I run XBMC on my XBOX - bought for thatpurpose - and hacked two more as holiday gifts for friends, both with XBMC. I and they do run some XBOX games on them but the primary purpose for me is media. In fact I will be modding another soon for my other TV.
The XBOX360 is interesting but until it's hacked to run 3rd party unsigned code I won't be buying one. Media Extender crap won't cut it and I know Microsoft will never release features like XBMC has. I could care less about pirating games for it - which can be done now - I want a decent media center running on it. When that's available I'll buy one but not before... Oh, XNA need not apply IMO as Microsoft would freak if it could play say ripped DVDs etc.
The 6million user number has also been debunked as crap too. I was reading a pretty good article concerning that this weekend actually, naturally the article URL isn't at hand but afterwards it was pretty clear that 6million is also bogus. It's still a HUGE number though and I think bigger than any other.
FWIW on EVE I regularly see 20K or more folks logged on and as many as 28K without experiencing problems. I believe it's gone over 30K but that's been a pretty rare thing and nto something I've ever personally seen.
We had just the opposite - we had a FREEZING cold office. I hate cold so this pissed me off and I went around to figure out WHY it was so cold. Seems some dumbass had setup a coffee put under the thermostat! I used a can of freezespray to get temporary relief and taped a cold soda to the thing too. eventually I bitched enough that they moved the coffee pot to a more reasonable position. I have no idea what they were thinking when they put it there...
We had a worksite setup in a conference room. By the time we were done we had a dozen dual CPU machines, tube monitors, and employees in there elbow to elbow. The worst came when they began adding servers and SANS:-) Anyway, prior to our moving in this conference room was hated for it's sheer cold, not anymore! It got pretty bad. to the point that we had both an indoor and outdoor thermometer posted up. Why? Well it seems that in our explorations of the ceiling we had found a vent to the outside. We constructed ventilation ducting out of cardboard leading to this vent and attached a LARGE box fan who's power wire dangled near someone's desk outlet. When temp outside was less than temp inside the employee was to plug in the fan, when the situation changed we unplugged the fan. At one point we actually tried to get them to buy expensive (at that time) LCD monitors just because of the heat savings - we were denied. That interior thermometer served another purpose too - when it hit 90 we got to go home for the day - paid:-P
As you might imagine power became a problem since most of this was run through just a few sockets and the panels couldn't take it. The solution? It seems that breakers trip due to heat melting some sort of wax inside so to prevent this we added yet another cooling fan - this one directed into the open door of the circuit breakers in the closet!:-) By the time we were done we were runing at least 4 different big fans, it was pretty sad and quite noisy too.
Yeah, it was nutz and it was loud but it was a critical function so we did it. Our final fix for this was shutting down all of our rigged cooling, turning on ALL of our equipment, having every employee at their desk, and having the higher ups come tour one day. It didn't take them long to figure out that this was a fire hazard and a lawsuit waiting to happen and we got better digs.
Oh, we did find one other source for cooling but it was short lived. We explored the ceiling space and found an access panel intop the main A/C trunk leading to the bank next door. Upon opening it we were greeted with glorious cool air by the bucket full! Sadly when the bank employees noticed that it was becoming quite warm and complained the maintenance guys knew exactly where to go to fnid the source of the missing airflow - right to our office! It was good while it lasted though:-)
The thinner air, the reduced timing due to temp, and the Summer mix gas might also have something to do with this, probably more than you realize but yeah A/C hurts MPG.
You're kidding right? The engine is mechanically connected to the wheels, it cannot turn faster and not speed up the wheels. Yes even in an automatic since these days they all have mechanical lockup converters to eliminate slippage at speed. What you claim isn't possible without changing the speed of the car....
Vac hasn't controlled the A/C in ages. The clutch is turned off when the EFI computer sees a TPS signal that tells it the throttle is about a set amount. The amount may vary by manufacturer or model but it is most certainly based on throttle more so than on any vac signal. Older cars, especially ones with carbs, DID use a vac signal because they had no computer to do this like we have now - you're information is dated.
In any case the A/C does shut off in order to give a greater amount of power to the wheels in specific circumstances. The A/C DOES impact fuel usage but then so does electric cooling fans and headlights - Mythbusters be damned. Power to run those things isn't free but the cost can be low enough that the average driver doesn't notice. I can tell you that when the A/C kicks on and even when the cooling fans kick on the EFI computer raises the amount of air into the engine at idle - I know this having had to program it myself on many cars while tuning their fuel injection systems. Not doing this properly would cause the cars to stall. EFI computers will raise idle air when the A/C is on, when system voltage drops, when the engine is cold, and under other circumstances I've probably forgotten - raisnig air intake also means raised fueling, no getting around that so yeah it eats more gas....
I've seen a Liberty diesel in the work parking lot, seen it drive out a time or two. I may have seen others and just not realized what they were. Frankly I don't think it was a terrific setup but hey it was better than no diesel for them I think. I see TONs of hybrids and TDI in my parking lot. Commuting here sux and fuel prices spiked for awhile plus there are HOV incentives for hybrids which really helped. I also see a fair share of big diesel here but lots of folks seem to tow or use them for work. Too many SUVs too though but fuel prices will take care of them - our's has been mostly parked since the woman realized that twice weekly fillups at $50 apiece were crazy:-) I have a 2006 TDI and the miles are very slowly coming on. It doesn't get as good a mileage as the older smaller cars I've concluded but it gets WAY better than a gas model of the same size would so I'm okay with that.
