Hmmm indeed. Pure electrics require infrastructure, repair shops (I’m no mechanic but I’m sure a 100% electric car is different mechanically than an internal combustion engine) and battery technology that doesn’t exist right now. Plug in hybrids can and will be a segway to 100% electric cars someday. Perhaps in 30 years when nanotechnology can create batteries with 10-20x more energy density than current batteries a 100% electric car will be a good idea. Right now you need too much room for the batteries for it to work. Even groups like calcars have to fill the trunk with batteries to go 20-40 miles on their plug in hybrids.
Heh. Even though I’m a chemist I have no idea how carbon fiber is made.
http://www.ornl.gov/info/press_releases/get_press_release.cfm?ReleaseNumber=mr20060306-00
“Whereas today the cost to purchase commercial-grade carbon fiber is between $8 and $10 per pound, the goal is to reduce that figure to between $3 and $5 per pound,” said Norris, leader of ORNL’s Polymer Matrix Composites Group. At that price, it would become feasible for automakers to use more than a million tons of composites - approximately 300 pounds of composites per vehicle - annually in the manufacturing of cars.
I think steel is about $0.80/lb or so.
I’m still not sure what is terrible about 300 pounds of carbon fiber. That is the equivalent of 1500 pounds of steel. So you save about $1200 in steel and spend about $3000 in carbon fiber with $10/pound prices to replace the steel with carbon fiber. But you increase fuel efficiency dramatically, by 30% or more. That is about what a hybrid does. Hybrids can cost 3-10k more per car than non hybrids for some models. A carbon fiber car would only cost 2k more per car and give the same gas mileage benefits of a hybrid w/o all the added technology that could go wrong.
As it stands in 2006 it seems to me that carbon fiber is a better way to increase fuel economy over hybrid technology.
So what’s Volvo’s reasoning for mounting the starters in different locations? If it’s because the engines are different sizes and the V8 engine is so big that it blocks the location for the V5 starter, I have to ask what it is about the V5 engine that bloks the location for the V8 starter. After all, there must be one, otherwise, they’d simply mount the V5 starter in the same location on the tranny bellhousing as they would on the V8, right? (Of course, that might necessitate the use of an extra bracket, but heck, let’s say the engineers at Volvo decide that from now on regardless of what size engine or tranny used, all trannys are going to have a starter mounted at the same point. That would be possible, wouldn’t it? Admittedly, Volvo [nor any other car company] could make the switch overnight, but they could do it.), but they could phase it in as they redesigned each model, couldn’t they? (GM has it’s models on about a five year cycle, meaning that there’s relatively minor changes from year to year [assuming that GM doesn’t cosmically fuck things up and have to change it all {as they often do}], between major redesigns, and IIRC, the rest of the industry is pretty much on the same schedule.)
That’s assuming, of course, the various designs exist in a vacuum, which, unless I’m wrong, doesn’t happen. I mean, I know that GM is a total clusterfuck as far as companies go [and I highly recommend that everyone reads All Corvettes are Red for the inside story at just how bad things are inside GM. Ross Perot, as nutty as he is, knew that GM was full of dumbasses.), but even there, it’s possible for the engineers to talk to one another. I would assume that the engineers at Volvo can do the same thing. I’d certainly hope so, since they’re Swedes, and as a whole, Swedes tend to be damned smart (even if Saab did put the radiator on the firewall on their first models)
Allow me to hijack this hiack for a few minutes. I once asked this in GQ and never got an answer to the question, and since you’re more than intimately familiar with the inner workings of a major automaker, you can answer this. I don’t understand why the brakes on a V8 car are different than those on a car with a smaller engine. Now, obviously, you wouldn’t want to put the brakes for a car with a 4 banger on a car with a V8, but let’s take a car like a 1965 Ford Ranchero (I used to own one, so I’m somewhat familiar with car), there were something like 4 different engines available with car when it was built, and each one of these engines had it’s own brake size. IIRC, you could get the engine with 3 different sizes of 6 cylinder engines and 1 size V8. Where’s the harm in using the brakes for the V8 engine size on the 6 cylinder engine models? I realize that back when you were lucky to get 60 HP out of a V8, that slapping the brakes for a V8 car on a 6 cylinder car would cause all kinds of problems, but given that 4 bangers have had more HP than that for quite some time now, I don’t see why the difference. In all seriousness now, I’m sure that you can offer a reason that makes sense. I realize that it would mean different stopping differences between a car with a 6 cyl. and a car with an 8, but that generally exists anyway, IIRC.
