made 2.2L or 2.5L engines do this.
If the bore to piston clearance was a little more (like it is in domestic motors), the rings could have a lot more cross-sectional area, and be able to maintain their spring tension against the inside of the cylinder bores a lot better.
My '88 CRX Si has 196000 miles, uses no oil, gets 38mpg, and is still as fast as it was when it was new.
Sure! And my 1976 Dodge Ram with a 400CID V8 has better than 227,000 miles on it, and still runs like it's new. My 1974 Plymouth Valiant Brougham has 297,000 miles on its trusty old Slant-6. They're all anecdotal, and with more mileage than most of their peers had when they hit the great metal munchers at the steel mills. The fact remains that generally a domestic engine will be more durable in the long run, and more forgiving of maintenance and mechanical failure than will be a Japanese motor.
God forbid you should be lax and not change your Honda's timing belt on time. It's an interference motor, meaning that the valves and the pistons don't have sufficient clearance for the valves to be open when the pistons reach top dead center. Of course, in a perfect world, that would never happen. In a perfect world, everyone changes their timing belts before they snap. We don't live in a perfect world, and our cars shouldn't require unrealistic maintenance to avoid a catastrophic failure. A timing belt snap in a Japanese car typically grenades the motor, often not just bending valves and breaking pistons, but also cracking heads and scoring blocks. While an intereference motor is great for performance and gas mileage, it's pretty nasty when they go bad. In a domestic car, when you pop the timing belt, usually the engine simply stops running. You'd coast to the shoulder, wait for the tow truck, and have a new timing belt fitted. When an interference motor grenades itself at highway speeds, normally the engine doesn't just stop producing power, it seizes because the debris blocks the movement of the pistons. If you're in a FWD stickshift vehicle, the front wheels will lock up, and you'll lose steering control until you have the presence of mind to hit the clutch or put the car into neutral.
(but yes, you do have to remove the left axle to replace the alternator )-: )
Sure! Now, that's fun, isn't it?
The little boys out there who think a Honda Civic with a big stereo is the ultimate driving machine get to find out all about this.
Most domestic cars, if you overload the alternator, the regulator will crank up the field current to a limit. If you're drawing 100A off the battery and the alternator can only supply 70A to replenish the battery, your battery voltage will drop, and eventually you may be screwed, if you don't watch the gauges.
A Nippondenso alternator (Honda/Toyota/Nissan/Subaru...) will crank the field current up, too. Sadly, though, the tiny and lightweight alternator doesn't cool itself well enough for the field windings to be able to handle the continuous current that the regulator will allow to flow. Not only will the battery voltage gradually drop, but eventually something in the alternator gets too hot (usually field windings, which are actually on the armature). Pop goes the alternator. Cars equipped with stupidly big stereos and lots of bug lights underneath are especially vulnerable to this, since the alternator load is nowhere within design specifications, and the alternator's design doesn't explicitly prevent thermal runaway.
While overloading an alternator is never a good idea, I find it comforting to know that most Bosch, Delco, Motorcraft and Mopar alternators (all domestics and most of the European imports) won't fail in this way: turn off the excessive electrical loads, toss the car on a battery charger, start it up, and everything is usually fine.
My '86 accord I bought a year ago with 220000 miles and now has 242000 miles. Similar story with that one; no oil consumption, 32mpg.
Easy! Take a string trimmer engine and graft it onto a 100 lb carbon fiber body just large enough for a 5'0 person. Make the driver lay on their back or stomach to cut the aero cross section. Use bicycle components for the wheels. Run the engine for 30 sec full throttle then coast for 3 minutes. 3000 mpg isn't too difficult. 10k is very realistic, especially in favorable terrain and wind. The SAE runs a similar competition for college teams. Search for "supermileage". BTW, avg speed is around 20 mph.
Wow. I can't wait to drive that. Sounds very comfortable, safe and practical.
But, sadly, those of us with statures less diminutive than the 5'0" indicated will have to continue to drive more conventional (and realistic) vehicles.
I, for one, at 6'4", shall continue to drive my 1976 Dodge Ram. It's 21' long, has a 400CID V8 engine, weighs about 4,500lbs and has manual steering. One cylinder on my engine could aspirate that entire weed wacker engine. The massive weight and lack of power steering give the vehicle other benefits that reduce the total cost of ownership (despite the fact that it only gets 7MPG). For one thing, I didn't need to keep my gym membership, since parallel parking it provides the best upper-body workout for which one could hope.
And, of course, the Ram provides a form of collision insurance just not sold by State Farm. It's the "if I'm gonna get killed in a car accident, I'm damned well taking you with me" policy. That would especially include carbon-fiber vehicles running on ten-speed tires. Sure, carbon fiber is great, but so is Michigan's finest steel: I could back over you in a parking lot and never even know it. 235/75R-15 Mud and Snow radials, while not huge, are big enough that an entire car such as you've described could become caught between my treads as easily as a piece of gravel.
With apologies to the very passe Lorne Michaels, the weed-wacker powered carbon fiber "I'm gonna lie down as I drive" car is another Not Ready for Prime Time Player.
The designers of the Grand Cherokee would be flattered that you never realized that it's a unibody vehicle
Uhhh... I think you're probably mistaken.
Last time I was under a Cherokee, it was a unibody. Pretty damned tough, but still a monoque vehicle.
But the Grand Cherokee shares a frame with the Durango, which is just a modified version of the Dakota frame.
I assure you, every Grand Cherokee I've ever worked on has been full frame. Box section, at that, with great body-to-frame isolating dampers and everything.
So, despite the silly carpets and leather seats, you may rest assured that a Grand Cherokee is *very* much a truck.
I ended up buying a used '97 BMW 328i last February. Sure, it cost twice as much used (excuse me, "pre-owned", which means it came with a kick-ass 100k mile warranty) as my Saturn did new, but I think it was well worth it. Here in L.A. I regularly see 15-year old Bimmers in excellent condition on the road. Plus they go something like 9000+ miles between oil changes, and there's a little LED strip on the instrument panel that counts down from 5 bars to let you know when it's time for service, using a customized estimate based on your gas consumption. What geek couldn't appreciate that?:-)
Absolutely. I like BMWs, but I'd never buy one, though they're generally rather solid cars (even if they still are unibodies). Price for parts is often way too expensive to make it practical to fix them if they need too much work, so take good care of it.
Even if BMW recommends changing the oil every 9,000 miles (!), changing the oil more frequently could only be beneficial. And remember that while synthetic oil may not suffer the chemical breakdown that coventional oil experiences in an engine, *any* oil will still fill up with combustion products from blowby.
I change my oil and filter every 2,500 miles. At the same time, I also do a chassis lube, check the freeplay in my balljoints and tie rod ends, brake pad thickness, then finish it off by doing a quick engine shampoo. When the old oil comes out, it's still clean and amber. (And it gets recycled.)
My daily driver is a 1976 Dodge Ram with a 400CID (6.6L) V8. It's now got over 225,000 miles on it, but it still starts and runs like brand new, with the original engine and transmission. Driving my old truck is about the only thing I look forward to, during my 30 mile each way daily commute... Merely touching the gas too hard can result in both rear tires disappearing in a cloud of white smoke.:)
Hey, where'd you get that statistic? I learned in my Thermodynamics class that new turbine/steam power plants can get only about 70% efficiency. If I'm not mistaken, the efficiency of the piddling powerplant in your car is nearer 20%.
Well, turbines are great for bulk power, but not for efficient power. A jet engine, which is a kind of turbine (admittedly being used in reverse to the application in a power plant) would need to put out about 100lb of thrust to maintain freeway cruising speeds in the average car. The jet fuel (kerosene) required to do that would be in the range of 4 MPG. Compare that to the freeway cruising efficiency of a modern car.
As for where my statistics come from, the statistic about the hydro grid comes from the book, "An Engineer's Guide to Hydro-Electric Distribution Systems". The figure about the efficiency of the average car is taken from an article that I recently read on SAE's website at www.sae.org.
Friction in the engine, nonrecoverable heat from the combustion (biggie), friction in the transmission and tires, etc.
Not to mention energy wasted as noise, energy wasted pushing the car through the air, energy wasted as the car idles.
Many new car brochures have the engine's power rated in kW now. If you stop and think about how much heat the car throws off for the fact that it's converting x kW of chemical energy into mechanical energy, I still think that's pretty impressive. By comparison, consider how much heat your computer's power supply throws off when you've got it running at its full 200W load (lots of disk drives and cards)....
You're also completely ignoring the benefits of regenerative braking in electric vehicles/hybrids.
Nah. They're there, but I'm sure it's negligible. Consider the energy used to make the vehicle maintain a given speed. When you apply the brakes, if the traction motor is 90% efficient both driving and braking the car, 10% of your kinetic energy will be wasted as heat. The other 90% will go to recharge the batteries. Recharging batteries is an inefficient proposition - on the order of 50% maximum. I'm sure that regenerative braking improves cruising range by a few miles, but not much overall.
The more important benefit of an electric or fuel-cell powered car is that when you're stopped, the electric drive motor is off. The batteries or fuel cells are not running an idling engine, the way a gas tank has to keep an internal combustion engine running at stoplights. For city drivers, I'm sure that's a far more important benefit.
The other great benefit is that a gasoline engine achieves peak efficiency only at the top of its torque curve. In other words, only at a rotational speed determined by many factors, including the shape of the combustion chamber, the ratio of bore versus stroke, the design of the runners and plenum in the induction system, the back pressure and scavenging properties of the exhaust system, etc... It's pretty hard to maintain this peak efficiency as you're tooling around town. The transmissions in most cars are geared so that at legal highway speeds, the engine will be spinning at about the torque peak.
I will give you this: as you'd use it in a car, an electric motor's energy useage increases linearly with speed, making an electric car absolutely ideal for the slow puttering around a city that most people end up doing. But for the reasons outlined in my orginial posting, I greatly protest to running them off batteries, for the chemical dangers and charging issues I outlined originally.
Very good point. If i remember correctly, Ford engineers toyed with using Sodium batteries for their EV-1. Those babies have to be hot enough for the sodium to melt.
I know. That's terrifying, isn't it? Most accidents happen on rainy/snowy days. Now, what happens when molten sodium from a broken battery hits the big puddle on the wet pavement beside the remains of the car...?
Geez, that takes me back to high school chemistry classes...
The "Oh no, more electrical bills!" argument is crap. New power plants would get built, and while they would probably burn fuel, they would incorporate more effective smokestack scrubbers than your catalytic converter on your car does.
Oh, no question. A gasoline fired power plant could produce a lot less emissions that the same amount of gasoline being burned in even the best of cars. (I'm using gasoline as an example because it's a simple comparison, not because it would be a likely candidate for a power plant fuel.)
But now that you've got the energy out of the gasoline, you still have to get the energy into the car, and the transmission and storage of energy is the problem.
If a gasoline-fired plant products 1kW of energy from every liter of fuel (abysmal example, but easy for clarity), and a car produces 500W of energy from a liter, this looks good.
Then, subtract 50% of that 1kW of energy to get the power to the consumer. That leaves you with 500W of enery remaining. On par with the car, but a much cleaner exhaust, it's still probably worthwhile.
Now, as you charge the electric car's batteries, you lose another 50% or so to the charger and the chemical processes within the batteries. That leaves you with 250W of useable energy from that liter. Which means that for a given distance travelled in an electric car, you could easily end up using 4 times the fuel as you would have if you'd just burned the gasoline in the car to begin with. Then, if the scrubbers leave the exhaust from the plant twice as clean, per liter consumed, as the exhaust from a car, you're still producing twice as much pollutant as the car would.
A better option is a fuel cell, as soon as they're ready for mass production. A fuel cell will burn gasoline with stellar efficiency, and coupled to the operating efficiency and lack of idling of an electric motor, a fuel-cell powered electric vehicle would be the best option.
And it means no new nuclear power plants, no new hydroelectric dams, no new coal-fired plants: it can be run off ordinary gasoline or methanol/ethanol processed from agricultural crops.
And, it's clean. Running on hydrogen, the only emissions would be water vapor. Off gasoline, there'd be a little more. Even if it's not perfect, running on gasoline, it would still be an order of magnitude better than today's cars.
only power supply the cars can have is standard petrolium. The cars manage over 10,000 miles to the gallon.