One thing to consider looking into is chipping your car. A friend did that to his older TDI and it was a night and day difference. If you've got a stick they also have different 5th gear ratios that help mileage on the highway by dropping RPMs. Once the mileage is up enough on mine I'll chip it but for now I want to preserve the warranty and get it broken in before I go crazy....
BZZZT! Sorry bucko' but if you owned a turbo V8 it was built poorly if it performed as you claim. I owned one of the first DDMI\Spearco twin turbo kits built for the Ford Mustang and it was installed on my car back when Accell\DFI was one of the ONLY EFI systems around save for the F1 stuff. I had 8 PSI of boost by 2500RPMs if I was in a gear other than 1st when I stepped into it from cruise. It held 10-12PSI all the way to redline. The Paxton supercharger it replaced had crap for boost until redline and the turbo made MUCH more power.
Torque off idle is what the cubes are for and I do not want massive torque off of idle anyway unless breakage or spinning into the jersey barriers are what you're after. I want a smooth powerband that allows me to get off the line with traction and make big power when I'm moving but still have enough traction to launch. IF I wanted nothing but off idle power I'd drive a diesel truck at the track - no thanks.
Cubes of exhaust match cubes of input? Huh?! A 71MM turbo on a 3liter 6banger can make over 700RWHP (over 800RWHP actually), if I put that SAME turbo on a V8 it will STILL make the same power. You may run into some surge issues that require juggling housings or wheels but in the end the turbo is an air pump just like the engine is and it could care less what's driving it. If a specific turbo moves enough air to make power on one engine it's perfectly capable of doing the same on another bigger or smaller engine so long you stay in the effeciency island and don't surge. I helped tune a stroked V8 Ford smallblock to over 900RWHP through a 'glide - the SINGLE "large" turbo used was 77mm and the car ran single digit quarter mile times without sick levels of boost. Your statement is crap and makes no sense.
As for twin turbos - what exactly is running twins these days? V configuration engines tend run twins because the plumbing is easier\cleaner. Cars like the Supra and RX7 ran sequential turbos not to cut down on moving mass but to allow high(ish) airflow starting from REAL low RPMs and needed two turbos to be able to maintain boost to redline. Having owned both an RX7 and a Supra I'd take a single larger turbo over the twins anyday of the week so long as it was sized properly. If you want to argue that two smaller wheels have less lag when run in parallel than a single larger turbo I'd disagree. V engines run parallel turbos because of plumbing issues. While you may have a smaller turbo on each side that will spool faster you also also have HALF the exhaust power to turn it. Properly designed I'd say the single turbo makes more sense as it will make as much power and cost a good bit less. That guys with twin turbo 300ZX are trying single larger turbos with good results and would seem to support that. The only thing I've ever seen that might hold water against what I'm saying is a book recently published named something like Street Turbocharging. They make the same claim you do - that twins can be better but the test they use to support is is two *different* cars and the overlaid dyno graphs show the single turbo car within a gnat's hair of the twin car down low and BEATING it up top. Sorry, not conclusive at all and I'll trade 20RWHP down low for 50RWHP up top where I can use it any day of the week.
So what modern "large turbos" are twins exactly? (lol) Honestly that statement by itself makes no sense, how about some supporting information here? That you think any turbo takes a significant amount of time to spool simply shows you've not spent any time around something put together right. That's a shame because it's obviously biased you against a damned good technology.....
The Jeep Liberty was available in a diesel too as are quite a few trucks. VW is knocking off the diesel imports here for 2007, I've not heard that the Tourag will even make it. The sad part is that I had to inform the dealer of this fact when we bought our first TDI earlier this year. By the time I bought mine at a different dealer getting them at sticker was nearly impossible if they were on the lot.
2007 will be a lean year for VW diesel. However 2008 will see LOTS of them! I also expect to see Mercedes and other manufacturers finally able to bring their cars here. the problem until now has been that our fuel SUCKED. Our fuel in their engines setup to run on cleaner Euro fuel would've apparently not been good. Now our fuel is much closer to their's and it seems that ways of dealing with the emissions have been found although at least one of them is pretty scary (burn the particulates in a little furnace?!). The Urea one may also be interesting in that if the owner doesn't refill emissions go up but performance doesn't suffer (heh).
Anyway, stay tuned as come 2008 when our fuel is fully here we'll see some more options. For now I think VW just doesn't want to deal with bringing over a car that would die on crap ful only to have someone unknowingly pump that fuel into it - deadline or not. We expected fuel prices to keep going crazy and bought current models, a decision I don't regret but I do wonder why I can travel about 20 miles West and find fuel for a good 40cents a gallon cheaper (Northern VA). I'm tempted to have a tank put in next to my garage and pump BD99 but I really don't want to live in a filling station...
Sorry, cars do NOT run richer for better combustion now than they did before - if anything they run leaner. 14.7:1 is what the manufacturs shoot for and in some cars, lean burn cars, they go into the 20s supposedly at cruise - the forces you to open the throttle which reduces pumping losses.
The rest of what you said is spot on. People want POWER and regulations have forced cars to be heavier. Kripes they are even changing things now to protect pedestrains - how about we not hit them in the first place?
Got one - a 10AE. Best MPG I got in the city was 27MPG but it probably needs plugs. I have a much bettefr commute in a 2006 Jetta TDI getting 38+ MPG. I'll agree it doesn't handle as well nor does it look as nice but the cops leave me alone and I've got room to stretchout. I can also haul more than a bag or two of groceries at a time (lol)
A cool site! Will they allow say a diesel TDI to contribute? I get around 40MPG in my car and have the logs going back to day one however no weather data. It wold be pretty interesting to see how some of the diesel cars stack up - some of the TDI guys report SICK numbers but I swear they must be tailgating trucks in the far right lane to get them....
