Gas Price Change For You

[Babalonian]

Electric cars do have very nice acceleration due to the different power curve they have compared to combustion engines. That being said the challenge is still how to charge them up quickly. I believe Tesla's have 300 mile range before they need an all night charge.

The "all night" charge isn't a wall socket either if I recall correctly, you need to get your meter and garage's electrical circuits upped from 120 to 240 iirc.


My comment was more directed at the fact that chevy has been investing and deleoping the volt and electric cars for how many years now?....  I don't see them leading the electric car industry or strongly establishing themselves as a leader within it today or tomorrow (maybe in a couple more years... but that's a good chunk of time).

Case in point with your comment - I'm pretty sure Tesla has been developing/working on the getting around the fast recharge problem, slowly, for at least as long as Chevy has decided to launch the entire Volt series (a couple to few years).  I hope Chevy succeeds, but my money is on Tesla at this point, they knew of this problem and started developing solutions for it while Chevy was asking the government for a bailout because "something" went wrong.

[CAP1]

Electric cars do have very nice acceleration due to the different power curve they have compared to combustion engines. That being said the challenge is still how to charge them up quickly. I believe Tesla's have 300 mile range before they need an all night charge.

 there are ways to "fast charge" batteries. the problem that you run into, is the same as when you discharge them quickly. they build up heat. heat kills them slowly over time. the more often you would fast charge the batteries, the shorter you would make its lifespan.

 do a lot of hard driving on any of the electrics, including the tesla, and you're gonna heat up the packs, and shorten their lifespan. i think the teslas have dedicated cooling systems for these to help, but you're still gonna hurt them. on top of all that, if you're a hard driver, you're not gonna get the range from the batteries, just like you won't get the mileage from a gas car. then go turning on the a/c, windshield wipers, headlights.....well....you get the picture.

 it's good that people are trying......but it's not there yet. probably won't be viable for a looooonnnggggg time.

 and finally...despite what people are saying.....do you truly think that charging these things every night isn't gonna hurt your electric bill?

[morfiend]

 Roy, forgive me I'm a canuk we call them stoves up here but your right he only uses the oven part!


   Semp, I checked out that site,   I'm not sure where they got their figures from but those are rather generous! I and my family owned or drove most those cars on the list and I cantell you from real world experience that there were few if any cars that got 40 mpg never mind 60mpg.

  Most those cars used a carb and only afew had any type of computer controlled ignition. Try any NA built car made in 74 and shut the engine down! See how long it runs on because of preignition!

   My wife had a 74 nova and you had to turn the key off and let the clutch out ingear to stop the engine from running on. they got better about 76 when they figured out how to stop this issue but it wasnt until the added fuel injection and comp. controlled ignition that the really fixed the problem.  They ran the cars too lean to pass emmisions,pump exhaust gases back through the system to reburn the mixture and this cause carbon buildup and thats what caused the run on issue.

       I'm sure the more technical guys can chime in and explain it better or even add their own real life experiences with 70's(mid to late} and 80's cars! 1974 was the year they stopped building anything with power,check the hp on even the vet that year!!!!

  Oh and find me a car from then that gets 50mpg and I'll pull a klinger and eat it!


   

[morfiend]

My Honda Shadow (650cc) gets 55 mpg on the highway and about 47 on the city streets. My wife's motorcycle (250cc) gets 71 mpg and even more than that on the highway but it rides like a palm sander at high speed.

 I dont doubt it Del, I had a 750 GPZ kawi with 4 carbs and 4 cylinders that was more of a sport bike that a touring machine like yours.  Also I`m not sure of your bikes age but it`s got to be 10 or 15 years newer and they even use FI on bikes these days!


   

 PS: ride safe,reconsider your helmet choice!

[CAP1]

Roy, forgive me I'm a canuk we call them stoves up here but your right he only uses the oven part!