Uhh... The only way to get that kind of energy out of gasoline/petroleum is if someone has managed to figure out a way to convert mass into energy.
So, unless Mr. Fusion has been pulled off the back of Doc Brown's DeLorean and stuck into a car, I think you've got a decimal point in the wrong place.
Mechanical and chemical engineering is a far more mature science than electrical engineering. All improvements in fields involving these two disciplines tend to occur at an incremental pace, not at the pace we've become used to in the computer field.
The Mobil Economy Run typically has 100MPG turnouts now, with a few spiking up as high as 110MPG.
To demonstrate the pace of change,a Slant-6 powered Plymouth Valiant won the 1964 Mobil Economy Run. It managed a whopping 38 MPG. Just 12 years later, Chrysler brought out a Plymouth Duster (Valiant derivative) which included some aluminum body panels and was capable of the same mileage. The '76 Plymouth Feather Duster is a rare and highly sought-after car today.
If someone were to build disposable cars, designed to last 3-4 years, using this ultra-efficient technology, you could throw away a good percentage of the gas-guzzlers. Less gasoline requied = more gasoline to go round.
Cars with shorter lifespans = more manufacturing of cars. More manufacturing of cars = more steel mills, more transportation, more tooling required for the factories. In short, you're replacing a problem seen at the tailpipe with a far bigger problem seen at the factory smokestack.
The one good thing about SUVs is that the real ones are built to last. They're full-frame, rear-wheel-drive. Sure, they're heavy gas-hogs, but most people don't drive more than about 12,000 miles a year. An SUV is built like a Chevrolet Caprice Classic or a Ford LTD Crown Victoria - either one is a car that has no problem surviving 150,000 miles in police duty before being sold for a second life as a taxicab.
Manufacturing the average car uses fuel and energy equivalent to driving that same car over over 180,000 miles. (Note that this isn't expressed in expensive terms like $/gallon; generally electric prices for steel mills are somewhere in the range of $30/megawatt.) This doesn't include toxic waste from both manufacturing and disposing of the plastic products that are used extensively in a modern car to reduce the weight (and therefore increase gas mileage).
Since the average car currently lasts 8-10 years, and since the average number of miles travelled is 12,000 per year, that means the investment to make the car is 180,000 miles, yet the useful life of the car is only 120,000 miles.
That's a net loss. And replacing the car every few years for only a very incremental upgrade in gas mileage is just crazy.
That's not to say that a disposeable car couldn't be made quite inexpensively. But the most expensive part of a car is the labor required to build it to the exacting tolerances to which it's built. If you reduce those tolerances to reduce the cost of the car, you're also reducing the efficiency of the car. Emissions and gas mileage are a direct factor of how precisely the valves close and how well the pistons fit into the cylinders.
If you want a car that is disposeable, look at the way most of today's cars are built. They're pretty damned near disposeable. Pickup trucks, full-frame rear-wheel drive cars, and heavy early unibodies last a long time. But lightweight unibody cars - like most of the vehicles on the road - suffer metal fatigue and corrosion problems early on. (A Dodge Aries/Plymouth Reliant is a classic example. Look at the side of the roof pillar, just near the the top of the back doors, next time you see one in a parking lot. A lot of them have fatigue cracks there.)
This is, of course, to say nothing of the fact that in a front wheel drive car, even a fairly small accident can easily trash the drivetrain as well as the suspension, and therefore write off the car. Since most cars experience two accidents during their lifetimes, and the average lifespan of a car is 8-10 years, that averages an accident every 4 or 5 years. The more fragile the car, and the more stuff is located up front, the more likely the car will be written off.
As far as I'm concerned, the best example of a disposeable car these days is a Honda Civic. The body panels are very thin to be light, which means that they dent very easily, and will quickly rust out if the paint and galvanizing layer is damaged. (Good thing Honda makes great paint.) The engine and transmission are right up front, since it's a front wheel drive car. As with all front wheel drive cars, it takes a lot of work to change a bad part, since there's a lot of stuff you have to move out of the way first. (Look at where the alternator is in a Civic!) Parts are expensive, making repairs impractical. And the hard-working little four-cylinder engines produce a lot of power for their size, sure, but that means more load on the piston rings and the tops of the combustion chambers. The more load on the piston rings and the tops of the combustion chambers, the sooner you will need to do a re-bore/re-ring job.
It's truly a car that is meant to be driven 120,000 miles (or more, if you're *very* good with maintenance) and then scrapped.
Unfortunately, the Japanese influence on Detroit, as well as the ever-higher Corporate Average Fuel Economy laws, have reduced the numbers of cars that are built like the Caprice Classics of yesteryear.
Your only hope for a tough-as-nails, built-to-last vehicle these days is a full-frame, American-made SUV, as odious as it may sound.
Note that a Toyota RAV-4 or a Honda CR-V or a Suzuki Sidekick is a lightweight unibody that masquerades as a truck. You have to buy the real thing to get the real thing:
Gasoline is here for a while. There's just no good substitute for most people yet.
Natural gas/Propane are both great, but the infrastructure to support them just isn't there. Gas stations would have to make a huge investment to be able to support them at all stations. It's great for fleet vehicles like taxis, since the cab seldom leaves its home city, and the driver can get to be very familiar with which gas stations have already added propane/NG fueling services.
While gasoline is very nasty stuff, it's a little safer than carrying around a large tank of compressed and invisible fuel. A car accident that ruptures a full automotive propane/NG tank would be far more likely to be deadly than a car accident that ruptures a gasoline tank and causes a spill. Let alone the dangers of hydrogen as a fuel, which, like acetylene, sweats its way out of cast iron tanks.
You'll note that most parking garages won't allow propane/NG vehicles. If, over the years, one of the fuel lines corrodes or develops metal fatigue cracks, a slow fuel leak could cause a parking garage explosion. Since parking garages tend to be under buildings, conceivably, the building could come down. Dire consequences? Yup. One in a million chance? Yup. But if there are millions of propane/NG vehicles out there, it's a bigger worry than gasoline.
Gasoline tends to drip, and you can usually see a leak. You can always see a puddle. With invisible gases, that's not possible: you have to rely on the odor, which you might not catch if it's windy.
Admittedly, conditions have to be just right for a propane/NG explosion, but it's unquestionably somewhat more dangerous than gasoline. Much like a Ford Pinto's gasoline tank is more dangerous than the average.
Fuel cells are a great idea, and I'm sure they'll be with us in a few years. I've had the opportunity to drive a Ballard-powered golf cart, and it was a lot of fun. Silent, fast, much more efficient than an internal combustion engine. It was nice. But the problem is that fuel cells still require membranes that are as difficult and unreliable to mass produce as color LCD displays were a few years ago. In time, that will change.
Fuel for fuel cells will still have to be something combustible. A fuel cell simply burns fuel through what is essentially a catalytic reaction, as opposed to a combustion reaction. So we're back at the same choices: drag around a tank of liquid gasoline/methanol/ethanol, or drag around a tank full of compressed hyrdrogen/propane/NG.
Since the infrastructure already exists for the distribution of liquid fuels, you're probably still going to be pouring some sort of liquid fuel into your tank.
Fuel cells, by virtue of their basic operation, will be very sensitive to impurities in the fuel. Deposits formed inside the fuel cell will require the replacement of the expensive membrane. A conventional paper fuel filter, like your car currently has, will not suffice. That's going to mean very expensive processes of lining tanks in every refinery, truck, gas station... which will be carried on to you, fair consumer.
Electric cars are a great idea, but they're not practical for two big reasons.
First things first, all batteries use a chemical reaction to convert chemical energy into electrical energy. The more efficient the battery, the more efficient (and therefore nasty) the chemicals must be. In order to achieve range in an electric car, every bit of free space is going to have to have batteries crammed into it.
Now, what happens when you're involved in a fender-bender? A battery will probably rupture somewhere, spraying out strong acids or alkalines. Accident victims will often have chemical burns. And every last fender-bender on the Santa Monica Freeway would result in a Haz-Mat team cleaning up the road. As if gasoline wasn't hazardous enough.
Electric cars also need fuel. The fuel, of course, will be electricity to recharge the batteries. If you're plugging your car in at night, your electric bill will go up. No big deal, it will probably be cheaper than gasoline. But what happens when the majority of the 6 million or so cars in LA are plugged in every night? The power from your wall outlets comes from somewhere... how many nuclear power plants will have to go up to deal with the increased electrical needs? How many more Hoover Dams will have to be built? Remember, tidal and solar power just aren't capable of serving any sort of electrical need yet. Building coal or other fossil-fuel powered plants just defeats the purpose of electric cars.
What will your electric bill look like as the demand for electricity outstrips supply? It already does that every year just with air conditioners. Look at the situation in Montana at the moment.
Add to that the fact that a modern gasoline car is about 70% efficient. Not good, right?
Most electric distribution systems are only about 40-50% efficient. So, on a per car basis, you're already using more energy by running an electric car. Then consider that batteries are at best 70% efficient. While the car's electric motor itself may be upwards of 90% efficient, your efficiencies have already added up and negated any benefit.
Gasoline is evil. Electricity is evil. Cars are evil. But they're here to stay; better just to continue to refine what we have. And when the fuel cell is ready for mass production, I'll happily fill my efficient fuel-cell powered vehicle up with renewable and clean methanol/ethanol.
I know for FACT in Brazil you are able to buy a car which burns gasoline or methonol.
Most American cars now will run very happily on either gasoline or methanol.
Methanol is, of course, a form of alcohol, and has properties somewhat different from gasoline. For one thing, it's significantly more corrosive to some of the rubber and plastic parts in a car's fuel system. That has been addressed; for example, all new Chryslers since 1991 (correct me if I'm wrong) include fuel system components that are meant to handle it.
Chrysler had a wonderful test car at about that time. It was a 1990 or 1991 Dodge Spirit R/T with a 2.2L or 2.5L engine - the same motor as most K-Cars, Dodge Shadows, etc. With very little work, they'd adapted the fuel system to happily take methanol/ethanol. And the fuel injection system (discussed below) was fitted with a fuel type sensor that would allow the car to run happily on any ratio of gasoline/ethanol/methanol.
Combustion properties are quite different. Since methanol burns differently, if you were to just dump it into your gas tank, your engine would run.... sorta. But since your carburetor and ignition timing are calibrated for gasoline, it wouldn't run very well. Knocking, poor performance, poor gas mileage, and stinky tailpipe.
Over the years, as the car makers have adopted electronic fuel injection systems, this has become less of a problem. EFI systems are meant to enhance driveability, gas mileage, performance and emissions by monitoring how the engine is behaving, and then adjusting fuel/air ratios and ignition timing accordingly. It's entirely a closed-loop, feedback oriented system.
As a result, if the engine is knocking, for example, a sensor on the engine will detect it and the computer will retard the ignition timing until the knock is gone. If the oxygen sensor on your tailpipe is reading too much oxygen (ie. mixture too lean), it will add more fuel. If the O2 sensor reads no oxygen, it will assume the mixture is too rich and lean it out a little bit. This happens hundreds of times a second as you drive. In this way, the engine can adapt a great deal to the kind and quality of fuel being used, with the benefits of better performance and lower fuel consumption.
And, if your oxygen sensor's (or any other sensor's) readings are way out of whack, the computer will realize it, and light up the "Check Engine" or "Service Engine Soon" light. At that point, the computer is making a best guess for how to run the engine, and while the car will still run, performance will not be optimal. If the car's engine can't cope with alternate fuels (ie. the computer isn't allowed enough range in its adjustments to timing and mixture) then this is probably what you'll see. And, likely, when you next fill it up with real gasoline, the little light will go out.
Of course, if your Check Engine light doesn't go out, take the car to the dealer as soon as possible.
(Interestingly, we have a similar perspective in some ways-- after all, you've designed a RADAR that helps protect the citizens, while I'm advocating a different sort of government spending that would also protect the citizens.)
Dangerously different viewpoints, but you've proven yourself to be a worthy adversary (even if you are just wrong).