Depends on how much power you want to make. V8s weigh too and a 4banger with a turbo can make plenty of power (I've tuned a stroked Honda to over 600WHP on race gas but talk about peaky!). 10PSI isn't too much pressure for a pretty much stock N/A engine to take unless it's compression was crazy to begin with. It's a myth that a turbo automatically means the car is a ticking bomb, if you can keep the greedy owner from turning the boost to the Moon it will be fine on a reasonable tune.
Maintained well a turbo car is not much different than any other. Good oil, good air filter, there's no problems. I daily drove a 6banger that made about 600RWHP for 2 years with no issues. I blew an intercooler hose once or twice but it was a problem area and something I solved with a better clamp and a flared pipe. Yes indeed it sucked to drive the car without the turbo the rest of the way home but it got out of it's way at least as well as any other commuter car around me.
The biggest problem is that most people do NOT maintain their cars. Many people don't change trans fluid, oil gets changed with cheap crap only when the dash light comes on, the list is endless. If you're going to drive a performance car you cannot use 10cent spark plugs and crap oil unless you want lots of problems. These days I drive a diesel VW and while it's no speed demon (upgrades exist....) it gets 38+ MPG in bumper to bumper. Yup, it's a turbo with a little VNT sucker under there whistling away. I pretty much drive it like a N/A 4banger and ignore the fact that it's turbo except when it comes to oil changes - then it gets GOOD oil. Turbo wheels should last 100K miles unless crap goes through them . Ask an over the road trucker how they would feel about taking the blower or turbo off of their rig to save on maintenance and see if they agree it's a good idea.:-)
Umm 180MPH doing what? Plenty of 4 and 6cylinder cars are capable of that speed given room. Who's kool-aid you been drinking? Number of cylinders has little to do with HP.
Dynos measure different ways. Some are eddy current, some use an accelerating drum, and on and on. Dynojet for instance is pretty optimistic with their numbers while many overseas dynos read MUCH lower. The thing is you're misunderstanding what a dyno is for - it's a tuning TOOL. It's what you use to get more power from your car, not to figure out who's is bigger which is sadly what many people do and probably why some companies read "optimistic". Dyno Dynamics makes the best dyno I've seen to date - no big drums, can give REALTIME torque readings for igntion tuning, comes with a W/B A/F setup, weather station, and is sorta' portable.
Unfortunatly many shops have no clue about tuning when they buy a dyno and of course they want a dyno they have heard of nistead of one from Australia that's a real tool for doing something other than peak power runs. This is why there's a damned Dynojet on every corner If you really want to learn about this stuff and tuning in general take an EFI101.com class - an eye opener for sure especially if you take the class at a shop with a good dyno....
Huh? Ethanol has even less power per gallon than gas. Diesel on the other hand has MORE power per gallon (aka BTUs) than gasoline! Diesel engines are also run without a throttle so there's no pumping loss and because they are cmopression ignition with a very stable fuel they can run higher cylinder pressures - hence massive turbocharging going on:-) The exhaust gasses are also cooler on a diesel so they can use nifty VNT turbos to get boost earlier. I want to see a diesel hybrid myself, that woudl rock. For now I'll daily my TDI and be happy with near hybrid MPG figures...
Excuse me?? Larger engines are even better for turbos, they excite the exhaust turbine far more quickly because they have greater exahust flow. You can make near instant boost on even a large turbo if you run a decent number of cubes. Plus a larger engine doesn't have the issue with low end torque that a smaller displacement engine does - it feels terrific all the way through the powerband. Does having boost at 2K RPMs sound like lag to you? LOL! Hey how about a Roots or Screw supercharger? Boost right off idle if sized correctly but a little more heat and less effeciency up top...
As for compression ratio - which do you think makes more power: High compression engine or Low compression engine with forced induction. Answer: Low compression engine with forced induction - to a point. If you drop compression much below 8:1 then the effeciencies go down on a forced induction motor. Built correctly though the forced induction motor will make more power and be more streetable - if for no other reason than it can have a nice smooth cam and still make shitloads of power without issue. High compression engines have to be tuned to the edge with cams, high pressure valvespirngs, goofy induction, and high octane gas to make nearly as much power as a well done forced induction engine.
In the end the engnie is simply an air pump and it uses FAR more air than it does fuel. If you think for a moment that an engine can suck in much more air than it's displacement naturally aspirated and still be streetable then you're living in fantasy land. However a forced induction motor WILL easily suck in far more air than it's displacement and make greater power. At some point squeezing the mixture harder just makes it detonate and you only get but so much air with a naturally aspirated motor...
Sure there is - it's called forced induction! The only reason why cubes get everyone tingly is because it can suck in more air and burn more fuel. If you want that power level with less cubes then simply force more air and fuel into it! I pushed 720RWHP out of a stock 3liter straight six with 32PSI of boost. That's over 2 atmospheres worth of air and it turned that 3liter into the equal of a 9liter N/A engine. Oh, and when not on boost it got the sorts of mileage you'd only dream of driving a 9liter engine:-) Yeah, a turbo engine making that kind of power has a peaky power curve and I was looking to put on a much smaller turbo for street driving on pump gas but it would still have made more than 500HP at the wheels and been responsive as all get out.
Cubes are nice but they suck, I'd rather be blown:-P Okay, big cubes AND blown FTW....