I hope you don’t mind me asking some detailed questions here, but I want to make sure that you and I are on the same page. The Pinto came with a couple of different engine and transmission combinations. AFAIK, it never came with the 429 engine. Nor can I see the point of having a Mustang with a 429 engine and an auto tranny. Granted, it’s entirely possible that someone ordered one that way, but that’s the subject for another thread (BTW, my dad traded a '68 Mustang 'vert, with a 302 in on a '72 Pinto wagon, I defy you to top that as far as automotive stupidity goes.). So, if you could, would you mind listing the engine and tranny combinations that the Pinto came with and the vehicles and trannys that the 429 came with. I’m not at all familiar with the specifics of Fords (Hey, I’m an AMC, Packard, Tucker, Studebaker, Nash, Hudson, and Mopar kind of guy. I certainly don’t expect you to know as much about Tuckers as I do, and I don’t think less of you for it. Everybody’s got their favorites and the world would be dull as shit if we all liked the same things.), so even though I know that one of Ford’s trannys was called a C4, I don’t know that much about them, or how they differ from other Ford automatic trannys and would appreciate your enlightening me on the subject so that we can have an intelligent discussion on the subject.
Again, allow me to hijack things here for a moment, another question I’ve never had a satisfactory answer to is exactly what seperates the slant 6 from other engines that Chrysler built. Yeah, it’s bulletproof (and so is their 383), but what is it about that engine that makes it so? And nearly every (save those in the Eastern Bloc) car company out there has one that sets the gold standard for quality and reliability (which for reasons known only to them, they discontinue, rather than tweaking so that they meet ever more stringent emission standards or copying whatever it is that makes them so bulletproof on their other engines). I honestly don’t get it. I mean, if I were the head of a car company, and we had one engine that couldn’t be killed (A buddy of mine, who lives in Sweden FTR and knows shitloads about cars, decided that since someone gave him a Mopar V8 he’d kill the slant six in his Mopar. To do this, he drained the oil out of the engine, then started it. After a while, he got tired of sitting there, holding the gas pedal to the floor, so he threw a brick on it and went inside to make some coffee. About an hour or two later, he heard the engine die. “Aha!” he thought. “I’ve killed it!” Nope. It was out of gas. He refilled the fuel tank and it started right up, purring like a kittten. He said “Fuck it!” shut the engine off and yanked it out of the car. No idea what happened to it.), I’d be flogging my engineers to find out exactly why that is, and incorporate it into every other engine we made. Totally corner the market that way. Even if people didn’t like the way our cars looked, they’d plunk down money for the engines so that they could put them in their cars.
Okay, I want to be clear here, just so that we’re not confused on things. I wasn’t talking about being able to drop a 6 liter Ford diesel engine into a Model T. Absolutely no way the guys in the 1920s (or thereabouts) could have predicted what technology would have been like almost 100 years later. However, given that car companies work with a 5 year lead time (or longer), and have ~5 year warranties (I know that it varies from car maker to car maker, but it’s been a long time, AFAIK that car makers have drastically changed their warranty period.) and that most people don’t continue to take their cars to the dealership after the warranty period expires (there are, of course, exceptions to this, and it’s a sign of how good a dealership treats it’s customers, if they have a lot of customers continuing to take their cars there after the warranty expires), and they know huge amounts of info about their engines, it seems to me that they could select one engine which would fit in all their cars. I know, I know, it’s a little crazy, but hear me out. When Ford did a redesign on their Mustang a few years ago, the head of the project presented the engineering team with a box (the exact dimensions aren’t important, as I’m sure you’ll agree), telling them that whatever rear end the Mustang used, it had to fit into that box. The reason being, that the box fillled the space which would be available for the rear end. Naturally, the engineers managed to pull it off. Why couldn’t they do the same with the engine compartment and all their various models? I really hate the way new car makers shoe horn an engine into a car these days. I can practically curl up in the engine compartment of my 1969 Newport, there’s so much room in it. Of course, it doesn’t have near the sophisticated components that a new car has, but damn, if they could just make new cars have half the space available in the engine compartment, I know of a lot of professional mechanics who’d be creaming their jeans. Sure, I’d be willing to let a car company have one car that broke the rule (after all, the Viper does serve as a bit of a test bed for new technology that DC develops), but for the rest of them, make 'em all work around the same engine compartment.