:)
Yeah, we might be able to switch ID's (I'm a 6'7 brown haired, brown eyed dude...) but I'll spare the other details since I don't want to turn slashdot into an online dating service...:)
Oh my god, you *did* sound like a sister!
As in, "Go West"; as in, Dupont Circle; as in too many Madonna CDs... While I'm highly atypical, I too am a sister. Drop me an e-mail!
Oh, this guy is a riot. I saw one of his titles on Napster, was intrigued, downloaded it and then a whole bunch of his other stuff.
That was last night, and so I haven't really listened to much of it yet. While, at first glance, the guy *cannot* sing, he's a hell of a lyricist. (Inability to sing never stopped Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix or Dire Straits/Mark Knopfler.)
I think everyone gets the fucking obvious point now. Why must the record companies insist on attempting to keep me from buying their things?
Because nice predictable business models make shareholders happy.
How about other bands that have supported MP3 sharing? Limp Bizkit? Motley Crue?
I especially love Offspring's little tactic: selling unlicensed Napster merchandise. Just in case you didn't hear the story, while Offspring was happy to proclaim their support for Napster, they didn't get Napster's approval before selling stuff with the Napster logo.
I'm not sure what that was supposed to mean... I guess just a protest of corporate control of information?
In a fit of self-destructive stupidity, Napster sued Offspring. The two have since reconciled; I understand that Offspring's proceeds from selling Napster gear is going to charity.
Now who would get hurt the most if you discovered a Napster DoS vulnerability? In fact, what would the effect be of posting a note saying "My machines were rebooted through my Napster connection?" I think the discovery of such a vulnerability would kill Napster faster than a flock of cuckoos.
<sigh> Yeah. You're right. </sigh>
Someone else, in one of the replies to this article, suggested a Slashdot-style moderation system based on the quality of one's shared files. I think that's a great idea, certainly far better than DoS attacks or including a "Kill User" button that would arbitrarily ban people.
I think I posted the message to which you're replying more out of frustration at the self-appointed savior of the RIAA, rather than out of any intelligent thought on my part. I apologize.
Find out who did it and in place of the napster file you download have a voice that says: that person's full name, credit card number, home phone number, work number, and social security.
That's great, but the combination of the relative anonymity of Napster along with the dynamic IP used by most ISPs will mean that it could be *very* tough to actually get a real name out of a Napster username. Without a warrant, I'm sure the ISP won't divulge the name of the user connected at a given IP address at a given time - if they even record logs of that. So, you could track the user to a given ISP, but that's it. I wonder how many IP addresses AOL owns? @home? Bell Atlantic DSL?
#2 LEGAL WAY: Another simple method is napster gets an update that tags each song download. when a user encounters a trouble song they simply click a button to report a problem. The server gets info on the previous user and with a simple program visible only to napster one can determine what users are sending this out by tracking the song's origin of corruption and simply remove their IP address (so they can't reregister) again on the system...
Again, most users have dynamic IPs, so that won't help matters. Just log off the 'net, log back in, re-start Napster and you're online again. Banning users a-la-Metallica was done using CLSID keys in your Windows registry. They're easy to remove if you know where they are. The information is readily available on the Internet. If someone is using one of the Open Nap clients - which weren't written or authorized by Napster - things become even more complicated: there's no real way to ban a user.
(Speaking as one of the 300,000 banned by Metallica, I was back on within an hour after they cut me off.)
Further, you really don't want to have a "Kill User" button in Napster. Maybe the guy has a bad rip of a rare song? Depending on how bad the rip, and how rare the song, I might be happy enough with it.
While a recent study shows that most Napster users are in their late 20s - early 30s (!), I'm sure there's still a large number of users in their teenage years, ones who don't see the implications of being able to arbitrarily ban a user because they maybe don't like the list of shared songs. That's not to imply that most teenaged users would do that, but impulsiveness does become less prevalent with age and wisdom. (Speaking from the perspective of the ripe old age of 26. [grin])
A moderation system, similar to Slashdot's, as suggested by some other reply, would be ideal. It's a great idea.
Until then, I'll keep on using my bandwidth-consuming quality-control system: I grab at least two different copies of each MP3, audition them for quality, move the better one to my collection, and delete the poorer one from my "untested" folder.
MP3 collecting has basically become a hobby for me. I have the CDs for most of the 900+ songs in my collection, and I still encourage people to go out and buy CDs if they hear a tune that they like. But it's fun to collect and hear new stuff. People sharing off me will be pleased to note that the MP3 collection I share is all tested, is all recorded at a minimum of 160kbps, and is all correctly labelled. Not to mention, it's usually logged into at least three separate Napster servers simultaneously every night.
Anyone know of any Napster client/protocol vulnerabilities?
While I certainly wouldn't condone such behavior, I think it would be very fitting if someone could help this self-appointed savior of the music industry to undermine his own tactics.
If you download one of these "eggs", delete it at once so that it's not shared to other users. No big deal.
But, if you were the enterprising sort who happened to get one of these by accident, you could easily determine the IP address of the Napster user who was sharing this.
Napster Beta 2 Version 6 has that wonderful instant messaging feature, so you could even let the user know beforehand why it is that he/she will be rebooting Windows within ten seconds.
Not to say that I would do such a thing. Indeed, it's not even in my skillset. But I also know it would be easily possible.
When someone claims that you can improve society by getting rid of People X, how is that fundamentally different?
Nope. That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying "No more free lunches". Why should I sweat and toil in the fields, grind the wheat, and bake the bread to feed those who are too busy gambling or shooting up heroin? (Of course that previous sentence was metaphorical, but it underscores the toil to make a living in a more direct fashion.)
If someone wants to help him/herself, I'll happily help that person. But those who don't make an effort, nah, screw 'em.
If that reduces the population of lazy people, derelicts, and those who aren't smart enough not to gamble away their grocery money, I see it as a positive thing for the future of humanity.
My point was NOT to say that increased population growth is good for the species (did you even READ my post?)
Maybe you attempted to imply it in some socialist shorthand that is apparently too sophisticated for my feeble capitalist mind.
3) From where do people get this idea that electric cars are plugged in? My cousin actually wrote the book on Electric Cars. I know more about Electric Cars than I want to share. But the plug in thing is a total myth, perpetuated by ignorance... [OFF-TOPIC]
Sure, this is off-topic, but I'm going to use it as a reference point to demonstrate how whacked-out you are.
An electric car will be powered by what? Batteries, right? Now, these can be either primary cells (disposeable) or secondary cells (rechargeable). Simple economics, let alone environmental consequences, dictate that these will be secondary cells.
Now, when you recharge your notebook computer or your cellphone (socialists *do* have those, right?), what do you have to do? You have to plug them in. Right? Right. This is because when the rechargeable battery has been exhausted, the only way to replenish its charge is to reverse the chemical reaction that took place while it was discharging. And, oddly enough, most secondary cells are replenished only through applying power.
So, it's *not* a fallacy to say that electric cars will be plugged in. Not while they're driving, of course, just when they're parked. The energy that you use when you're driving the car isn't free, you know. At that, it's a hell of a lot of energy. (746 watts = 1 horsepower.) And secondary cells are less than 50% efficient. The hydro distribution system is probably no more than about 40% efficient. This compares to the efficiency that has been achieved through the constant refinement of the internal combustion engine over the past 100 years: about 70%.
Your ignorance of basic physics and electrical engineering principles astounds me. One would think that you would have taken time to inform yourself.
Where do I speak from? What are my credentials? I work for a *big* defense contractor (the name rhymes with "kitten", and it used to have a division that sold microwave ovens and washing machines). Every last US Navy ship, every American and Canadian Coast Guard ship, and hundreds of civilian vessels have critical radar safety systems that I designed.
So, until you know something about electricity and can actually make intelligent statements about the relative merits of electric cars, I suggest you leave the discussion to those of us who understand electricity and electronics.
enough to feed and re-educate a few homeless folks. If you have enough money you can move away from the pollution, otherwise you can sleep on the street.
Well, I work for a Canadian division of my company. Ya know what? Even though I've got lots of highly useful, highly valuable skills, I could probably make more money squeegeeing windshields at the corner of Yonge and Bloor Streets. The problem is not that I'm not paid enough. The problem is that as more people give to the derelicts, more people become opportunistic, and more of us who actually make a contribution to society end up getting harassed - either through taxation or a surly 19-year-old homeless kid banging his squeegee on the hood of my truck because I told him not to wash the windshield. If that's the kind of society you want to live in, great. Go colonize some little island somewhere. I'd rather these derelicts stopped getting handouts, and basic need for food drove them to get off their asses and get jobs.
I don't believe "working hard" is a fundamental human behavior.
No. In the characteristic behavior of the cyclical arguer, you have absolutely blinded yourself to the reasonably clear point that I was making. It's exactly the opposite: laziness is fundamental to human behavior. Most people are lazy. If they don't need to work for something, they won't. Wasn't the Industrial Revolution entirely about building machines to give us more time to sit back and be lazy? (It's completely backfired, but that's another point entirely.)
Britain's finest minds, nobody offers *me* a permit to work in the EU...
I'm a Canadian citizen who happens to have been born in Wales, part of the United Kingdom (it's where Tom Jones and Anthony Hopkins are from). Born to Canadian parents, I'm a full Canadian citizen, but what is known as a "Canadian Citizen born abroad".
By my dual (Canada/UK) citizenship, I'm therefore entitled to a full EU passport (though I have no interest in getting one, and so therefore haven't), as well as my Canadian passport.
American citizen? Approximately the same age as me with about the same physical dimensions? (6'3, 175 lbs, caucasian with brown hair and eyes) I have something you want, you have something I want, and I'm sure we can at least agree on that. We could do an identity swap quite easily! [jovial grin]
Darwin's theory is not doing its job because of the things that go on in this article.
Well, my friend, clearly you and I disagree on something.
That's not to say that I agree with even half the responses to this article. I don't. But, on the other hand, with the other responses, I have a clear idea of the reasons for the viewpoints that my peers have. I respect, read, contemplate, and maybe even change my own viewpoints based on their thoughts.
Or, I hit the reply key, and use my Vulcan logic, good keyboarding skills and brilliant intellect to attempt to make them see things from another perspective.
I'm still not sure what your perspective actually is, or how you feel that Darwinism doesn't work in a Slashdot context; therein lies my frustration.
You should come to US. This country needs people like you.
Again, not to use Slashdot as my own personal dice.com, but if you're hiring, lemme know!
Further, I'm not the sort of person who is looking for a work visa and will leave at the end of x years. I'm looking to move permanently to the US, to work for the responsibility and honor of being an American citizen, and of flying the American flag proudly on my home.
That's cultural. Orientals believe in predestination; so if they believe that they will win, nothing will stop them from gambling.
Well, the Japanese also live in an earthquake zone, and yet they continue, after centuries of not getting the lesson, to build paper houses with stone roofs.
They're clearly not stupid, but their construction techniques make me avoid trusting my life to Japanese cars as much as possible.
Yes, that is precisely the logic Hitler used. The term for that is "eugenics"-- trying to cleanse the population of one or another form of apparent ill (in his case, Jews, in your case, the stupid).
No, actually, you can't even remotely compare letting Darwinian Theory (nature) take its course to the actions of Hitler.
While it is true that smarter people tend to have smarter kids, there's no real proof that this is necessarily good for evolution under Darwin. For one thing, choosing population as a criteria for evolutionary success, it is not clear that intelligence is a good thing.
Absolutely not. There are probably 100 billion cockroaches in this world. I'm sure few people (except the most incorrigible PETA-members) would suggest that they're a more advanced species than we are, simply based on sheer numbers. That's lunacy.
Increasing the intelligence of the overall population may result in less population growth (or even a population reduction), but is principally going to be advantageous in terms of quality of life for all of us.
Higher IQ people breed fewer children.
Okay. And that's a bad thing how?
If anybody should be applauding this "sustainable" growth model, it should be a self-proclaimed socialist such as yourself. (After all, socialists are also the people pushing such follies as the "electric car" in the interests of sustainability. As an aside, how many nuclear power plants do you intend to build to power Los Angeles when all the commuters plug in their cars at night? How many Haz-Mat crews do you wish to train to deal with the toxic chemicals that will be spilled when potent batteries crammed into every square inch of an electric car rupture in a minor fender-bender? Socialists/environmentalists/vegetarians = idiots.)