Sorry but 15-30% is nutz. Try closer to 10% unless you're using a REALLY crappy automatic. Folks like to come up with big loss numbers so they can claim big flywheel numbers but in the real world the loss numbers aren't going to come close to 30% by a long shot unless something is WAY wrong. If you've got a stick 10% is probably a good number, if it's an auto then a little higher. If it's a Powerglide then wow, yeah you're losing a ton with that ancient POS;-)
As an aside - talked to a guy who's car I was helping tune and who had switched to a 'glide. He lost 100RWHP going from a T5 to the 'glide - I was floored! That day the car made more than 900RWHP through that damned thing and it was near undrivable when boost came on - sick. That was a Ford smallblock - over 351 cubes with a decent sized turbo plumbed with junk parts. The 'glide was MUCH easier to drive on the track then the stick (not to mention it stayed together) but until the chassis was tuned they had to turn the power way down, it was a handful!
Some of what he says is actually correct. While I won't respond to everything you've posted I'll try to answer some of it so that you can at least get a sense of where the guy is coming from. Note that I'm not saying I agree or diagree with his position but I've been forced to research VISTA a good bit for work so I'm not completly clueless as to what's in store for us:-(
1) Laws of physics. Yes actually he's right. You see DRM is supposed to prevent us from being able to copy signals that are in the end analog. In order for it to actually work 100% we would have to have our ears replaced with digital jacks. Obviously not going to happen so in order for this to work Microsoft must have found a way to prevent you from using a microphone to record the audio (for instance). This is why folks says that for DRM to work it must break the laws of physics - this isn't just Peter saying this. I'll also note that some cmopanies have claimed to have the ability to close this "analog hole" buit to date nothing has materialized that actually does it.
2) Driver signing - in 64BIT VISTA Microsoft says all drivers must be signed. In 32BIT it's optional but encouraged and we'll get the usual pop-ups. If a driver is found to be vulnerable yeah they probably WILL kill it's certificate. Why? Because they are bending over to the media companies like CableCard and will not wish to lose that certification. An example of how far companies will go to get these certifications can be found with the TIVO S3 where they threw out significant functionality (Tivo2Go) in order to become "certified" and in their addition of DRM to retain their Macrovision license. Microsoft has now made themselves subject to much the same arm twisting... BTW, the MS blog I read that mentioned driver signing stated that they did this in 64BIT because there was little chance of breaking backwards functionality and that they couldn't quite do it in 32BIT but really wanted to. I do not know if 64BIT is required for the advanced media features but I'll bet that signed drivers will be required throughout for the advanced stuff to work on 32BIT.
3) Broken hardware... I will point out the HDMI video cards that turned out had an HDMI capable chipset (HDCP and all) but no hardware keys for the HDCP that sort of screwed the consumers. Yeah, they do sometimes ship "broken" hardware and when folks found out their spiffy vid cards wouldn't be compliant they were pretty pissed off!
4) Killer NIC card? I know some hardcore guys that play in tournaments considering that thing. es, a few milliseconds makes a difference to them and yes they run HIGH end video cards as a result. It makes no sense to me either but if the price were right I might consider that card too:-)
5) Installing Blu Ray of HD DVD drives in the system doesn't matter. All of this DRM crap is in there working anyway and the addition of this hardware doesn't somehow suddenly turn it all on. This is part of his ppoint, the system could be more fragile because of these design considerations. As I understand it the DRM drivers all run at a special priv level seperate from the others - now that seems like an odd decision to make if you were trying to build an optimal system for the user doesn't it? I would also point out that there are other DRM contents out there over and above that which comes on physical media. I own a Buffalo Linktheater and it can play a TON of content. However certain DRM'd WMA files tip it right over because the damned media wants to phone home for authorization blah blah. You can get screwed by stuff like that without ever having installed goofy DRM'd hardware. Windows Media Player has been chock full of this DRM crap for awhile on XP if you've been paying attention.
On the flip side Microsoft has REALLY worked hard to make Vista more secure. Buffer overflows may have just been shot dead - memory space shuffling, NX bit for the OS, signing of code, canaries in the stack, no more users running as admin all the time, the lis
To me it seems that Microsoft has been willing to make the changes to their OS that the content providers have "demanded" in order to allow their protected content to be played back on a PC. That doesn't mean that Microsoft will completely control this market just that other people who want to provide that same service will also have to meet the approval of the content providers. Apple might, I doubt Linux ever will. Bitch about that all you want but Microsoft wanted to sell their product and having this functionality is a sales feature and I'm sure it cost them a bunch of development time to implement it, hopefully it will take less time to break it:-) Cablecard is a perfect example - try getting your hands on the hardware if you don't have an "approved" device for instance. What should have been a boon for say MythTV instead could kill it. Microsoft simply made their product compliant is all - and so did TIVO:-(
So, in this particular case, I'd say it's the content "providers" you ought to be angry with not Microsoft for being willing to bend over and take direction from the providers. Certainly they could've "taken a stand" but they want to make a profit and thus bent over. Want to make a change? Don't buy the new content and stop buying the old if you can manage it. Just realize that until enough people do that no one will notice....
Too late! They are already letting it rot, I know a Verizon tech who tells me so. They have completely cut their maintenance crews in his area of Maryland and only do repair work as needed. He has horror stories of trying to find free pairs for new lines too. They are betting the farm on FIOS and expecting to lease out the copper to 3rd parties who will have to pay for it's maintenance I guess. Honestly the end goal isn't clear but he bitches to me quite often about how much work it's making for him these days...
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I run XBMC on my XBOX - bought for thatpurpose - and hacked two more as holiday gifts for friends, both with XBMC. I and they do run some XBOX games on them but the primary purpose for me is media. In fact I will be modding another soon for my other TV.