nary a clue, but if you’ll allow me to go back to my 1965 Ranchero for a moment, I might have an answer for you. You see, when the car was built (the one that I owned, anyways) it originally came with a 6 cylinder and a 3 on the tree transmission. At some point, someone yanked the engine and tranny out of it, replacing it with a 302 (which, as you well know, wasn’t made in 1965) and a C4r (I think that was it, anyway, it was a Ford auto tranny), but they left the original 6 cylinder rear end in the car. If I even put the gas pedal halfway to the floor, the car would smack my head against the rear window (and as much as I dislike Fords, I really regret getting rid of that car). I drove that thing for 2+ years and put close to 100K on it and the rear end handled everything fine. If a 40 year old rear end can handle an engine which wasn’t even thought of when the rear end was designed, I’d think that a tranny, while more complex, should be able to handle a much more powerful engine for a few days. I may be wrong, you tell me. (Oh yeah, I dogged the shit out of that Ranchero. I’m a firm believer than no foreign built car can beat an American car built before the introduction of the catalytic convertor, and I used to dust ricers at traffic lights all the time in that thing. :D)
Okay, I have to ask why here. No, seriously, I mean, I can understand the need for a beefier transmission in a V8 than a V5, but I don’t know exactly what the differences between the two are. I can WAG that the various components will be larger and/or made out of more durable materials, but I don’t know the exact difference and would like you to elaborate (of course, you don’t have to go into every gear, nut, ballbearing, etc. to satisfy me).
Heck no, I’m not going to say that at all, given that it’s entirely possible for the engine computer to recognize what kind of tranny’s installed in the car (since it strikes me as being technologically possible for the two of them to communicate with one another) and limit the engine’s performance based on the kind of tranny it’s connected to. (BTW, has Chrysler ever gotten their tranny computers to work glitch free? I know that for years the most common recommendation for Mopar owners was to yank the tranny computer that came with the car and replace it with an aftermarket model, since the aftermarket ones were vastly superior.) Admittedly, you’ve been talking about pre-computerized engines, but in the post that inspired your response I mentioned post-2007 models, and since it’s impossible for a carbed engine to meet current emission standards, I’d prefer if we’d leave them out of this where ever possible, unless, of course, you know the engineering details of a carb that could meet current emission standards. In which case, I’d ask you to share them.
Don’t do that, you’ll hurt yourself.
Interesting set up. I’ve never seen anything like that. On all the V engines I’ve dealt with, there’s been exhaust manifolds on bothe sides of the engines. I’d like to see pics of the V5 if you can provide them. I’m curious as to how they do that.
Again, on alll the V engines I’m familiar with, unless they have dual exhausts, they have a ‘Y’ pipe connected between the exhaust manifolds and the catalytic convertor, so I’m curious as to how Volvo builds a V engine with only one exhaust manifold.
Yeah, I thought of it, but I also thought of the shop I took my car to when I needed the exhaust system replaced a few years ago. This was the 1984 Honda Accord that I owned, and not the 1981 Honda Prelude that I currently own, BTW. They had to replace the entire exhaust from the manifold back. They slapped on a universal catalytic convertor on the car. I asked the guys at the place why they used that, and they said that it was so that they didn’t have to stock convertors for every car made since converters were required (which was about the mid-1970s, IIRC). Didn’t notice any loss of performance, and when I ran the car through emissions testing, it passed with flying colors. I can only assume that the cars with V8s also passed with those catalytic converters, since that was 5 years ago and the place was still in business.