(And our geniuses are bringing us much closer to armageddon than Forrest Gump ever would've.)
Yup. And a lot closer to polio vaccinations, an end to diabetes, artificial ocular implants for the blind, lights at night, computers and other electronic means to communicate, and to fulfill the civilization-old yearning for the stars and distant planets...
With power comes responsibility. You're suggesting that power (intelligence) is always used irresponsibly.
Maybe it's because your good socialist conscience has been hanging around in union halls too long, working hard to make sure that the lowliest of janitor is unionized to the point where he costs his employer $21/hr for his oh-so-useful skills.
By this criteria, intelligence is bad for the species.
Speaking as one who (unfortunately) lives in a socialist country (Canada), to a self-proclaimed socialist whose understanding of socialism is clearly based on hanging around silly little college focus groups rather than having actually been forced to live in a socialist land, I've gotta tell you, the biggest liability to the betterment of humanity is bleeding heart unrealistic people who espouse moral and political systems that can never actually work. They can stunt the economic growth of a country for decades. (Where would Russia be today if they'd never experimented with communism? Don't you think the average Russian would be better off? Isn't that what it's all about? What was Canada's last great accomplishment? In my books, it was the Avro Arrow, a supersonic fighter aircraft cancelled by Prime Minister Diefenbaker in the 1950s. That was the start of the Canadian downfall that today sees Canada's most skilled leaving the country, only to be replaced by third-world refugees who yearn for an easier passage into the United States.)
Socialism, like communism, is a great idea, but neither can ever work. Neither one rewards working hard, and neither one punishes laziness. And therefore neither one takes into account the most basic factors of human behavior.
Simply, if you don't like gambling, don't do it. Yeah, and people who don't like smoking should just stop. And people who are just desparate for their next fix, spending their welfare dollars on crack should just stop.
I'm an idiot. And with good reason. I therefore feel that I have perspective on this issue.
Even though I knew better, I started smoking. Now, admittedly, that was when I was 14, and I was hanging around in a garage with a bunch of car-buddies, and everyone else was smoking.
But I knew better. And I did it anyway.
Smoking is a chemical addiction, like heroin or crack; it changes the chemistry of the brain, and therefore makes it very difficult to quit. In fact, nicotine is considered by many medical researchers to be more addictive than heroin. I'd wager it's substantially more addictive than the behavior-only drug that gambling constitutes. (Yes, play on words intended.)
I'm an addict. I know it. And, while it pains me to say so, I'm dying for a cigarette even now.
While quitting smoking is a priority, it's always been a back-burner issue compared to the greater trials and tribulations in life. But I assure you, when it comes down to being a choice between paying the rent or buying groceries versus smoking, I pay the rent and get the food. I've had lean times in the past, times where the pain of a few months of poverty was aggravated by my brain incessantly fixating on slender white objects with little orangy-gold tips. But I was able to maintain my priorities, fending off my impulses against this most tenacious of addictions.
Perhaps this is the difference between the stupid addict (like myself) and the truly stupid addict (like those who gamble away the rent money). While I'm not perfect, I have self control.
Can't we rid ourselves of this pathetic race of people? Are there no solutions to these trajedies? I don't know how much longer we as a community are going to be able to stand these filthy beings before something really happens.
First off, you mis-spelled "tragedies". Since the "g" and the "j" key are separated by the "h" (unless you're one of the 0.001% of the population using a Dvorak keyboard), I can't help but assume it to be a spelling error, as opposed to a mistyped word. Nor is "trajedy" a common British, Aussie or Canadian spelling; and the rest of your composition skills suggest that your first language is probably English. I realize the reply before mine addressed this issue, but I felt it to be a worthwhile issue for you to consider.
More pressingly, however, I am concerned about the content of your posting. No definate point was actually made, it was simply an expression of vaguely-directed displeasure.
Perhaps you're missing the concept upon which Slashdot seems to operate: a source of intelligent discourse among those of us who are either professionals in the IT field or are highly advanced computer users.
We agree, we disagree, we bicker, we moan.
Far be it for me to say I've never called someone on Slashdot an idiot: my personality is far more aggressive and volatile than to be able to contain that. I tell people what I think of them. But, on the other hand, I don't think I've ever called someone an idiot simply because I disagreed with them. I've called them idiots either because their arguments for/against a specific position were weak or ill-informed, not because they disagreed with me.
And I fear that this is specifically the reason why you feel uncomfortable with your fellow Slashdot fans. I'm sorry if that's the case. I like to consider myself to be reasonably intelligent; even so, a few of the individuals you call "idiots" have helped me to see things from a different viewpoint, and have even, on occasion, managed to change my opinions.
The suggestion of genocide against the idiots of the world is significantly more ominous, since innocent people will always be swept up in any attempt. A better solution is a hands-off approach in policy and legislation. Let Darwin's theory do its job. There's no need to lift a finger to kill off the idiots: they'll be gone, soon enough, with no intervention. In fact, intervention tends to backfire and propagate the species.
Finally, shared knowledge is what it's all about. Open-source, if you will. There will always be idiots. But Slashdot's signal-to-noise ratio is just about the best on the 'Net.
Consider, for a moment, the fact that many churchgoers gladly donate up to ten percent of their net income to the offering plate every week. And for what? Because most of them are gambling on the fact that hopefully, when they die, they will shoot on up to heaven and play harps and in paradise for all eternity. But what if they're wrong? What if they're backing the wrong horse? What if Allah is up there, laughing himself sick as he watches Christian churchgoers fork over their salaries?
Absolutely. Let's face it, religion is about buying favors from a God that may or may not exist.
I'd like to think that whatever Supreme Being there may be, will be reasonable enough to recognize that people may eschew religion on the basis that it's more a reflection of the people who created/translated scriptures, rather than anything concrete that may have been passed down by a Deity centuries ago. If that's not the case, then, by logic, ask your family to have you buried in Bermuda shorts, cause it's gonna be mighty hot where we're *all* destined to end up.
And, if there's nothing out there, it's all for nought. At least we can thank organized religion for destroying the fun that we could have had during our one chance to experience anything for the brief respite from the eternal blackness that will be our existance after our corporal conclusion.
Value religion for its one important teaching: Live and Let Live. That's a remarkably powerful credo, and one that doesn't impose its ideals on everyone else.
Now, I can't claim to be perfectly able to live by even this one credo. No one can. Certainly, organized religion affects each of our lives every day, whether we want it to or not, and thus they're not abiding by the credo, either. But it remains a good goal for humanity: let people live as they want to live.
Instead of going to church and allowing human flaws to inevitably muddy the concept of spirituality, just live life to the fullest and value your fellow creatures.
Take the money you were going to put into the collection plate. Use it instead to take your young cousins to Disneyland. Or to buy your wife a new car. Money can't buy happiness, but material comfort sure makes happiness a much easier goal to achieve.
(I feel like I'm just rehashing my comments from the online voting section, but I apologize. I just get mad hearing about how many hicks have been bankrupted by video poker machines in convenience stores in South Carolina, etc. etc. etc.)
So?
If they're stupid enough to spend their money that way, is it my fault?
If they were spending their disposeable inccome, I'm sure you wouldn't have a problem with them losing it. But why should those people who want to gamble recreationally have to go without because these idiots don't know when to draw the line and burn up their grocery money?
Ban roads, because a few pedestrians forget to stay on the sidewalk and get killed.
Ban knives, because a few people cut themselves while they're trying to slice apples.
Ban gasoline, because a few hundred idiots cut into a pipeline in Nigeria and start collecting it from the puddles with buckets?
If a hick can't figure out when he's burned up his (meager?) disposeable income and burns through his grocery/rent money, where's the problem?
Theoretically, that person will starve to death, hence removing himself from the human genepool, and thus increase the quality of the breeding population.
Don't protect the stupid through laws that inconvenience the intelligent. Not only does it make life less enjoyable for the bulk of the population, but it also helps to ensure that the human genome will continue to carry the stench of failure for eons to come.
I think that it's far more important that something be done about the sin and family-destroying habit of gambling. In Hong Kong, an average of 10% of every family's income goes to horse racing, and 30% of all men have what could be described as a gambling addiction.
Okay. Then, by your numbers, 30% of all men in Hong Kong are stupid. You said it, not me.
Listen, I think gambling is about the best way of wasting your money that exists on the face of this earth. (Short of buying Metallica CDs.)
Now, whether or not gambling is addictive isn't my concern. I just really don't like the idea of setting the precedent that government knows more than individuals. Somewhere, shortly after crossing that line, you also cross the line dividing a government that serves the people from a people that serve the government.
As for your moral objections to gambling, while you feel that gambling is repugnant, I feel that imposing your morals on others is at least equally repugnant. Not everybody feels that gambling is evil and nasty. If people are stupid enough to want to gamble, and can't control their impulses to wager money, too bad. That's their problem.
Simply, if you don't like gambling, don't do it.
A good parallel would be the Howard Stern Radio Show. Many people would love to see Howard Stern legislated from the airwaves. That's incredibly dangerous, because that legislation actually erodes freedom of speech. A better solution, if you don't like Stern, is just not to tune the radio to any station that airs the Howard Stern show. If enough people do it, the capitalist system will serve as a great controlling body: the ratings will drop and the show will be cancelled. All without writing your Congressman with dangerous ideas that would restrict one of the most important rights in free countries.
I did notice your "family-destroying" description of gambling. I'd suggest that any family "destroyed" by gambling was broken anyway. Further, the use of "family-destroying" as an adjective conjures up images of various representatives of the Christian Right banging on my door and attempting to impose their morals on me or to entice me to go to church.
Ever have a bus full of Baptists stop in your driveway to try to pick up one more before going to the church? The line that was supposed to sell me on going to church was "We need good folk to help stop abortions".
Now, I think abortions are pretty nasty, and that there are usually valid alternatives (like adoption, or simply planning ahead), but I also don't want the government's fingers in any more pies (Bad enough they got a low-flush toilet into my house). Nor do I want to restrict the freedom of others. My response was simply, "Don't like abortions? Then don't have one!" Then I told them if their bus wasn't removed from my driveway in under 30 seconds, I'd have them cited for trespassing, and slammed the door.
Come on, man, it was a Sunday morning. I was sleeping off a long night of playing with my new DSL connection! Isn't the prime concept of Christianity to "do unto others", essentially to live and let live?
Don't like internet gambling? Then don't do it. Don't like pornography? Then don't buy it. Don't like homosexuality? Then don't go to gay bars. Don't like being unceremoniously told were you can shove your morals? Then don't attempt to impose them on others.
Love thy neighbor. Don't always agree with him/her, but don't always harass him/her. And give him/her the benefit of the doubt when it comes to making decisions.
What you do is you get one of those 3" tube bumper setups like I did for my Trooper. Yeah, they make you look like a wannabee poseur -- but you can plow into one of these little unibodies, bend it double, back out, touch up the paint a bit, and drive off. Pretty damned good investment, actually.
I agree with you about the bumper. A big tube bumper is great for menacing Hondas. But a Trooper? That's just a step above a Toyota "Rectal Assault Vehicle" (RAV-4), Honda CR-V or a Subaru Outcast.
Come on, man! Fire up your MIG welder, and gusset your frame! Weld some nice box-section steel bar as the hypotenuse of a triangle from your bumper bracket on each side to the chassis' center bar, just under the engine. You'll more than double the strength of the front end of your frame.
My old Dodge has a box-section frame made of 3/8" thick plate steel, which is a lot more substantial than almost any modern vehicle. Sure, it gets about 7 miles per gallon as a result of the sheer mass, but that's okay. I view the extra gas cost as that kind of insurance that State Farm just won't sell; a policy that, by simple laws of physics, dictates that anything else (short of a Peterbilt) that gets in my way will be obliterated.
The only other vehicles that I fear on the road are Jeep Grand Cherokees, Dodge Dakotas and Dodge Durangos. They're all based on mostly the same frame, a really tough box-section frame that could do serious damage, even if it is wrapped up in painted plastic bumpers. (Sadly, the modern Dodge Ram frame is a C-channel frame, which is great for load-hauling, but nowhere near as imposing. And the Cherokee Classic, while an excellent 4x4, is a unibody, and therefore doesn't compete in this Bad Ass league.)