The XBOX360 is interesting but until it's hacked to run 3rd party unsigned code I won't be buying one. Media Extender crap won't cut it and I know Microsoft will never release features like XBMC has. I could care less about pirating games for it - which can be done now - I want a decent media center running on it. When that's available I'll buy one but not before... Oh, XNA need not apply IMO as Microsoft would freak if it could play say ripped DVDs etc.
The 6million user number has also been debunked as crap too. I was reading a pretty good article concerning that this weekend actually, naturally the article URL isn't at hand but afterwards it was pretty clear that 6million is also bogus. It's still a HUGE number though and I think bigger than any other.
FWIW on EVE I regularly see 20K or more folks logged on and as many as 28K without experiencing problems. I believe it's gone over 30K but that's been a pretty rare thing and nto something I've ever personally seen.
We had just the opposite - we had a FREEZING cold office. I hate cold so this pissed me off and I went around to figure out WHY it was so cold. Seems some dumbass had setup a coffee put under the thermostat! I used a can of freezespray to get temporary relief and taped a cold soda to the thing too. eventually I bitched enough that they moved the coffee pot to a more reasonable position. I have no idea what they were thinking when they put it there...
We had a worksite setup in a conference room. By the time we were done we had a dozen dual CPU machines, tube monitors, and employees in there elbow to elbow. The worst came when they began adding servers and SANS :-) Anyway, prior to our moving in this conference room was hated for it's sheer cold, not anymore! It got pretty bad. to the point that we had both an indoor and outdoor thermometer posted up. Why? Well it seems that in our explorations of the ceiling we had found a vent to the outside. We constructed ventilation ducting out of cardboard leading to this vent and attached a LARGE box fan who's power wire dangled near someone's desk outlet. When temp outside was less than temp inside the employee was to plug in the fan, when the situation changed we unplugged the fan. At one point we actually tried to get them to buy expensive (at that time) LCD monitors just because of the heat savings - we were denied. That interior thermometer served another purpose too - when it hit 90 we got to go home for the day - paid :-P
:-) By the time we were done we were runing at least 4 different big fans, it was pretty sad and quite noisy too.
:-)
As you might imagine power became a problem since most of this was run through just a few sockets and the panels couldn't take it. The solution? It seems that breakers trip due to heat melting some sort of wax inside so to prevent this we added yet another cooling fan - this one directed into the open door of the circuit breakers in the closet!
Yeah, it was nutz and it was loud but it was a critical function so we did it. Our final fix for this was shutting down all of our rigged cooling, turning on ALL of our equipment, having every employee at their desk, and having the higher ups come tour one day. It didn't take them long to figure out that this was a fire hazard and a lawsuit waiting to happen and we got better digs.
Oh, we did find one other source for cooling but it was short lived. We explored the ceiling space and found an access panel intop the main A/C trunk leading to the bank next door. Upon opening it we were greeted with glorious cool air by the bucket full! Sadly when the bank employees noticed that it was becoming quite warm and complained the maintenance guys knew exactly where to go to fnid the source of the missing airflow - right to our office! It was good while it lasted though
Walmart?! The heck with Walmart! Go visit a Fry's - now that is a much more intreresting place to go with lots more neat toys! :-)
The thinner air, the reduced timing due to temp, and the Summer mix gas might also have something to do with this, probably more than you realize but yeah A/C hurts MPG.
You're kidding right? The engine is mechanically connected to the wheels, it cannot turn faster and not speed up the wheels. Yes even in an automatic since these days they all have mechanical lockup converters to eliminate slippage at speed. What you claim isn't possible without changing the speed of the car....
Vac hasn't controlled the A/C in ages. The clutch is turned off when the EFI computer sees a TPS signal that tells it the throttle is about a set amount. The amount may vary by manufacturer or model but it is most certainly based on throttle more so than on any vac signal. Older cars, especially ones with carbs, DID use a vac signal because they had no computer to do this like we have now - you're information is dated.
In any case the A/C does shut off in order to give a greater amount of power to the wheels in specific circumstances. The A/C DOES impact fuel usage but then so does electric cooling fans and headlights - Mythbusters be damned. Power to run those things isn't free but the cost can be low enough that the average driver doesn't notice. I can tell you that when the A/C kicks on and even when the cooling fans kick on the EFI computer raises the amount of air into the engine at idle - I know this having had to program it myself on many cars while tuning their fuel injection systems. Not doing this properly would cause the cars to stall. EFI computers will raise idle air when the A/C is on, when system voltage drops, when the engine is cold, and under other circumstances I've probably forgotten - raisnig air intake also means raised fueling, no getting around that so yeah it eats more gas....
I've seen a Liberty diesel in the work parking lot, seen it drive out a time or two. I may have seen others and just not realized what they were. Frankly I don't think it was a terrific setup but hey it was better than no diesel for them I think. I see TONs of hybrids and TDI in my parking lot. Commuting here sux and fuel prices spiked for awhile plus there are HOV incentives for hybrids which really helped. I also see a fair share of big diesel here but lots of folks seem to tow or use them for work. Too many SUVs too though but fuel prices will take care of them - our's has been mostly parked since the woman realized that twice weekly fillups at $50 apiece were crazy :-) I have a 2006 TDI and the miles are very slowly coming on. It doesn't get as good a mileage as the older smaller cars I've concluded but it gets WAY better than a gas model of the same size would so I'm okay with that.
