Re: Lusers, lusers, everywhere,
- From: mroberds@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 20 Sep 2005 08:43:04 GMT
Gene Cash <gcash@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>Pete Stephenson <pete+usenet@xxxxxxxxxxx> writes:
>> [1] Lots of stuff in the Mercedes is vacuum-driven [...]
>
>I remember the first time I encountered a vehicle with vacuum operated
>windshield wipers. It was a '42-something[4], [...]
Interesting. AIUI, there weren't that many 1942 cars built. The .us
manufacturers started on next year's models later in the year than they
do now, and by maybe February 1942, were all building other things
instead.
>However, based on my experience with vacuum tubing, I must ask how well
>does the MB stuff stand up to time? Does it last?
I don't know if you're talking about tubing in automobiles, but: most
American cars up to about 1985 that had lots of vacuum hoses tended to
have mostly soft rubber hoses with hard plastic (nylon?) connectors.
The main problems were that the hard plastic bits would crack, and the
rubber hose would take a set where it was pushed onto a device.
Replacement was about the only cure for a cracked hard plastic
connector. For a hose that took a set, you could fix it several times
by cutting off the last half-inch or so of hose and reconnecting it.
Eventually the hose got too short to get away with this and you had to
replace the whole length. When my dad's '79 Oldsmobile was maybe 8 years
old, we tried to tune it up. We did everything you could do to the
ignition and carburetion and it still wouldn't idle smoothly. Finally we
inspected the vacuum hoses and found several marginal connections; we
decided on a wholesale replacement. About 30 feet of hose later, the
idle was as smooth as when it was new.
Around 1985, molded vacuum tubing started to show up. The wall could be
much thinner than the soft rubber hose, so the tubing had a much smaller
overall diameter. The molded lines had soft rubber bits at the ends
where they connected to things. After two or three years, the molded
lines would break if you looked at them sideways. I had to pull the
intake manifold on an '89 Chevy to get at the other end of a broken
molded vacuum line so I could replace it. The lines seemed to get more
durable in later models, but I have noticed that many new cars have gone
back to the soft rubber tubing.
The rise and fall of vacuum hoses on car engines seems to be some kind
of commentary on design. When they first started adding hoses to run
the first pieces of smog equipment in the late 1960s, vacuum was a
reasonable way to power and control things. The hoses proliferated into
the late 1970s until it got kind of silly; I think the engineers wanted
to ditch them but the accountants made them buy hose instead of chips,
so they kept patching and extending the old designs. Finally when fuel
injection became common in the mid 1970s, the number of hoses went way
down again and engine compartments looked a lot less scary.
Matt Roberds
.
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- Re: Lusers, lusers, everywhere,
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