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Quoting from article:
Anyone out there old enough to remember the Civic CVCC (1973)? The CVCC or Compound Vortex Controlled Combustion system burned fuel so completely that it passed California's emission standards without a catalytic converter.Sure, CVCC was great. That extra valve, the separate swirly-port combustion chamber. It was a great idea, and I've gotta say that Honda's designers had a great concept.
Too bad they carboned up before the warranty period was up due to defective carburetor float design.
Too bad Honda's manufacturing at the time was such that all the bores on a given block were often of different sizes and even on different centers.
Too bad the early Civics and Preludes into which these motors were fitted had myriad safety deficiencies, not limited to brakes that could be activated by a passenger pressing a foot too hard on the passenger side firewall.
Too bad the steel rotted out fast enough to make people suspect the cars were made of recycled bedframes.
Too bad I've rebuilt 6 different Honda engines and not yet found one that I like even remotely as much as the clanky old 2.2L engine in K-Cars.
Too bad I'll never trust another Honda product again.
Most cars are not that well maintained, and therefore will not last that long. Especially few people maintain the engine and neglect the body (and vice versa). Usually, if the body is neglected, the engine is, too.
Further, in order to reduce fuel consumption and increase power per cubic inch, many Japanese engines have very small piston to bore clearances, requiring very narrow piston rings. Now, this sounds like a good thing on paper, and in many respects, it's a great thing. It's like communism - it seems like a good idea until you try it. In practice, speaking as one who has rebuilt several Japanese car engines, it sucks.
The problem is that you don't want to put the piston ring grooves too deep into the piston skirts. If you do, that increases the weight of the piston, and therefore more energy is wasted during the reciprocation of the bottom end of the engine.
So, because the piston rings are narrow, as they wear, their cross-section is reduced, and so is the spring tension that forces their faces against the insides of the bore. Since these also tend to be high-revving engines that place an enormous load on their piston rings both thermally (from friction with the bore) and caused by inertia, the erosion of the rings is very much a design concern. As that happens, more blowby gets into the crankcase, and more oil gets up into the combustion chamber. Coked-up oil (which is oil that is not changed as frequently as it should be, and virtually everyone is guilty of that occasionally) will get into the tight bore to piston clearance and often creates sludge in the oil control rings, preventing them from working properly. Oil then leaks into the combustion chambers.
One of the most famous engines for this is the Mitsubishi 3.0L V6, sold primarily in Dodge Caravans and Plymouth Voyageurs. (It was the late '80s. People thought Japanese cars were better, but wanted to be patriotic and drive a domestic, so having a Japanese engine in an American car made them feel good.) Next time you see an older Caravan or Voyageur spouting blue smoke, take a look for the little emblem on the fender: 3.0L V6. Note that very few of the Caravans/Voyageurs with American-made 2.2L or 2.5L engines do this.
If the bore to piston clearance was a little more (like it is in domestic motors), the rings could have a lot more cross-sectional area, and be able to maintain their spring tension against the inside of the cylinder bores a lot better.
My '88 CRX Si has 196000 miles, uses no oil, gets 38mpg, and is still as fast as it was when it was new.Sure! And my 1976 Dodge Ram with a 400CID V8 has better than 227,000 miles on it, and still runs like it's new. My 1974 Plymouth Valiant Brougham has 297,000 miles on its trusty old Slant-6. They're all anecdotal, and with more mileage than most of their peers had when they hit the great metal munchers at the steel mills. The fact remains that generally a domestic engine will be more durable in the long run, and more forgiving of maintenance and mechanical failure than will be a Japanese motor.
God forbid you should be lax and not change your Honda's timing belt on time. It's an interference motor, meaning that the valves and the pistons don't have sufficient clearance for the valves to be open when the pistons reach top dead center. Of course, in a perfect world, that would never happen. In a perfect world, everyone changes their timing belts before they snap. We don't live in a perfect world, and our cars shouldn't require unrealistic maintenance to avoid a catastrophic failure. A timing belt snap in a Japanese car typically grenades the motor, often not just bending valves and breaking pistons, but also cracking heads and scoring blocks. While an intereference motor is great for performance and gas mileage, it's pretty nasty when they go bad. In a domestic car, when you pop the timing belt, usually the engine simply stops running. You'd coast to the shoulder, wait for the tow truck, and have a new timing belt fitted. When an interference motor grenades itself at highway speeds, normally the engine doesn't just stop producing power, it seizes because the debris blocks the movement of the pistons. If you're in a FWD stickshift vehicle, the front wheels will lock up, and you'll lose steering control until you have the presence of mind to hit the clutch or put the car into neutral.
(but yes, you do have to remove the left axle to replace the alternator )-: )Sure! Now, that's fun, isn't it?
The little boys out there who think a Honda Civic with a big stereo is the ultimate driving machine get to find out all about this.
Most domestic cars, if you overload the alternator, the regulator will crank up the field current to a limit. If you're drawing 100A off the battery and the alternator can only supply 70A to replenish the battery, your battery voltage will drop, and eventually you may be screwed, if you don't watch the gauges.
A Nippondenso alternator (Honda/Toyota/Nissan/Subaru...) will crank the field current up, too. Sadly, though, the tiny and lightweight alternator doesn't cool itself well enough for the field windings to be able to handle the continuous current that the regulator will allow to flow. Not only will the battery voltage gradually drop, but eventually something in the alternator gets too hot (usually field windings, which are actually on the armature). Pop goes the alternator. Cars equipped with stupidly big stereos and lots of bug lights underneath are especially vulnerable to this, since the alternator load is nowhere within design specifications, and the alternator's design doesn't explicitly prevent thermal runaway.
While overloading an alternator is never a good idea, I find it comforting to know that most Bosch, Delco, Motorcraft and Mopar alternators (all domestics and most of the European imports) won't fail in this way: turn off the excessive electrical loads, toss the car on a battery charger, start it up, and everything is usually fine.
My '86 accord I bought a year ago with 220000 miles and now has 242000 miles. Similar story with that one; no oil consumption, 32mpg.More power to you.
Wow. I can't wait to drive that. Sounds very comfortable, safe and practical.
But, sadly, those of us with statures less diminutive than the 5'0" indicated will have to continue to drive more conventional (and realistic) vehicles.
I, for one, at 6'4", shall continue to drive my 1976 Dodge Ram. It's 21' long, has a 400CID V8 engine, weighs about 4,500lbs and has manual steering. One cylinder on my engine could aspirate that entire weed wacker engine. The massive weight and lack of power steering give the vehicle other benefits that reduce the total cost of ownership (despite the fact that it only gets 7MPG). For one thing, I didn't need to keep my gym membership, since parallel parking it provides the best upper-body workout for which one could hope.
And, of course, the Ram provides a form of collision insurance just not sold by State Farm. It's the "if I'm gonna get killed in a car accident, I'm damned well taking you with me" policy. That would especially include carbon-fiber vehicles running on ten-speed tires. Sure, carbon fiber is great, but so is Michigan's finest steel: I could back over you in a parking lot and never even know it. 235/75R-15 Mud and Snow radials, while not huge, are big enough that an entire car such as you've described could become caught between my treads as easily as a piece of gravel.
With apologies to the very passe Lorne Michaels, the weed-wacker powered carbon fiber "I'm gonna lie down as I drive" car is another Not Ready for Prime Time Player.
Uhhh... I think you're probably mistaken.
Last time I was under a Cherokee, it was a unibody. Pretty damned tough, but still a monoque vehicle.
But the Grand Cherokee shares a frame with the Durango, which is just a modified version of the Dakota frame.
I assure you, every Grand Cherokee I've ever worked on has been full frame. Box section, at that, with great body-to-frame isolating dampers and everything.
So, despite the silly carpets and leather seats, you may rest assured that a Grand Cherokee is *very* much a truck.
Absolutely. I like BMWs, but I'd never buy one, though they're generally rather solid cars (even if they still are unibodies). Price for parts is often way too expensive to make it practical to fix them if they need too much work, so take good care of it.
Even if BMW recommends changing the oil every 9,000 miles (!), changing the oil more frequently could only be beneficial. And remember that while synthetic oil may not suffer the chemical breakdown that coventional oil experiences in an engine, *any* oil will still fill up with combustion products from blowby.
I change my oil and filter every 2,500 miles. At the same time, I also do a chassis lube, check the freeplay in my balljoints and tie rod ends, brake pad thickness, then finish it off by doing a quick engine shampoo. When the old oil comes out, it's still clean and amber. (And it gets recycled.)
My daily driver is a 1976 Dodge Ram with a 400CID (6.6L) V8. It's now got over 225,000 miles on it, but it still starts and runs like brand new, with the original engine and transmission. Driving my old truck is about the only thing I look forward to, during my 30 mile each way daily commute... Merely touching the gas too hard can result in both rear tires disappearing in a cloud of white smoke. :)
Well, turbines are great for bulk power, but not for efficient power. A jet engine, which is a kind of turbine (admittedly being used in reverse to the application in a power plant) would need to put out about 100lb of thrust to maintain freeway cruising speeds in the average car. The jet fuel (kerosene) required to do that would be in the range of 4 MPG. Compare that to the freeway cruising efficiency of a modern car.
As for where my statistics come from, the statistic about the hydro grid comes from the book, "An Engineer's Guide to Hydro-Electric Distribution Systems". The figure about the efficiency of the average car is taken from an article that I recently read on SAE's website at www.sae.org .
Friction in the engine, nonrecoverable heat from the combustion (biggie), friction in the transmission and tires, etc.Not to mention energy wasted as noise, energy wasted pushing the car through the air, energy wasted as the car idles.
Many new car brochures have the engine's power rated in kW now. If you stop and think about how much heat the car throws off for the fact that it's converting x kW of chemical energy into mechanical energy, I still think that's pretty impressive. By comparison, consider how much heat your computer's power supply throws off when you've got it running at its full 200W load (lots of disk drives and cards)....
You're also completely ignoring the benefits of regenerative braking in electric vehicles/hybrids.Nah. They're there, but I'm sure it's negligible. Consider the energy used to make the vehicle maintain a given speed. When you apply the brakes, if the traction motor is 90% efficient both driving and braking the car, 10% of your kinetic energy will be wasted as heat. The other 90% will go to recharge the batteries. Recharging batteries is an inefficient proposition - on the order of 50% maximum. I'm sure that regenerative braking improves cruising range by a few miles, but not much overall.
The more important benefit of an electric or fuel-cell powered car is that when you're stopped, the electric drive motor is off. The batteries or fuel cells are not running an idling engine, the way a gas tank has to keep an internal combustion engine running at stoplights. For city drivers, I'm sure that's a far more important benefit.
The other great benefit is that a gasoline engine achieves peak efficiency only at the top of its torque curve. In other words, only at a rotational speed determined by many factors, including the shape of the combustion chamber, the ratio of bore versus stroke, the design of the runners and plenum in the induction system, the back pressure and scavenging properties of the exhaust system, etc... It's pretty hard to maintain this peak efficiency as you're tooling around town. The transmissions in most cars are geared so that at legal highway speeds, the engine will be spinning at about the torque peak.
I will give you this: as you'd use it in a car, an electric motor's energy useage increases linearly with speed, making an electric car absolutely ideal for the slow puttering around a city that most people end up doing. But for the reasons outlined in my orginial posting, I greatly protest to running them off batteries, for the chemical dangers and charging issues I outlined originally.
Very good point. If i remember correctly, Ford engineers toyed with using Sodium batteries for their EV-1. Those babies have to be hot enough for the sodium to melt.I know. That's terrifying, isn't it? Most accidents happen on rainy/snowy days. Now, what happens when molten sodium from a broken battery hits the big puddle on the wet pavement beside the remains of the car...?
Geez, that takes me back to high school chemistry classes...
The "Oh no, more electrical bills!" argument is crap. New power plants would get built, and while they would probably burn fuel, they would incorporate more effective smokestack scrubbers than your catalytic converter on your car does.Oh, no question. A gasoline fired power plant could produce a lot less emissions that the same amount of gasoline being burned in even the best of cars. (I'm using gasoline as an example because it's a simple comparison, not because it would be a likely candidate for a power plant fuel.)
