Re: Is Sirius available in Mr. Bean cars?


lab~rat >:-) <chase@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
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On Fri, 22 Jun 2007 14:09:52 GMT, "Bill Reid"
<hormelfree@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> puked:
lab~rat >:-) <chase@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
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On Wed, 20 Jun 2007 23:10:32 GMT, "Bill Reid"
<hormelfree@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> puked:
lab~rat >:-) <chase@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
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On Wed, 20 Jun 2007 13:53:50 GMT, "Bill Reid"
<hormelfree@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> puked:
lab~rat >:-) <chase@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
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Well, bottom line is, if they made a "pony car" that got 100mpg,
by whatever technology, you might CONSIDER buying it...

No, I'm there. It would be cool to be green and haul ass...

But they'd have to add a non-functional stick shift and clutch
for you to play with, and probably some sub-woofer sound effects
of V-8 burble and overrun popping...

Bottom line as I see it: if we truly are at "peak oil", then
you'd best start thinking about how to dramatically conserve
the stuff in order to have any chance of driving anything
automotive in 50 years, unless a technological miracle
occurs.

I have hope.

Well, so do I, but sometimes hoping for stuff just ain't enough...

Synthetic gas is my wet dream.

How about a car that runs on water, man? I heard this guy
invented a car that runs on water, but the oil companies killed
him, man...

It was the Military Industrial Complex. If we don't need oil, we
can't make money in wars...

I think it was Newton's ghost that offed him, trying to avoid
posthumous irrelevance...

Yeah, here's the deal: you gotta change sumpin', or everything is
gonna be the same. Simple enough logic, right?

Right. But in some instances your talking about something on the
scale of going from the horse and buggy to the automobile. The
economics to do something like that is staggering.

Yes, but if it is the next logical and NECESSARY step that's
what will happen...one thing about economics is that nobody who
is currently relatively fat and happy ever wants to change
anything, and they're the ones who always get blindsided when
the big changes come...

Did you ever think for a minute that there might be a hell of a lot
more oil out there than the folks that are selling it for a premium
let on?

Yes, that is possible. That's why I say "IF" the "peak oil" theory
is correct. We may not have an actual energy crisis now, or for the
next 100 years, or longer...

But as far as those "folks" who sell oil are concerned, they've
proven themselves in the past not to be smart enough to fool anybody.
I still remember all the OPEC quota "cheating" that collapsed the
price of oil down to $8/bbl. You honestly think retards like
Hugo Chavez are smart enough to create a "fake" energy crisis?

The Elky is in a class by itself. You can't compare it to any
car
made in the past 20 years since it's 40 years old. It has a 3
speed
that makes it terribly inefficient at cruising speed and low
gears
that make for a fast shift throw.

The car is all about the marvelous mid-60's and is a total gas
(pun
intended) to drive. Not to mention, it's my pickup. I use it
for
Home Depot runs and whatnot.

As a "pick-up", it's majorly weak...it's just one step above a
Subaru Brat...in the not so marvelous mid-00ies soccer moms
drive 1-ton payloaders to pick up their press-on nails...

I don't know, it serves my purpose, 35 bags of mulch or a couple
dozen
2x8s, chlorine for the water system, seats three across and some
kids
in the bed for a trip to the neighborhood park.

So you ARE a soccer mom!!!

With a '66 ChevELle Camino? Bullshit. Now my wife with tha mini van,
you may have a point...

Using modern pickup truck aesthetics, you should be wearing a dress...

You're yanking my chain, now. I have a prime time muscle car with a
big trunk. Like I said, I won't be hauling masonry, but it does what
it does and that's what I need.

OK, man, don't get your panties in a bunch...must be "that time of
the month"...

I like American cars, even though most of them should be called NORTH
American cars...

I hate American cars, resolved decades ago never to buy one of those
pieces of crap ever again...but not necessarily cars made by hard-working
honest Americans, as one of my "foreign" cars was manufactured in
friggin' Indiana, and is the most mechanically-reliable and long-lived
car I ever owned...it's American car company management I hate...