   Semp, I checked out that site,   I'm not sure where they got their figures from but those are rather generous! I and my family owned or drove most those cars on the list and I cantell you from real world experience that there were few if any cars that got 40 mpg never mind 60mpg.

  Most those cars used a carb and only afew had any type of computer controlled ignition. Try any NA built car made in 74 and shut the engine down! See how long it runs on because of preignition!

   My wife had a 74 nova and you had to turn the key off and let the clutch out ingear to stop the engine from running on. they got better about 76 when they figured out how to stop this issue but it wasnt until the added fuel injection and comp. controlled ignition that the really fixed the problem.  They ran the cars too lean to pass emmisions,pump exhaust gases back through the system to reburn the mixture and this cause carbon buildup and thats what caused the run on issue.

       I'm sure the more technical guys can chime in and explain it better or even add their own real life experiences with 70's(mid to late} and 80's cars! 1974 was the year they stopped building anything with power,check the hp on even the vet that year!!!!

  Oh and find me a car from then that gets 50mpg and I'll pull a klinger and eat it!


   

c'mon dood.....you're a car guy. why didn't ya fix the idle stop solenoid?

[morfiend]

c'mon dood.....you're a car guy. why didn't ya fix the idle stop solenoid?

      Cap it wasnt an idle stop solenoid it was the 20 pounds of carbon on the valves,pistons and cyl.heads. Remember this was a carbed car and it ran on because the carbon was still hot enough to ignite the fuel left in the intake,she'd diesel on for a good 5 mins if you didnt stall it out!

 Point of it all is that a 60 mpg car from that time period just didnt exist,there's no conspiracy to make cars get worse gas milage,big oil doesnt care about that. Cars have gotten better in every way since then and will continue to get better as the years pass.

  Here's a question for the electric car doubters,what percentage of trucks on the road in 1910 were electric?   Look up the stats for NYC in that time period,you may be shocked!



   

[clerick]

      Cap it wasnt an idle stop solenoid it was the 20 pounds of carbon on the valves,pistons and cyl.heads. Remember this was a carbed car and it ran on because the carbon was still hot enough to ignite the fuel left in the intake,she'd diesel on for a good 5 mins if you didnt stall it out!

 Point of it all is that a 60 mpg car from that time period just didnt exist,there's no conspiracy to make cars get worse gas milage,big oil doesnt care about that. Cars have gotten better in every way since then and will continue to get better as the years pass.

  Here's a question for the electric car doubters,what percentage of trucks on the road in 1910 were electric?   Look up the stats for NYC in that time period,you may be shocked!



   

It's like the myth of the 100mpg carburetor. If Ford or GM had all these miracle devices they'd run them to market ASAP and clean house. It's like any other quantum leap, the first to market sets the price and people are willing to pay above retail for it. Look at the Iproducts as an example. It's not like Apple would sit on a quantum computing iPad just because they are in league with "Big Whatever."

[CAP1]

      Cap it wasnt an idle stop solenoid it was the 20 pounds of carbon on the valves,pistons and cyl.heads. Remember this was a carbed car and it ran on because the carbon was still hot enough to ignite the fuel left in the intake,she'd diesel on for a good 5 mins if you didnt stall it out!

 Point of it all is that a 60 mpg car from that time period just didnt exist,there's no conspiracy to make cars get worse gas milage,big oil doesnt care about that. Cars have gotten better in every way since then and will continue to get better as the years pass.

  Here's a question for the electric car doubters,what percentage of trucks on the road in 1910 were electric?   Look up the stats for NYC in that time period,you may be shocked!



   

 bolded....i see what you did there. 

 yea, i remember the way those old pos's used to get carboned up. i used to use water to clean them out. dribble it VEEERRRYYYYYY slowly down the carb, as you maintain the engine around 2k rpm. it tended to "cook" the carbon off of the valves, piston tops, and the combustion chambers.

 the idle stop solenoids would still stop the car though, if they were working properly....remember....they allowed the throttle blades to close all the way, cutting off the air. fuel, and ignition source still equals nothing, without the air.


 i do remember a lot of that crap though.