But now that you've got the energy out of the gasoline, you still have to get the energy into the car, and the transmission and storage of energy is the problem.
If a gasoline-fired plant products 1kW of energy from every liter of fuel (abysmal example, but easy for clarity), and a car produces 500W of energy from a liter, this looks good.
Then, subtract 50% of that 1kW of energy to get the power to the consumer. That leaves you with 500W of enery remaining. On par with the car, but a much cleaner exhaust, it's still probably worthwhile.
Now, as you charge the electric car's batteries, you lose another 50% or so to the charger and the chemical processes within the batteries. That leaves you with 250W of useable energy from that liter. Which means that for a given distance travelled in an electric car, you could easily end up using 4 times the fuel as you would have if you'd just burned the gasoline in the car to begin with. Then, if the scrubbers leave the exhaust from the plant twice as clean, per liter consumed, as the exhaust from a car, you're still producing twice as much pollutant as the car would.
A better option is a fuel cell, as soon as they're ready for mass production. A fuel cell will burn gasoline with stellar efficiency, and coupled to the operating efficiency and lack of idling of an electric motor, a fuel-cell powered electric vehicle would be the best option.
And it means no new nuclear power plants, no new hydroelectric dams, no new coal-fired plants: it can be run off ordinary gasoline or methanol/ethanol processed from agricultural crops.
And, it's clean. Running on hydrogen, the only emissions would be water vapor. Off gasoline, there'd be a little more. Even if it's not perfect, running on gasoline, it would still be an order of magnitude better than today's cars.
Uhh... The only way to get that kind of energy out of gasoline/petroleum is if someone has managed to figure out a way to convert mass into energy.
So, unless Mr. Fusion has been pulled off the back of Doc Brown's DeLorean and stuck into a car, I think you've got a decimal point in the wrong place.
Mechanical and chemical engineering is a far more mature science than electrical engineering. All improvements in fields involving these two disciplines tend to occur at an incremental pace, not at the pace we've become used to in the computer field.
The Mobil Economy Run typically has 100MPG turnouts now, with a few spiking up as high as 110MPG.
To demonstrate the pace of change,a Slant-6 powered Plymouth Valiant won the 1964 Mobil Economy Run. It managed a whopping 38 MPG. Just 12 years later, Chrysler brought out a Plymouth Duster (Valiant derivative) which included some aluminum body panels and was capable of the same mileage. The '76 Plymouth Feather Duster is a rare and highly sought-after car today.
If someone were to build disposable cars, designed to last 3-4 years, using this ultra-efficient technology, you could throw away a good percentage of the gas-guzzlers. Less gasoline requied = more gasoline to go round.Cars with shorter lifespans = more manufacturing of cars. More manufacturing of cars = more steel mills, more transportation, more tooling required for the factories. In short, you're replacing a problem seen at the tailpipe with a far bigger problem seen at the factory smokestack.
The one good thing about SUVs is that the real ones are built to last. They're full-frame, rear-wheel-drive. Sure, they're heavy gas-hogs, but most people don't drive more than about 12,000 miles a year. An SUV is built like a Chevrolet Caprice Classic or a Ford LTD Crown Victoria - either one is a car that has no problem surviving 150,000 miles in police duty before being sold for a second life as a taxicab.
Manufacturing the average car uses fuel and energy equivalent to driving that same car over over 180,000 miles. (Note that this isn't expressed in expensive terms like $/gallon; generally electric prices for steel mills are somewhere in the range of $30/megawatt.) This doesn't include toxic waste from both manufacturing and disposing of the plastic products that are used extensively in a modern car to reduce the weight (and therefore increase gas mileage).
Since the average car currently lasts 8-10 years, and since the average number of miles travelled is 12,000 per year, that means the investment to make the car is 180,000 miles, yet the useful life of the car is only 120,000 miles.
That's a net loss. And replacing the car every few years for only a very incremental upgrade in gas mileage is just crazy.
That's not to say that a disposeable car couldn't be made quite inexpensively. But the most expensive part of a car is the labor required to build it to the exacting tolerances to which it's built. If you reduce those tolerances to reduce the cost of the car, you're also reducing the efficiency of the car. Emissions and gas mileage are a direct factor of how precisely the valves close and how well the pistons fit into the cylinders.
If you want a car that is disposeable, look at the way most of today's cars are built. They're pretty damned near disposeable. Pickup trucks, full-frame rear-wheel drive cars, and heavy early unibodies last a long time. But lightweight unibody cars - like most of the vehicles on the road - suffer metal fatigue and corrosion problems early on. (A Dodge Aries/Plymouth Reliant is a classic example. Look at the side of the roof pillar, just near the the top of the back doors, next time you see one in a parking lot. A lot of them have fatigue cracks there.)
This is, of course, to say nothing of the fact that in a front wheel drive car, even a fairly small accident can easily trash the drivetrain as well as the suspension, and therefore write off the car. Since most cars experience two accidents during their lifetimes, and the average lifespan of a car is 8-10 years, that averages an accident every 4 or 5 years. The more fragile the car, and the more stuff is located up front, the more likely the car will be written off.
As far as I'm concerned, the best example of a disposeable car these days is a Honda Civic. The body panels are very thin to be light, which means that they dent very easily, and will quickly rust out if the paint and galvanizing layer is damaged. (Good thing Honda makes great paint.) The engine and transmission are right up front, since it's a front wheel drive car. As with all front wheel drive cars, it takes a lot of work to change a bad part, since there's a lot of stuff you have to move out of the way first. (Look at where the alternator is in a Civic!) Parts are expensive, making repairs impractical. And the hard-working little four-cylinder engines produce a lot of power for their size, sure, but that means more load on the piston rings and the tops of the combustion chambers. The more load on the piston rings and the tops of the combustion chambers, the sooner you will need to do a re-bore/re-ring job.
It's truly a car that is meant to be driven 120,000 miles (or more, if you're *very* good with maintenance) and then scrapped.
Unfortunately, the Japanese influence on Detroit, as well as the ever-higher Corporate Average Fuel Economy laws, have reduced the numbers of cars that are built like the Caprice Classics of yesteryear.
Your only hope for a tough-as-nails, built-to-last vehicle these days is a full-frame, American-made SUV, as odious as it may sound.
Note that a Toyota RAV-4 or a Honda CR-V or a Suzuki Sidekick is a lightweight unibody that masquerades as a truck. You have to buy the real thing to get the real thing:
Jeep Grand Cherokee/Dodge Dakota/Dodge Durango
Jeep TJ/Wrangler
Any pickup truck.
Chevy Blazer/GMC Jimmy/Yukon/Suburban
Ford Expedition/Explorer/Lincoln Navigator
Gasoline is here for a while. There's just no good substitute for most people yet.
Natural gas/Propane are both great, but the infrastructure to support them just isn't there. Gas stations would have to make a huge investment to be able to support them at all stations. It's great for fleet vehicles like taxis, since the cab seldom leaves its home city, and the driver can get to be very familiar with which gas stations have already added propane/NG fueling services.
While gasoline is very nasty stuff, it's a little safer than carrying around a large tank of compressed and invisible fuel. A car accident that ruptures a full automotive propane/NG tank would be far more likely to be deadly than a car accident that ruptures a gasoline tank and causes a spill. Let alone the dangers of hydrogen as a fuel, which, like acetylene, sweats its way out of cast iron tanks.
You'll note that most parking garages won't allow propane/NG vehicles. If, over the years, one of the fuel lines corrodes or develops metal fatigue cracks, a slow fuel leak could cause a parking garage explosion. Since parking garages tend to be under buildings, conceivably, the building could come down. Dire consequences? Yup. One in a million chance? Yup. But if there are millions of propane/NG vehicles out there, it's a bigger worry than gasoline.
Gasoline tends to drip, and you can usually see a leak. You can always see a puddle. With invisible gases, that's not possible: you have to rely on the odor, which you might not catch if it's windy.
Admittedly, conditions have to be just right for a propane/NG explosion, but it's unquestionably somewhat more dangerous than gasoline. Much like a Ford Pinto's gasoline tank is more dangerous than the average.
Fuel cells are a great idea, and I'm sure they'll be with us in a few years. I've had the opportunity to drive a Ballard-powered golf cart, and it was a lot of fun. Silent, fast, much more efficient than an internal combustion engine. It was nice. But the problem is that fuel cells still require membranes that are as difficult and unreliable to mass produce as color LCD displays were a few years ago. In time, that will change.
Fuel for fuel cells will still have to be something combustible. A fuel cell simply burns fuel through what is essentially a catalytic reaction, as opposed to a combustion reaction. So we're back at the same choices: drag around a tank of liquid gasoline/methanol/ethanol, or drag around a tank full of compressed hyrdrogen/propane/NG.
Since the infrastructure already exists for the distribution of liquid fuels, you're probably still going to be pouring some sort of liquid fuel into your tank.
Fuel cells, by virtue of their basic operation, will be very sensitive to impurities in the fuel. Deposits formed inside the fuel cell will require the replacement of the expensive membrane. A conventional paper fuel filter, like your car currently has, will not suffice. That's going to mean very expensive processes of lining tanks in every refinery, truck, gas station... which will be carried on to you, fair consumer.
Electric cars are a great idea, but they're not practical for two big reasons.
First things first, all batteries use a chemical reaction to convert chemical energy into electrical energy. The more efficient the battery, the more efficient (and therefore nasty) the chemicals must be. In order to achieve range in an electric car, every bit of free space is going to have to have batteries crammed into it.
Now, what happens when you're involved in a fender-bender? A battery will probably rupture somewhere, spraying out strong acids or alkalines. Accident victims will often have chemical burns. And every last fender-bender on the Santa Monica Freeway would result in a Haz-Mat team cleaning up the road. As if gasoline wasn't hazardous enough.
Electric cars also need fuel. The fuel, of course, will be electricity to recharge the batteries. If you're plugging your car in at night, your electric bill will go up. No big deal, it will probably be cheaper than gasoline. But what happens when the majority of the 6 million or so cars in LA are plugged in every night? The power from your wall outlets comes from somewhere... how many nuclear power plants will have to go up to deal with the increased electrical needs? How many more Hoover Dams will have to be built? Remember, tidal and solar power just aren't capable of serving any sort of electrical need yet. Building coal or other fossil-fuel powered plants just defeats the purpose of electric cars.
What will your electric bill look like as the demand for electricity outstrips supply? It already does that every year just with air conditioners. Look at the situation in Montana at the moment.
Add to that the fact that a modern gasoline car is about 70% efficient. Not good, right?
Most electric distribution systems are only about 40-50% efficient. So, on a per car basis, you're already using more energy by running an electric car. Then consider that batteries are at best 70% efficient. While the car's electric motor itself may be upwards of 90% efficient, your efficiencies have already added up and negated any benefit.
Gasoline is evil. Electricity is evil. Cars are evil. But they're here to stay; better just to continue to refine what we have. And when the fuel cell is ready for mass production, I'll happily fill my efficient fuel-cell powered vehicle up with renewable and clean methanol/ethanol.
I know for FACT in Brazil you are able to buy a car which burns gasoline or methonol.Most American cars now will run very happily on either gasoline or methanol.
Methanol is, of course, a form of alcohol, and has properties somewhat different from gasoline. For one thing, it's significantly more corrosive to some of the rubber and plastic parts in a car's fuel system. That has been addressed; for example, all new Chryslers since 1991 (correct me if I'm wrong) include fuel system components that are meant to handle it.
Chrysler had a wonderful test car at about that time. It was a 1990 or 1991 Dodge Spirit R/T with a 2.2L or 2.5L engine - the same motor as most K-Cars, Dodge Shadows, etc. With very little work, they'd adapted the fuel system to happily take methanol/ethanol. And the fuel injection system (discussed below) was fitted with a fuel type sensor that would allow the car to run happily on any ratio of gasoline/ethanol/methanol.
Combustion properties are quite different. Since methanol burns differently, if you were to just dump it into your gas tank, your engine would run.... sorta. But since your carburetor and ignition timing are calibrated for gasoline, it wouldn't run very well. Knocking, poor performance, poor gas mileage, and stinky tailpipe.