We can easily turn this conversation into a Union discussion.

Oh, let's not, and not just because it would be boring, but
just another topic that depends mostly on incorrect pre-conceived
prejudices and emotional rather than rational thinking...let's keep
that to one at a time...

I like American cars. Even though the line is pretty blurry when it
comes to defining them.

Let's put it this way, I like every car that has not one metric
fastener on it...

You know, in many ways, you and I are very different...

Horsepower and Torque. Not to mention the drop top is pretty high up
there. We've had a convertible in our family for around 15 years and
that isn't stopping any time soon.

I'm satisfied with just a decent-sized sunroof myself...I appreciate
the roof as a load-bearing structure adding rigidity for a more stable
overall platform...

The Camaro has factory subframe connectors. I had a Cutlass that had
what appeared to be a roll bar across the top that stiffened the
chassis.

This stuff adds weight, so reduces performance, and still doesn't
fully replace the rigidity of what's missing...

The truth is that cars are now and have always been
very intensely personal revelations of psychology for
EVERYBODY...there's a psychologist that has been advising
the Detroit companies for years on vehicle design based
purely on marketing to psychological traits, and they
pay this guy like $50million a year because they consider
his advice INVALUABLE...

I said it before and I'll say it again, people that don't think that
cars define them don't realize that they do...

Yeah, but there actually is a large (and perhaps growing)
market just for plain old "transportation" out there, just
getting from "point A" to "point B" without all the BS...

I know if someone in a Prius said anything about my cars, I'd just
thank them for conserving more gas for me to use. And the less the
demand, well, you know...

Well, there you go. Look, I realized years ago that driving
a "performance car" in the daily commute was an exercise in futility.
So I have an "all-around" non-performance car for that stuff, and
the sports cars for nice weather backroad weekend fun.

I'm considering a Prius or some future even-better hybrid or
high-mileage car for my daily driving under the theory that the
gas I save during the week will be gas I can use on the weekend
for fun. Make sense?

Of course it does, I have my 345 hp Camaro for the daily drives and my
relic for the evenings and weekends. Same thing, right?

Well, around here, the only way to beat "rush-hour" traffic is
to get out and walk, so sitting there at 0 mph in a "performance
car" actually makes me nutz ("road rage"?)...but you've still got
that stick shift to fondle when not moving...

No, I'm not telling you that, and there is a trade-off between the
two just like for internal combustion engines. However, there is a
general difference for torque/power curves, and EFFICIENCY at any
and all RPM ranges, between electric motors and internal combustion
engines. How many internal combustion engines generate their
MAXIMUM torque at 0 rpm, also at virtually 100% "thermal efficiency"
(they convert 100% of the potential power of the electricity to
usable torque)? NONE OF THEM, but that is true of MOST electric motors.
(A typical 4-stroke gasoline engine might need to be revved to
1500rpm at least to generate maximum torque, at about 28% efficiency.)

When an electric car breaks the 5 second quarter mile mark...

You just keep raising the bar because you hate the planet!

So sure, you could put a transmission in an electric car; Tesla
uses a two-speed transmission, and the Toyota is insanely proud
of their complex computer-controlled continuously variable
transmission in the Prius that "integrates" and "allocates"
the power in the system between the gas engine, two generators,
electric motor, and drive shaft...but you don't absolutely
NEED a transmission in an electric car, because of their
SUPERIOR torque characteristics, and eliminating one increases
"gas" mileage by up to 25% alone...

Well my electric car doesn't have a transmission and I wish it did...

Time to add that phony stick shift to satisfy your "manual" desires...

I don't know a lot about the Prius, but it seems that they use the ICE
off the line and the electric for cruising speed.

You're right...you don't know a lot about the Prius. It's exactly
the OPPOSITE; they use the electric motor to start the car and power
it up to about 40mph, then the internal combustion engine kicks
in, largely just as a fully-loaded generator to replace the
electricity in the batteries consumed by the low-speed acceleration.
But the faster the car goes, the more the power from the internal
combustion engine is used in combination with the electric motor to
actually propel the car at the higher rates of speed.