One thing to consider looking into is chipping your car. A friend did that to his older TDI and it was a night and day difference. If you've got a stick they also have different 5th gear ratios that help mileage on the highway by dropping RPMs. Once the mileage is up enough on mine I'll chip it but for now I want to preserve the warranty and get it broken in before I go crazy....
BZZZT! Sorry bucko' but if you owned a turbo V8 it was built poorly if it performed as you claim. I owned one of the first DDMI\Spearco twin turbo kits built for the Ford Mustang and it was installed on my car back when Accell\DFI was one of the ONLY EFI systems around save for the F1 stuff. I had 8 PSI of boost by 2500RPMs if I was in a gear other than 1st when I stepped into it from cruise. It held 10-12PSI all the way to redline. The Paxton supercharger it replaced had crap for boost until redline and the turbo made MUCH more power.
Torque off idle is what the cubes are for and I do not want massive torque off of idle anyway unless breakage or spinning into the jersey barriers are what you're after. I want a smooth powerband that allows me to get off the line with traction and make big power when I'm moving but still have enough traction to launch. IF I wanted nothing but off idle power I'd drive a diesel truck at the track - no thanks.
Cubes of exhaust match cubes of input? Huh?! A 71MM turbo on a 3liter 6banger can make over 700RWHP (over 800RWHP actually), if I put that SAME turbo on a V8 it will STILL make the same power. You may run into some surge issues that require juggling housings or wheels but in the end the turbo is an air pump just like the engine is and it could care less what's driving it. If a specific turbo moves enough air to make power on one engine it's perfectly capable of doing the same on another bigger or smaller engine so long you stay in the effeciency island and don't surge. I helped tune a stroked V8 Ford smallblock to over 900RWHP through a 'glide - the SINGLE "large" turbo used was 77mm and the car ran single digit quarter mile times without sick levels of boost. Your statement is crap and makes no sense.
As for twin turbos - what exactly is running twins these days? V configuration engines tend run twins because the plumbing is easier\cleaner. Cars like the Supra and RX7 ran sequential turbos not to cut down on moving mass but to allow high(ish) airflow starting from REAL low RPMs and needed two turbos to be able to maintain boost to redline. Having owned both an RX7 and a Supra I'd take a single larger turbo over the twins anyday of the week so long as it was sized properly. If you want to argue that two smaller wheels have less lag when run in parallel than a single larger turbo I'd disagree. V engines run parallel turbos because of plumbing issues. While you may have a smaller turbo on each side that will spool faster you also also have HALF the exhaust power to turn it. Properly designed I'd say the single turbo makes more sense as it will make as much power and cost a good bit less. That guys with twin turbo 300ZX are trying single larger turbos with good results and would seem to support that. The only thing I've ever seen that might hold water against what I'm saying is a book recently published named something like Street Turbocharging. They make the same claim you do - that twins can be better but the test they use to support is is two *different* cars and the overlaid dyno graphs show the single turbo car within a gnat's hair of the twin car down low and BEATING it up top. Sorry, not conclusive at all and I'll trade 20RWHP down low for 50RWHP up top where I can use it any day of the week.
So what modern "large turbos" are twins exactly? (lol) Honestly that statement by itself makes no sense, how about some supporting information here? That you think any turbo takes a significant amount of time to spool simply shows you've not spent any time around something put together right. That's a shame because it's obviously biased you against a damned good technology.....
The new ones still smoke a little during a stone cold startup, it quickly clears.
The problem here is that the moron AC hasn't realized when he's been behind a modern diesel because they have no outward signs of being a diesel!
The Jeep Liberty was available in a diesel too as are quite a few trucks. VW is knocking off the diesel imports here for 2007, I've not heard that the Tourag will even make it. The sad part is that I had to inform the dealer of this fact when we bought our first TDI earlier this year. By the time I bought mine at a different dealer getting them at sticker was nearly impossible if they were on the lot.
2007 will be a lean year for VW diesel. However 2008 will see LOTS of them! I also expect to see Mercedes and other manufacturers finally able to bring their cars here. the problem until now has been that our fuel SUCKED. Our fuel in their engines setup to run on cleaner Euro fuel would've apparently not been good. Now our fuel is much closer to their's and it seems that ways of dealing with the emissions have been found although at least one of them is pretty scary (burn the particulates in a little furnace?!). The Urea one may also be interesting in that if the owner doesn't refill emissions go up but performance doesn't suffer (heh).
Anyway, stay tuned as come 2008 when our fuel is fully here we'll see some more options. For now I think VW just doesn't want to deal with bringing over a car that would die on crap ful only to have someone unknowingly pump that fuel into it - deadline or not. We expected fuel prices to keep going crazy and bought current models, a decision I don't regret but I do wonder why I can travel about 20 miles West and find fuel for a good 40cents a gallon cheaper (Northern VA). I'm tempted to have a tank put in next to my garage and pump BD99 but I really don't want to live in a filling station...
Sorry, cars do NOT run richer for better combustion now than they did before - if anything they run leaner. 14.7:1 is what the manufacturs shoot for and in some cars, lean burn cars, they go into the 20s supposedly at cruise - the forces you to open the throttle which reduces pumping losses.
The rest of what you said is spot on. People want POWER and regulations have forced cars to be heavier. Kripes they are even changing things now to protect pedestrains - how about we not hit them in the first place?
Got one - a 10AE. Best MPG I got in the city was 27MPG but it probably needs plugs. I have a much bettefr commute in a 2006 Jetta TDI getting 38+ MPG. I'll agree it doesn't handle as well nor does it look as nice but the cops leave me alone and I've got room to stretchout. I can also haul more than a bag or two of groceries at a time (lol)
A cool site! Will they allow say a diesel TDI to contribute? I get around 40MPG in my car and have the logs going back to day one however no weather data. It wold be pretty interesting to see how some of the diesel cars stack up - some of the TDI guys report SICK numbers but I swear they must be tailgating trucks in the far right lane to get them....