Over the years, as the car makers have adopted electronic fuel injection systems, this has become less of a problem. EFI systems are meant to enhance driveability, gas mileage, performance and emissions by monitoring how the engine is behaving, and then adjusting fuel/air ratios and ignition timing accordingly. It's entirely a closed-loop, feedback oriented system.
As a result, if the engine is knocking, for example, a sensor on the engine will detect it and the computer will retard the ignition timing until the knock is gone. If the oxygen sensor on your tailpipe is reading too much oxygen (ie. mixture too lean), it will add more fuel. If the O2 sensor reads no oxygen, it will assume the mixture is too rich and lean it out a little bit. This happens hundreds of times a second as you drive. In this way, the engine can adapt a great deal to the kind and quality of fuel being used, with the benefits of better performance and lower fuel consumption.
And, if your oxygen sensor's (or any other sensor's) readings are way out of whack, the computer will realize it, and light up the "Check Engine" or "Service Engine Soon" light. At that point, the computer is making a best guess for how to run the engine, and while the car will still run, performance will not be optimal. If the car's engine can't cope with alternate fuels (ie. the computer isn't allowed enough range in its adjustments to timing and mixture) then this is probably what you'll see. And, likely, when you next fill it up with real gasoline, the little light will go out.
Of course, if your Check Engine light doesn't go out, take the car to the dealer as soon as possible.
Dangerously different viewpoints, but you've proven yourself to be a worthy adversary (even if you are just wrong).
:)
Yeah, we might be able to switch ID's (I'm a 6'7 brown haired, brown eyed dude...) but I'll spare the other details since I don't want to turn slashdot into an online dating service...Oh my god, you *did* sound like a sister!
As in, "Go West"; as in, Dupont Circle; as in too many Madonna CDs... While I'm highly atypical, I too am a sister. Drop me an e-mail!
Oh, this guy is a riot. I saw one of his titles on Napster, was intrigued, downloaded it and then a whole bunch of his other stuff.
That was last night, and so I haven't really listened to much of it yet. While, at first glance, the guy *cannot* sing, he's a hell of a lyricist. (Inability to sing never stopped Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix or Dire Straits/Mark Knopfler.)
I think everyone gets the fucking obvious point now. Why must the record companies insist on attempting to keep me from buying their things?Because nice predictable business models make shareholders happy.
How about other bands that have supported MP3 sharing? Limp Bizkit? Motley Crue?
I especially love Offspring's little tactic: selling unlicensed Napster merchandise. Just in case you didn't hear the story, while Offspring was happy to proclaim their support for Napster, they didn't get Napster's approval before selling stuff with the Napster logo.
I'm not sure what that was supposed to mean... I guess just a protest of corporate control of information?
In a fit of self-destructive stupidity, Napster sued Offspring. The two have since reconciled; I understand that Offspring's proceeds from selling Napster gear is going to charity.
I think the discovery of such a vulnerability would kill Napster faster than a flock of cuckoos.
<sigh> Yeah. You're right. </sigh>
Someone else, in one of the replies to this article, suggested a Slashdot-style moderation system based on the quality of one's shared files. I think that's a great idea, certainly far better than DoS attacks or including a "Kill User" button that would arbitrarily ban people.
I think I posted the message to which you're replying more out of frustration at the self-appointed savior of the RIAA, rather than out of any intelligent thought on my part. I apologize.
That's great, but the combination of the relative anonymity of Napster along with the dynamic IP used by most ISPs will mean that it could be *very* tough to actually get a real name out of a Napster username. Without a warrant, I'm sure the ISP won't divulge the name of the user connected at a given IP address at a given time - if they even record logs of that. So, you could track the user to a given ISP, but that's it. I wonder how many IP addresses AOL owns? @home? Bell Atlantic DSL?
#2 LEGAL WAY: Another simple method is napster gets an update that tags each song download. when a user encounters a trouble song they simply click a button to report a problem. The server gets info on the previous user and with a simple program visible only to napster one can determine what users are sending this out by tracking the song's origin of corruption and simply remove their IP address (so they can't reregister) again on the system...Again, most users have dynamic IPs, so that won't help matters. Just log off the 'net, log back in, re-start Napster and you're online again. Banning users a-la-Metallica was done using CLSID keys in your Windows registry. They're easy to remove if you know where they are. The information is readily available on the Internet. If someone is using one of the Open Nap clients - which weren't written or authorized by Napster - things become even more complicated: there's no real way to ban a user.
(Speaking as one of the 300,000 banned by Metallica, I was back on within an hour after they cut me off.)
Further, you really don't want to have a "Kill User" button in Napster. Maybe the guy has a bad rip of a rare song? Depending on how bad the rip, and how rare the song, I might be happy enough with it.
While a recent study shows that most Napster users are in their late 20s - early 30s (!), I'm sure there's still a large number of users in their teenage years, ones who don't see the implications of being able to arbitrarily ban a user because they maybe don't like the list of shared songs. That's not to imply that most teenaged users would do that, but impulsiveness does become less prevalent with age and wisdom. (Speaking from the perspective of the ripe old age of 26. [grin])
A moderation system, similar to Slashdot's, as suggested by some other reply, would be ideal. It's a great idea.
Until then, I'll keep on using my bandwidth-consuming quality-control system: I grab at least two different copies of each MP3, audition them for quality, move the better one to my collection, and delete the poorer one from my "untested" folder.
MP3 collecting has basically become a hobby for me. I have the CDs for most of the 900+ songs in my collection, and I still encourage people to go out and buy CDs if they hear a tune that they like. But it's fun to collect and hear new stuff. People sharing off me will be pleased to note that the MP3 collection I share is all tested, is all recorded at a minimum of 160kbps, and is all correctly labelled. Not to mention, it's usually logged into at least three separate Napster servers simultaneously every night.
Anyone know of any Napster client/protocol vulnerabilities?
While I certainly wouldn't condone such behavior, I think it would be very fitting if someone could help this self-appointed savior of the music industry to undermine his own tactics.
If you download one of these "eggs", delete it at once so that it's not shared to other users. No big deal.
But, if you were the enterprising sort who happened to get one of these by accident, you could easily determine the IP address of the Napster user who was sharing this.
Napster Beta 2 Version 6 has that wonderful instant messaging feature, so you could even let the user know beforehand why it is that he/she will be rebooting Windows within ten seconds.
Not to say that I would do such a thing. Indeed, it's not even in my skillset. But I also know it would be easily possible.
Nope. That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying "No more free lunches". Why should I sweat and toil in the fields, grind the wheat, and bake the bread to feed those who are too busy gambling or shooting up heroin? (Of course that previous sentence was metaphorical, but it underscores the toil to make a living in a more direct fashion.)
If someone wants to help him/herself, I'll happily help that person. But those who don't make an effort, nah, screw 'em.
If that reduces the population of lazy people, derelicts, and those who aren't smart enough not to gamble away their grocery money, I see it as a positive thing for the future of humanity.
My point was NOT to say that increased population growth is good for the species (did you even READ my post?)Maybe you attempted to imply it in some socialist shorthand that is apparently too sophisticated for my feeble capitalist mind.
3) From where do people get this idea that electric cars are plugged in? My cousin actually wrote the book on Electric Cars. I know more about Electric Cars than I want to share. But the plug in thing is a total myth, perpetuated by ignorance... [OFF-TOPIC]Sure, this is off-topic, but I'm going to use it as a reference point to demonstrate how whacked-out you are.
An electric car will be powered by what? Batteries, right? Now, these can be either primary cells (disposeable) or secondary cells (rechargeable). Simple economics, let alone environmental consequences, dictate that these will be secondary cells.
Now, when you recharge your notebook computer or your cellphone (socialists *do* have those, right?), what do you have to do? You have to plug them in. Right? Right. This is because when the rechargeable battery has been exhausted, the only way to replenish its charge is to reverse the chemical reaction that took place while it was discharging. And, oddly enough, most secondary cells are replenished only through applying power.
So, it's *not* a fallacy to say that electric cars will be plugged in. Not while they're driving, of course, just when they're parked. The energy that you use when you're driving the car isn't free, you know. At that, it's a hell of a lot of energy. (746 watts = 1 horsepower.) And secondary cells are less than 50% efficient. The hydro distribution system is probably no more than about 40% efficient. This compares to the efficiency that has been achieved through the constant refinement of the internal combustion engine over the past 100 years: about 70%.
Your ignorance of basic physics and electrical engineering principles astounds me. One would think that you would have taken time to inform yourself.
Where do I speak from? What are my credentials? I work for a *big* defense contractor (the name rhymes with "kitten", and it used to have a division that sold microwave ovens and washing machines). Every last US Navy ship, every American and Canadian Coast Guard ship, and hundreds of civilian vessels have critical radar safety systems that I designed.
So, until you know something about electricity and can actually make intelligent statements about the relative merits of electric cars, I suggest you leave the discussion to those of us who understand electricity and electronics.
enough to feed and re-educate a few homeless folks. If you have enough money you can move away from the pollution, otherwise you can sleep on the street.Well, I work for a Canadian division of my company. Ya know what? Even though I've got lots of highly useful, highly valuable skills, I could probably make more money squeegeeing windshields at the corner of Yonge and Bloor Streets. The problem is not that I'm not paid enough. The problem is that as more people give to the derelicts, more people become opportunistic, and more of us who actually make a contribution to society end up getting harassed - either through taxation or a surly 19-year-old homeless kid banging his squeegee on the hood of my truck because I told him not to wash the windshield. If that's the kind of society you want to live in, great. Go colonize some little island somewhere. I'd rather these derelicts stopped getting handouts, and basic need for food drove them to get off their asses and get jobs.
I don't believe "working hard" is a fundamental human behavior.No. In the characteristic behavior of the cyclical arguer, you have absolutely blinded yourself to the reasonably clear point that I was making. It's exactly the opposite: laziness is fundamental to human behavior. Most people are lazy. If they don't need to work for something, they won't. Wasn't the Industrial Revolution entirely about building machines to give us more time to sit back and be lazy? (It's completely backfired, but that's another point entirely.)
Britain's finest minds, nobody offers *me* a permit to work in the EU...I'm a Canadian citizen who happens to have been born in Wales, part of the United Kingdom (it's where Tom Jones and Anthony Hopkins are from). Born to Canadian parents, I'm a full Canadian citizen, but what is known as a "Canadian Citizen born abroad".
By my dual (Canada/UK) citizenship, I'm therefore entitled to a full EU passport (though I have no interest in getting one, and so therefore haven't), as well as my Canadian passport.
American citizen? Approximately the same age as me with about the same physical dimensions? (6'3, 175 lbs, caucasian with brown hair and eyes) I have something you want, you have something I want, and I'm sure we can at least agree on that. We could do an identity swap quite easily! [jovial grin]
Well, my friend, clearly you and I disagree on something.
That's not to say that I agree with even half the responses to this article. I don't. But, on the other hand, with the other responses, I have a clear idea of the reasons for the viewpoints that my peers have. I respect, read, contemplate, and maybe even change my own viewpoints based on their thoughts.
Or, I hit the reply key, and use my Vulcan logic, good keyboarding skills and brilliant intellect to attempt to make them see things from another perspective.
I'm still not sure what your perspective actually is, or how you feel that Darwinism doesn't work in a Slashdot context; therein lies my frustration.
Again, not to use Slashdot as my own personal dice.com, but if you're hiring, lemme know!
Further, I'm not the sort of person who is looking for a work visa and will leave at the end of x years. I'm looking to move permanently to the US, to work for the responsibility and honor of being an American citizen, and of flying the American flag proudly on my home.
Sound good?
GetMeAGreenCard@yahoo.com
Nah, read my message again. They're paper houses with stone roofs. I just don't get it.
BTW. In central US people still refuse to build brick houses despite the fact that they are safer against tornados and suchI don't get that, either, but I have noticed it. Nor do I get trailerhomes, especially in Kansas....
Well, the Japanese also live in an earthquake zone, and yet they continue, after centuries of not getting the lesson, to build paper houses with stone roofs.
They're clearly not stupid, but their construction techniques make me avoid trusting my life to Japanese cars as much as possible.