[morfiend]

 Ha ha,

  I didnt even realize the pun until you pointed it out!

   Yup steam cleaning the engine,been there done that,also tranny fluid,brake cleaner and some other things but those fixes only lasted for a few weeks and she was carboned up again. Short of a teardown and a real cleaning nothing would solve the issue.

  Come to think of it are you sure they even had a solenoid on the carb? I recall an electric choke but I didnt mess with carbs much. The EGR system caused most the problems and if you had any blowby it just got worse.

   I'm sure Roy could get into this in more detail,sry Cap I just dont think your quite old enough to have the experience with those old junkers!  I'm barely old enough,maybe Hajo or GE would have something to add.


    

[CAP1]

Ha ha,

  I didnt even realize the pun until you pointed it out!

   Yup steam cleaning the engine,been there done that,also tranny fluid,brake cleaner and some other things but those fixes only lasted for a few weeks and she was carboned up again. Short of a teardown and a real cleaning nothing would solve the issue.

  Come to think of it are you sure they even had a solenoid on the carb? I recall an electric choke but I didnt mess with carbs much. The EGR system caused most the problems and if you had any blowby it just got worse.

   I'm sure Roy could get into this in more detail,sry Cap I just dont think your quite old enough to have the experience with those old junkers!  I'm barely old enough,maybe Hajo or GE would have something to add.


    

 you're right. i'm only 50....and only been wrenching since about82 or 83. i came in as that crap was trailing off. i got to work on some of it, but not much. my very first engine rebuild was a 74 pinto-stang 2.3 liter with points. then several 60's 289/302's. did pretty much on mid 70's big block cadis.


 now that you mention it though, i think the idle solenoids didn't come into being till very late 70's into the 80's. those 80's carbs? friggin HATED them. ford managed to take a holley carb...just about the best carb for performance.....and totally screw it up. gm had those damed bogjets. chrysler had leanburn. they ALL sucked. well.......kinda. the leanburn didn't make much power, but it did seem to run the best of the three.
 and who remembers the variable venturi carbs that ford tried? GGAAHH!!!!!

 egr systems in their infancy truly did create more problems than they solved. i'm absolutely sure that in the perfect world in which engineers live that those early egr systems worked fine. then reality struck, and it was shown that in the reality of the average joe driving these cars, those systems didn't last long before lack of maintenance created havoc with them.

 it seemed as if we went from good(60's technology) to crap(70's technology) to almost kinda sorta good(80's technology) back to good(90's technology) to friggin fabulous(2000 to present technology).

[morfiend]

 Ya Cap I wasnt sure myself.

  I had a 79 LTD,year before they changed the name to crown vic,anyways it had a variable venturi carb. If you even saw 1 you'd know this was the worse thing ever place on a car!





   

[CAP1]

Ya Cap I wasnt sure myself.

  I had a 79 LTD,year before they changed the name to crown vic,anyways it had a variable venturi carb. If you even saw 1 you'd know this was the worse thing ever place on a car!





   

 i converted at least a dozen of those pos setups to holly carbs. there used to be a kit for it. i used to think very very mean and unfriendly thoughts towards the schmuck that put those dam things on those engines.

 remember the first throttlebody injected mustangs? the ones with the choke? on friggin FUEL INJECTION?

[curry1]

Payed $3.99 for Regular three days ago.

[4440]

Offroad diesel for my tractors, 300 gallons @ 3.83/gal  I burn 7.5 gallons/hour when things go into full swing in about a month.

87 octane, 4.11 gallon average

North of Bellingham Wa with 3 refineries with 15 miles. Not to mention one just half burned to the ground.

[rpm]

It's like the myth of the 100mpg carburetor. If Ford or GM had all these miracle devices they'd run them to market ASAP and clean house.

But if Exxon or BP owned those miracle devices they would bury them.