You're making the classic mistake in thinking that somehow,
internal combustion engines have more "power", when in fact,
just the opposite is truer. Internal combustion engines are
very weak and incredibly inefficient compared to electric
motors.

I wasn't aware of that. Jeez, those things must have small gas
engines ;)

What, you call 1500cc and 76 whopping horsepower SMALL?!??!!
Anything over 30 bhp is PLANET RAPE!!!

Look, you have to get familiar with a little concept called
"power density", the amount of power you can get out of an engine
or motor of a certain size. The electric motor in the Toyota
Prius is about the size of a coffee can, weighs about 60 pounds,
and generates almost 300 lb-ft of torque. How big of a 4-stroke
gasoline internal combustion engine would it take to produce
the same output?

The problem, where this misconception comes from, is that
there are actually TWO "power densities" involved: one for the
power plant, the other for the fuel source. There is more
potential power in 15 pounds of gasoline than there is in
1000 pounds of the most advanced batteries known to man.
Hell, even accounting for the inefficiency of the gasoline
engine, there is more producible power in 60 pounds of gasoline
than in 1000 pounds of batteries...

So over the years, they've used a lot of little wimpy-ass
electric motors in light-duty applications, to try to conserve
as much battery weight as possible, and to avoid those LONG
re-charges...

The next car I have WILL have a standard transmission. It's doubtful
that there will be any electric/hybrids in the running.

OK, you have a need to grab a gnarly stick, gotcha...actually, the
kind of cars I've usually driven over the years were famous for not
even offering an automatic transmission as an option, but now have
moved to those "paddle shifters", which is kind of like the same thing
if you think about it, but as I've said, people like to kid themselves
about this stuff...

I've never driven a paddle-shifted car. They seem so, I don't know,
Indy eurotrash. LOL

They actually make sense at Indy, but are mostly just boy-racer
foolishness on a street car...Porsche actually kind of pioneered
the concept with their "Trip-Tronic" transmissions decades ago...

Of course, even if the motors ARE direct drive, you'll be relying on
electronic speed controls and a computer management system. It's been
my experience to trust mechanical parts more than electronic parts.
Usually a mechanical failure comes on slowly and isn't a complete
shutdown of an entire system, such as a single brake going.

Well, yeah, OK...

Speed controls are touchy and expensive by nature, and relying on four
of them to work in concert is every bit as questionable as their
mechanical counterparts.

Maybe...

In addition, you can lock up the car on wet pavement and it would
continue in a straight line. I imagine that more expensive luxury
vehicles could do more.

They can do some impressive stuff, but the point is, you could
have even better control in much cheaper cars, because you eliminate
lots of potentially unreliable and COSTLY mechanics...

Motors and speed controls aren't inexpensive. And let me say that
I've replaced starters and alternators more often than I've had to
repair my traction control system.

Mmmm...I'm going to use my powers of ESP and predict that you've
never replaced ANY starters or alternators on a car with a traction
control system...but I know what you're saying...

I replaced both on my Camaro.

AND PEOPLE WONDER WHY I SAY I WILL NEVER BUY AN AMERICAN CAR!!!

Sheesh, how many miles you got on that Camaro...10, 15K? Surprised
you haven't had to re-build the top-end yet...

You understand there are people tooling around in Japanese cars
they bought DECADES ago with like 200,000 miles on them, and they
have yet to replace ANY automotive-required mechanical or electrical
component? But Detroit is still playing the planned obselesence,
scrap-it-at-50K-because-it-ain't-worth-fixing-it game, and they
can't figure out why they're getting their brains beat out in
the marketplace...

The companies that make those cars are very sick and losing ground
constantly to the Japanese. The "success" of these retro cars is the
purest insanity, because Detroit's own business model is to change
the styling every three years to "maintain" sales (they actually go
down anyway, but that's the theory), and so they have effectively
sowed the seeds of their own destruction...for the umpteenth time.
They're idiots.

Well the business model for Ford has been to create umpteen billion
rare specialty Mustangs that people pay a premium plus dealer markups
in hope they'll be worth '68 Shelby Cobra money in a few years.