Depends on how much power you want to make. V8s weigh too and a 4banger with a turbo can make plenty of power (I've tuned a stroked Honda to over 600WHP on race gas but talk about peaky!). 10PSI isn't too much pressure for a pretty much stock N/A engine to take unless it's compression was crazy to begin with. It's a myth that a turbo automatically means the car is a ticking bomb, if you can keep the greedy owner from turning the boost to the Moon it will be fine on a reasonable tune.
:-)
Maintained well a turbo car is not much different than any other. Good oil, good air filter, there's no problems. I daily drove a 6banger that made about 600RWHP for 2 years with no issues. I blew an intercooler hose once or twice but it was a problem area and something I solved with a better clamp and a flared pipe. Yes indeed it sucked to drive the car without the turbo the rest of the way home but it got out of it's way at least as well as any other commuter car around me.
The biggest problem is that most people do NOT maintain their cars. Many people don't change trans fluid, oil gets changed with cheap crap only when the dash light comes on, the list is endless. If you're going to drive a performance car you cannot use 10cent spark plugs and crap oil unless you want lots of problems. These days I drive a diesel VW and while it's no speed demon (upgrades exist....) it gets 38+ MPG in bumper to bumper. Yup, it's a turbo with a little VNT sucker under there whistling away. I pretty much drive it like a N/A 4banger and ignore the fact that it's turbo except when it comes to oil changes - then it gets GOOD oil. Turbo wheels should last 100K miles unless crap goes through them . Ask an over the road trucker how they would feel about taking the blower or turbo off of their rig to save on maintenance and see if they agree it's a good idea.
Umm 180MPH doing what? Plenty of 4 and 6cylinder cars are capable of that speed given room. Who's kool-aid you been drinking? Number of cylinders has little to do with HP.
Dynos measure different ways. Some are eddy current, some use an accelerating drum, and on and on. Dynojet for instance is pretty optimistic with their numbers while many overseas dynos read MUCH lower. The thing is you're misunderstanding what a dyno is for - it's a tuning TOOL. It's what you use to get more power from your car, not to figure out who's is bigger which is sadly what many people do and probably why some companies read "optimistic". Dyno Dynamics makes the best dyno I've seen to date - no big drums, can give REALTIME torque readings for igntion tuning, comes with a W/B A/F setup, weather station, and is sorta' portable.
Unfortunatly many shops have no clue about tuning when they buy a dyno and of course they want a dyno they have heard of nistead of one from Australia that's a real tool for doing something other than peak power runs. This is why there's a damned Dynojet on every corner If you really want to learn about this stuff and tuning in general take an EFI101.com class - an eye opener for sure especially if you take the class at a shop with a good dyno....
Huh? Ethanol has even less power per gallon than gas. Diesel on the other hand has MORE power per gallon (aka BTUs) than gasoline! Diesel engines are also run without a throttle so there's no pumping loss and because they are cmopression ignition with a very stable fuel they can run higher cylinder pressures - hence massive turbocharging going on :-) The exhaust gasses are also cooler on a diesel so they can use nifty VNT turbos to get boost earlier. I want to see a diesel hybrid myself, that woudl rock. For now I'll daily my TDI and be happy with near hybrid MPG figures...
Excuse me?? Larger engines are even better for turbos, they excite the exhaust turbine far more quickly because they have greater exahust flow. You can make near instant boost on even a large turbo if you run a decent number of cubes. Plus a larger engine doesn't have the issue with low end torque that a smaller displacement engine does - it feels terrific all the way through the powerband. Does having boost at 2K RPMs sound like lag to you? LOL! Hey how about a Roots or Screw supercharger? Boost right off idle if sized correctly but a little more heat and less effeciency up top...
As for compression ratio - which do you think makes more power: High compression engine or Low compression engine with forced induction. Answer: Low compression engine with forced induction - to a point. If you drop compression much below 8:1 then the effeciencies go down on a forced induction motor. Built correctly though the forced induction motor will make more power and be more streetable - if for no other reason than it can have a nice smooth cam and still make shitloads of power without issue. High compression engines have to be tuned to the edge with cams, high pressure valvespirngs, goofy induction, and high octane gas to make nearly as much power as a well done forced induction engine.
In the end the engnie is simply an air pump and it uses FAR more air than it does fuel. If you think for a moment that an engine can suck in much more air than it's displacement naturally aspirated and still be streetable then you're living in fantasy land. However a forced induction motor WILL easily suck in far more air than it's displacement and make greater power. At some point squeezing the mixture harder just makes it detonate and you only get but so much air with a naturally aspirated motor...
Sure there is - it's called forced induction! The only reason why cubes get everyone tingly is because it can suck in more air and burn more fuel. If you want that power level with less cubes then simply force more air and fuel into it! I pushed 720RWHP out of a stock 3liter straight six with 32PSI of boost. That's over 2 atmospheres worth of air and it turned that 3liter into the equal of a 9liter N/A engine. Oh, and when not on boost it got the sorts of mileage you'd only dream of driving a 9liter engine :-) Yeah, a turbo engine making that kind of power has a peaky power curve and I was looking to put on a much smaller turbo for street driving on pump gas but it would still have made more than 500HP at the wheels and been responsive as all get out.
:-P Okay, big cubes AND blown FTW....