No, actually, you can't even remotely compare letting Darwinian Theory (nature) take its course to the actions of Hitler.
While it is true that smarter people tend to have smarter kids, there's no real proof that this is necessarily good for evolution under Darwin. For one thing, choosing population as a criteria for evolutionary success, it is not clear that intelligence is a good thing.Absolutely not. There are probably 100 billion cockroaches in this world. I'm sure few people (except the most incorrigible PETA-members) would suggest that they're a more advanced species than we are, simply based on sheer numbers. That's lunacy.
Increasing the intelligence of the overall population may result in less population growth (or even a population reduction), but is principally going to be advantageous in terms of quality of life for all of us.
Higher IQ people breed fewer children.Okay. And that's a bad thing how?
If anybody should be applauding this "sustainable" growth model, it should be a self-proclaimed socialist such as yourself. (After all, socialists are also the people pushing such follies as the "electric car" in the interests of sustainability. As an aside, how many nuclear power plants do you intend to build to power Los Angeles when all the commuters plug in their cars at night? How many Haz-Mat crews do you wish to train to deal with the toxic chemicals that will be spilled when potent batteries crammed into every square inch of an electric car rupture in a minor fender-bender? Socialists/environmentalists/vegetarians = idiots.)
(And our geniuses are bringing us much closer to armageddon than Forrest Gump ever would've.)Yup. And a lot closer to polio vaccinations, an end to diabetes, artificial ocular implants for the blind, lights at night, computers and other electronic means to communicate, and to fulfill the civilization-old yearning for the stars and distant planets...
With power comes responsibility. You're suggesting that power (intelligence) is always used irresponsibly.
Maybe it's because your good socialist conscience has been hanging around in union halls too long, working hard to make sure that the lowliest of janitor is unionized to the point where he costs his employer $21/hr for his oh-so-useful skills.
By this criteria, intelligence is bad for the species.Speaking as one who (unfortunately) lives in a socialist country (Canada), to a self-proclaimed socialist whose understanding of socialism is clearly based on hanging around silly little college focus groups rather than having actually been forced to live in a socialist land, I've gotta tell you, the biggest liability to the betterment of humanity is bleeding heart unrealistic people who espouse moral and political systems that can never actually work. They can stunt the economic growth of a country for decades. (Where would Russia be today if they'd never experimented with communism? Don't you think the average Russian would be better off? Isn't that what it's all about? What was Canada's last great accomplishment? In my books, it was the Avro Arrow, a supersonic fighter aircraft cancelled by Prime Minister Diefenbaker in the 1950s. That was the start of the Canadian downfall that today sees Canada's most skilled leaving the country, only to be replaced by third-world refugees who yearn for an easier passage into the United States.)
Socialism, like communism, is a great idea, but neither can ever work. Neither one rewards working hard, and neither one punishes laziness. And therefore neither one takes into account the most basic factors of human behavior.
Yeah, and people who don't like smoking should just stop.
And people who are just desparate for their next fix, spending their welfare dollars on crack should just stop.
I'm an idiot. And with good reason. I therefore feel that I have perspective on this issue.
Even though I knew better, I started smoking. Now, admittedly, that was when I was 14, and I was hanging around in a garage with a bunch of car-buddies, and everyone else was smoking.
But I knew better. And I did it anyway.
Smoking is a chemical addiction, like heroin or crack; it changes the chemistry of the brain, and therefore makes it very difficult to quit. In fact, nicotine is considered by many medical researchers to be more addictive than heroin. I'd wager it's substantially more addictive than the behavior-only drug that gambling constitutes. (Yes, play on words intended.)
I'm an addict. I know it. And, while it pains me to say so, I'm dying for a cigarette even now.
While quitting smoking is a priority, it's always been a back-burner issue compared to the greater trials and tribulations in life. But I assure you, when it comes down to being a choice between paying the rent or buying groceries versus smoking, I pay the rent and get the food. I've had lean times in the past, times where the pain of a few months of poverty was aggravated by my brain incessantly fixating on slender white objects with little orangy-gold tips. But I was able to maintain my priorities, fending off my impulses against this most tenacious of addictions.
Perhaps this is the difference between the stupid addict (like myself) and the truly stupid addict (like those who gamble away the rent money). While I'm not perfect, I have self control.
First off, you mis-spelled "tragedies". Since the "g" and the "j" key are separated by the "h" (unless you're one of the 0.001% of the population using a Dvorak keyboard), I can't help but assume it to be a spelling error, as opposed to a mistyped word. Nor is "trajedy" a common British, Aussie or Canadian spelling; and the rest of your composition skills suggest that your first language is probably English. I realize the reply before mine addressed this issue, but I felt it to be a worthwhile issue for you to consider.
More pressingly, however, I am concerned about the content of your posting. No definate point was actually made, it was simply an expression of vaguely-directed displeasure.
Perhaps you're missing the concept upon which Slashdot seems to operate: a source of intelligent discourse among those of us who are either professionals in the IT field or are highly advanced computer users.
We agree, we disagree, we bicker, we moan.
Far be it for me to say I've never called someone on Slashdot an idiot: my personality is far more aggressive and volatile than to be able to contain that. I tell people what I think of them. But, on the other hand, I don't think I've ever called someone an idiot simply because I disagreed with them. I've called them idiots either because their arguments for/against a specific position were weak or ill-informed, not because they disagreed with me.
And I fear that this is specifically the reason why you feel uncomfortable with your fellow Slashdot fans. I'm sorry if that's the case. I like to consider myself to be reasonably intelligent; even so, a few of the individuals you call "idiots" have helped me to see things from a different viewpoint, and have even, on occasion, managed to change my opinions.
The suggestion of genocide against the idiots of the world is significantly more ominous, since innocent people will always be swept up in any attempt. A better solution is a hands-off approach in policy and legislation. Let Darwin's theory do its job. There's no need to lift a finger to kill off the idiots: they'll be gone, soon enough, with no intervention. In fact, intervention tends to backfire and propagate the species.
Finally, shared knowledge is what it's all about. Open-source, if you will. There will always be idiots. But Slashdot's signal-to-noise ratio is just about the best on the 'Net.
Absolutely. Let's face it, religion is about buying favors from a God that may or may not exist.
I'd like to think that whatever Supreme Being there may be, will be reasonable enough to recognize that people may eschew religion on the basis that it's more a reflection of the people who created/translated scriptures, rather than anything concrete that may have been passed down by a Deity centuries ago. If that's not the case, then, by logic, ask your family to have you buried in Bermuda shorts, cause it's gonna be mighty hot where we're *all* destined to end up.
And, if there's nothing out there, it's all for nought. At least we can thank organized religion for destroying the fun that we could have had during our one chance to experience anything for the brief respite from the eternal blackness that will be our existance after our corporal conclusion.
Value religion for its one important teaching: Live and Let Live. That's a remarkably powerful credo, and one that doesn't impose its ideals on everyone else.
Now, I can't claim to be perfectly able to live by even this one credo. No one can. Certainly, organized religion affects each of our lives every day, whether we want it to or not, and thus they're not abiding by the credo, either. But it remains a good goal for humanity: let people live as they want to live.
Instead of going to church and allowing human flaws to inevitably muddy the concept of spirituality, just live life to the fullest and value your fellow creatures.
Take the money you were going to put into the collection plate. Use it instead to take your young cousins to Disneyland. Or to buy your wife a new car. Money can't buy happiness, but material comfort sure makes happiness a much easier goal to achieve.
So?
If they're stupid enough to spend their money that way, is it my fault?
If they were spending their disposeable inccome, I'm sure you wouldn't have a problem with them losing it. But why should those people who want to gamble recreationally have to go without because these idiots don't know when to draw the line and burn up their grocery money?
Ban roads, because a few pedestrians forget to stay on the sidewalk and get killed.
Ban knives, because a few people cut themselves while they're trying to slice apples.
Ban gasoline, because a few hundred idiots cut into a pipeline in Nigeria and start collecting it from the puddles with buckets?
If a hick can't figure out when he's burned up his (meager?) disposeable income and burns through his grocery/rent money, where's the problem?
Theoretically, that person will starve to death, hence removing himself from the human genepool, and thus increase the quality of the breeding population.
Don't protect the stupid through laws that inconvenience the intelligent. Not only does it make life less enjoyable for the bulk of the population, but it also helps to ensure that the human genome will continue to carry the stench of failure for eons to come.
Okay. Then, by your numbers, 30% of all men in Hong Kong are stupid. You said it, not me.
Listen, I think gambling is about the best way of wasting your money that exists on the face of this earth. (Short of buying Metallica CDs.)
Now, whether or not gambling is addictive isn't my concern. I just really don't like the idea of setting the precedent that government knows more than individuals. Somewhere, shortly after crossing that line, you also cross the line dividing a government that serves the people from a people that serve the government.
As for your moral objections to gambling, while you feel that gambling is repugnant, I feel that imposing your morals on others is at least equally repugnant. Not everybody feels that gambling is evil and nasty. If people are stupid enough to want to gamble, and can't control their impulses to wager money, too bad. That's their problem.
Simply, if you don't like gambling, don't do it.
A good parallel would be the Howard Stern Radio Show. Many people would love to see Howard Stern legislated from the airwaves. That's incredibly dangerous, because that legislation actually erodes freedom of speech. A better solution, if you don't like Stern, is just not to tune the radio to any station that airs the Howard Stern show. If enough people do it, the capitalist system will serve as a great controlling body: the ratings will drop and the show will be cancelled. All without writing your Congressman with dangerous ideas that would restrict one of the most important rights in free countries.
I did notice your "family-destroying" description of gambling. I'd suggest that any family "destroyed" by gambling was broken anyway. Further, the use of "family-destroying" as an adjective conjures up images of various representatives of the Christian Right banging on my door and attempting to impose their morals on me or to entice me to go to church.
Ever have a bus full of Baptists stop in your driveway to try to pick up one more before going to the church? The line that was supposed to sell me on going to church was "We need good folk to help stop abortions".
Now, I think abortions are pretty nasty, and that there are usually valid alternatives (like adoption, or simply planning ahead), but I also don't want the government's fingers in any more pies (Bad enough they got a low-flush toilet into my house). Nor do I want to restrict the freedom of others. My response was simply, "Don't like abortions? Then don't have one!" Then I told them if their bus wasn't removed from my driveway in under 30 seconds, I'd have them cited for trespassing, and slammed the door.
Come on, man, it was a Sunday morning. I was sleeping off a long night of playing with my new DSL connection! Isn't the prime concept of Christianity to "do unto others", essentially to live and let live?
Don't like internet gambling? Then don't do it. Don't like pornography? Then don't buy it. Don't like homosexuality? Then don't go to gay bars. Don't like being unceremoniously told were you can shove your morals? Then don't attempt to impose them on others.
Love thy neighbor. Don't always agree with him/her, but don't always harass him/her. And give him/her the benefit of the doubt when it comes to making decisions.
I agree with you about the bumper. A big tube bumper is great for menacing Hondas. But a Trooper? That's just a step above a Toyota "Rectal Assault Vehicle" (RAV-4), Honda CR-V or a Subaru Outcast.
Come on, man! Fire up your MIG welder, and gusset your frame! Weld some nice box-section steel bar as the hypotenuse of a triangle from your bumper bracket on each side to the chassis' center bar, just under the engine. You'll more than double the strength of the front end of your frame.
My old Dodge has a box-section frame made of 3/8" thick plate steel, which is a lot more substantial than almost any modern vehicle. Sure, it gets about 7 miles per gallon as a result of the sheer mass, but that's okay. I view the extra gas cost as that kind of insurance that State Farm just won't sell; a policy that, by simple laws of physics, dictates that anything else (short of a Peterbilt) that gets in my way will be obliterated.
The only other vehicles that I fear on the road are Jeep Grand Cherokees, Dodge Dakotas and Dodge Durangos. They're all based on mostly the same frame, a really tough box-section frame that could do serious damage, even if it is wrapped up in painted plastic bumpers. (Sadly, the modern Dodge Ram frame is a C-channel frame, which is great for load-hauling, but nowhere near as imposing. And the Cherokee Classic, while an excellent 4x4, is a unibody, and therefore doesn't compete in this Bad Ass league.)