Oh yeah, Ford is doing GREAT with their "business model"...idiots...

As far as power and efficiency going up, you can basically thank
the federal government's emissions regulations for that. After several
years of messing around with different unreliable technologies, the
entire industry settled on "three-way" catalytic converters requiring
precise engine management fuel injection/ignition systems with
knock and O2 sensor feedback. Over the years, the engineers realized
they could now safely raise compression ratios and use more aggressive
(but flexible) ignition curves with these precise fuel/ignition
systems, allowing an overall increase in both power AND fuel
efficiency.

And timing curves, which blows my mind.

Guess what, they won't be able to continue to raise fuel
efficiency and power much from here without some new REVOLUTIONARY
type of technology, because they've pretty much maxed out what
they could get already.

I remember an episode of the Flintstones when Fred said that
everything was already invented...

I think that was Tom Watson Sr. of IBM...or Bill Gates...

For the internal combustion engine, "revolutionary" might mean
something very old, actually patented about 130 years ago, some
form of true "Atkinson cycle" engine (not the "Miller cycle"
engine in the Prius, which they falsely call "Atkinson"),
with about a 17:1 power stroke but only a 9:1 or so compression
stroke. This should about at least double (or more) the fuel
efficiency of the engine, meaning that your "pony car" would now
get up to 60+mpg with little other discernable difference.

The problem with the "Atkinson cycle" engine as actually
patented by Atkinson, is that it uses a very complex system
of idler cranks and connecting rods that would make the
bottom end of the engine at least three times as expensive
to manufacture, and make it at least three times less reliable
and prone to wear and failure, which is why nobody has even
tried to manufacture it...

And there's the Rotary engine that has unlimited rpms on paper. I
don't think that engines are going to stop running on explosions
anytime soon...

No, but the rotary is a good example of an engine design that
couldn't be improved upon, in the worst sense of the phrase. This
is true to some extent for all basic engine designs, you've got
kind of a known upper limit as to what they can accomplish...

It's not like they don't know how to make MUCH more fuel-efficient
internal combustion engines. A two-stroke diesel will get more than
twice (more like three times) the fuel mileage of a 4-stroke gasoline
engine, they've known that for 130+ years. Problem is, it's a gross
unfixable (well, never say never, but...) polluter that spews all
kinds of unburned fuel and oil right out the tail pipe.

The difference between the two engines isn't a matter of little
details, but big differences in their fundamental operation. Likewise,
you ain't gonna all of sudden get three times the fuel mileage
out of 4-stroke gasoline engine by installing a special carbuerator,
no matter what the ads say in the back of the gear-head mags...physics
is a bitch, man...

There are still a lot of people doing head and cam swaps, headers,
fresh air intakes and suspension upgrades. The age of electronics in
cars are now entering the collectable car era. There's a LOT of
tinkering going on out there. In fact, down the street from me is a
house where about 8 college age kids get together several times a week
and do serious numbers on their rice cars. Not just neon and race
seats, there's and engine puller in the garage. That does my heart
good.

And best of all, it's all illegal! (except for the suspension stuff...)

Why would it be illegal? Unless you're talking about emissions, and
Florida has no emission testing. Still there are a lot of
manufacturers of aftermarket parts that are emissions ok...

I believe some of that stuff is under federal law too, but
whatever...you'd be in San Quentin for the rest of your life
if you pulled that stuff in California, maybe get the death
penalty...

And where are the nuclear cars? Now that would be cool...

Just remember, "Homer Simpson" would be the guy at
the garage servicing your nuk-cler power plank thingie...

Bah, never. The Haynes manual would just get a little more
complicated...

"Every manual written by performing a total melt-down."

I'm leaving this joke here until somebody laughs at it...

LOL, ok?

FINALLY!!! The joke was even funnier than the suggestion
that terrorists could buy a nuclear-powered cars and drive
them for a million miles in a circle to enrich enough uranium
for a "dirty bomb"...

---
William Ernest Reid



.

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