Why? Seems to me that if you have the same subframe on all models, you get oodles of cost savings. Heck, if you’re really worried about weight, you can use titanium to build the subframes. I know that 'Vettes use a lot of titantium in them (springs and exhaust are what springs to mind). Sure, it’s more expensive, but you make up for that in a number of ways. For one thing, you’ve only got one subframe to design and inventory, for another thing, it shaves a shitload of weight off the car, which means better fuel economy. I’m at the limit again, so there’s more to come.
You’ve lost me here. You’re telling me that if I designed a car where the engine could recognize what kind of transmission it’s hooked up to (because it talks to the computer hooked up to the tranny) and adjust it’s performance based on that, it’d still be impossible to do this? I realize that no one does this now, but I’m assuming that’s because they follow the same rules that 99% of all businesses follow, namely: We do it this way because we’ve always done it this way.
Of course, a lot, though not all, of the crash testing car makers do these days is done simply to meet Federal regulations, computers having become powerful enough that they can simulate crashes in such a way as to yield boatloads more data than slamming an actual car into a wall or whatever. Yeah, you’ll have to smack a couple of extra cars into a wall as the law currently stands, but, of course, car companies have been known to lobby to get laws changed. I don’t see why they couldn’t get the Feds to accept more data from computer simulations and not require that each and every iteration of a particular vehicle be smacked into the wall. As for the emissions, well, now, if you’re having the engine computer modify it’s performance to match the vehicle it’s installed in, that would be an easy matter to solve, I’d think. After all, the various sensors on the car let the computer know what kind of pollution it’s putting out. Of course, another solution to the problem would be for a car company to say, “Okay, it’s 2006 and we’re designing the 2011 models right now, which have these kinds of emissions requirements, let’s beat the most restrictive them by at least 20%, so that if the law changes between now and then, which it may very well do, we’ve still got a cushion to work with.” Admittedly, this would require a change in the thought processes of some of the car makers to embracing emission changes, rather than fighting them.
See my above posts.
Hmm, it seems to me that waaay back in the 1950s one could get a car with what was called a “load leveller suspension” and that the 1988 Lincoln Continental (POS extraodinaire, BTW) had an active suspension. I also seem to recall that the last year Lincoln marketed the Mark VII (or whatever the hell number it was) that one of the selling points was that the car would lower itself based on the speed, since a lower car got better mileage and could go faster. I can’t directly link to it, but on the “Build Your Own Volvo” section of Volvo USA’s website I couldn’t help but notice that the S40 model (which certainly isn’t the most expensive Volvo) has the following options:
(emphasis mine)
Now, I’m not going to poke around Volvo’s site to find the details on that Dynamic Sport Suspension, but judging by the name, it sounds to me like that just might be a suspension system that monitors what kind of load that the car’s carrying and how the car’s being driven and adapts itself to those things. Am I right? Or is that simply marketing BS on Volvo’s part? Interestingly enough, the cost of that DSS, along with custom rims, aluminum inlays, fog lights and a leather gearshift knob is a mere $875. That’s quite the bargain. A buddy of mine scuffed the rims on his VW (mind you, he had the base rims, and not the fancy upmarket package rims) and looked at the cost to replace them. The rims alone were $1,200. Here, you’re not only getting fancier rims, but you’re also getting a better suspension, fog lights, aluminium inlays, and a leather gearshift knob for less than what VW charges for rims! That’s quite the bargain! What’s Volvo know that VW doesn’t? And given those kind of prices, can you tell me how it’d be insanely more expensive to add a few lines of code and beefier air ride suspension (assuming that’s what Volvo uses and not hydraulics) so that it’d be able to handle having a different engine dumped in it? Assuming, of course, the car isn’t capable of compensating for such a weight difference with existing equipment.
I’d have to stuff it in there first.
You got me, I’ve not worked on anything newer than 1990. I do, however, read some of the industry mags and haven’t seen anything mentioned about quick connect fuel lines.
My 1990 Pontiac Grand Am didn’t have 'em.
Probably, but I’ve never looked under the hood of one. Volvos ain’t my bag.