Cubes are nice but they suck, I'd rather be blown
Sorry but 15-30% is nutz. Try closer to 10% unless you're using a REALLY crappy automatic. Folks like to come up with big loss numbers so they can claim big flywheel numbers but in the real world the loss numbers aren't going to come close to 30% by a long shot unless something is WAY wrong. If you've got a stick 10% is probably a good number, if it's an auto then a little higher. If it's a Powerglide then wow, yeah you're losing a ton with that ancient POS ;-)
As an aside - talked to a guy who's car I was helping tune and who had switched to a 'glide. He lost 100RWHP going from a T5 to the 'glide - I was floored! That day the car made more than 900RWHP through that damned thing and it was near undrivable when boost came on - sick. That was a Ford smallblock - over 351 cubes with a decent sized turbo plumbed with junk parts. The 'glide was MUCH easier to drive on the track then the stick (not to mention it stayed together) but until the chassis was tuned they had to turn the power way down, it was a handful!
Some of what he says is actually correct. While I won't respond to everything you've posted I'll try to answer some of it so that you can at least get a sense of where the guy is coming from. Note that I'm not saying I agree or diagree with his position but I've been forced to research VISTA a good bit for work so I'm not completly clueless as to what's in store for us :-(
:-)
1) Laws of physics. Yes actually he's right. You see DRM is supposed to prevent us from being able to copy signals that are in the end analog. In order for it to actually work 100% we would have to have our ears replaced with digital jacks. Obviously not going to happen so in order for this to work Microsoft must have found a way to prevent you from using a microphone to record the audio (for instance). This is why folks says that for DRM to work it must break the laws of physics - this isn't just Peter saying this. I'll also note that some cmopanies have claimed to have the ability to close this "analog hole" buit to date nothing has materialized that actually does it.
2) Driver signing - in 64BIT VISTA Microsoft says all drivers must be signed. In 32BIT it's optional but encouraged and we'll get the usual pop-ups. If a driver is found to be vulnerable yeah they probably WILL kill it's certificate. Why? Because they are bending over to the media companies like CableCard and will not wish to lose that certification. An example of how far companies will go to get these certifications can be found with the TIVO S3 where they threw out significant functionality (Tivo2Go) in order to become "certified" and in their addition of DRM to retain their Macrovision license. Microsoft has now made themselves subject to much the same arm twisting... BTW, the MS blog I read that mentioned driver signing stated that they did this in 64BIT because there was little chance of breaking backwards functionality and that they couldn't quite do it in 32BIT but really wanted to. I do not know if 64BIT is required for the advanced media features but I'll bet that signed drivers will be required throughout for the advanced stuff to work on 32BIT.
3) Broken hardware... I will point out the HDMI video cards that turned out had an HDMI capable chipset (HDCP and all) but no hardware keys for the HDCP that sort of screwed the consumers. Yeah, they do sometimes ship "broken" hardware and when folks found out their spiffy vid cards wouldn't be compliant they were pretty pissed off!
4) Killer NIC card? I know some hardcore guys that play in tournaments considering that thing. es, a few milliseconds makes a difference to them and yes they run HIGH end video cards as a result. It makes no sense to me either but if the price were right I might consider that card too
5) Installing Blu Ray of HD DVD drives in the system doesn't matter. All of this DRM crap is in there working anyway and the addition of this hardware doesn't somehow suddenly turn it all on. This is part of his ppoint, the system could be more fragile because of these design considerations. As I understand it the DRM drivers all run at a special priv level seperate from the others - now that seems like an odd decision to make if you were trying to build an optimal system for the user doesn't it? I would also point out that there are other DRM contents out there over and above that which comes on physical media. I own a Buffalo Linktheater and it can play a TON of content. However certain DRM'd WMA files tip it right over because the damned media wants to phone home for authorization blah blah. You can get screwed by stuff like that without ever having installed goofy DRM'd hardware. Windows Media Player has been chock full of this DRM crap for awhile on XP if you've been paying attention.
On the flip side Microsoft has REALLY worked hard to make Vista more secure. Buffer overflows may have just been shot dead - memory space shuffling, NX bit for the OS, signing of code, canaries in the stack, no more users running as admin all the time, the lis
To me it seems that Microsoft has been willing to make the changes to their OS that the content providers have "demanded" in order to allow their protected content to be played back on a PC. That doesn't mean that Microsoft will completely control this market just that other people who want to provide that same service will also have to meet the approval of the content providers. Apple might, I doubt Linux ever will. Bitch about that all you want but Microsoft wanted to sell their product and having this functionality is a sales feature and I'm sure it cost them a bunch of development time to implement it, hopefully it will take less time to break it :-) Cablecard is a perfect example - try getting your hands on the hardware if you don't have an "approved" device for instance. What should have been a boon for say MythTV instead could kill it. Microsoft simply made their product compliant is all - and so did TIVO :-(
So, in this particular case, I'd say it's the content "providers" you ought to be angry with not Microsoft for being willing to bend over and take direction from the providers. Certainly they could've "taken a stand" but they want to make a profit and thus bent over. Want to make a change? Don't buy the new content and stop buying the old if you can manage it. Just realize that until enough people do that no one will notice....
Too late! They are already letting it rot, I know a Verizon tech who tells me so. They have completely cut their maintenance crews in his area of Maryland and only do repair work as needed. He has horror stories of trying to find free pairs for new lines too. They are betting the farm on FIOS and expecting to lease out the copper to 3rd parties who will have to pay for it's maintenance I guess. Honestly the end goal isn't clear but he bitches to me quite often about how much work it's making for him these days...