In looking at the current S40 on the volvo site I linked to above, it doesn’t look to be all that small of a car. And it seems to me that if the car was modified (like say when they were going to redo the platform, which, if Volvo’s like GM they do every five years) they could make it so that a V8 could fit in there. Yeah, I know, that means when a 4 banger was in there, you’d just have all this empty space, and we all know that empty space is insanely heavy, and that mechanics like it when they have to pull the engine to change the spark plugs because there’s not enough room to swing a wrench in the engine compartment.
Bet that’s an absolute joy to work on, isn’t it?
No, you can’t, but I’d bet you dollars to donuts that there’s Toyotas and Lexuses that share the engines used in the Supra and the Yaris.
You ever change the alternator on a 1984 Honda Accord? Do you know what you have to do to be able to do that? You’ve got to remove the CV joints on one side so that you can get to the alternator. No shit. Interestingly enough, my 1981 Prelude has the same engine and options as my 1984 Accord, even has a smaller engine compartment, but swap to out alternators, one doesn’t have to yank the CV joints. Admittedly, none of this matters when the car’s on the assembly line, but it sure as shit matters when you’re trying to swap alternators in the rain in freakin’ December. Then there’s the oil pump on a 1980 Jeep Cherokee with an AMC 360 engine in it. Move it just a hair to one side, and your wrench never hits the frame, while you’re pulling the bolts to put a new seal on it. Of course, that’s not where AMC put it. They butted it right up against the frame and other lines, so that no matter what tools you use, you’ve got to be a contortionist to get the damn things loose, and if you didn’t have carpal tunnel before you started working on it, then you’ll certainly have it when you’re done. I’ve never found anything that couldn’t be improved on (not that I’ve always been able to figure out the improvements, but even Pete Puma came up with a few good ideas once in a blue moon). Let me give you a non-automotive example. Right now, I’m a screw machine operator, which, for those of you who don’t know what that is, means that I run machines which make nuts and bolts. The machines I run on an almost daily basis range in age from 1927 to 1975, and haven’t been refurbished since the 1980s. Not a one of them has a servo motor on 'em or a computer (they’re also pretty worn out by now). The variation in design during those 50 years is practically nil. Which makes a lot of sense for most of the compnents of the machines, since the design does exactly what it needs to do. Yeah, some of the newer ones have some safety interlocks that the older ones don’t have, but that’s to be expected. Now, I can’t find a decent photo of the tooling compartment on the machines, so you’ll just have to take my word for this until I go back to work on the 5th and can take some photos (assuming you’re not willing to take my word on the matter), but in the tooling compartment, the tooling is all mounted on the left side of the machine, the spindles, where the stock is fed in, is on the right side of the compartment. The coolant lines (which spray cutting oil on the tooling to cool the cutters, lubricate them, and flush the chips out of the machine) all run from left to right inside the machine. They pass directly in front of the tooling in order to do this. This means that if you need to adjust the tooling (or replace it) you have to first remove the coolant lines, then once you’ve taken care of the tooling, you have to put the coolant lines back in and make sure that they’re hitting the parts correctly. This takes a lot of time, and one night after having to dick around with the shit about every 15 minutes (cause, you know, the machine’s not been serviced since 1942, and I’m running some high dollar parts that if they’re a smidgeon out of spec, it’s my ass, so I have to stand by it all night long and check every fucking part that comes off it) I said, “Why the fuck did they put those lines on the left side of the machine? If they were on the right side, I could adjust the tooling all I wanted without ever having to fuck with these stupid cooling lines!” At that point I did a :smack: and took a look at the right side of the machine. Tons of empty space. Tons of it. Yeah, there’s some rotating parts, but still ample room to run the lines without hitting anything. So, I thought, “There must be some reason why they did this, let’s look at the left side of the machine.” Nothing special about it, really, and as a matter of fact, depending upon what tooling you’ve got installed in the machine, there can be less on that side than there is on the right. So, I said, “Hmm. I wonder if all the machines are like that?” I went and took a look at every machine, from the one that was built in 1927, to the 1975 model and they were all laid out the same, no matter what size the machine was. Now, as I’m sure you’ll be more than willing to admit, I’m no genius, so why is it that I was able to notice something that the engineers who designed those machines (and mind you, I could not design a screw machine, I haven’t fiddled with the innards of them enough to be able to that yet) didn’t notice? Maybe it’s because I’m willing to actually look at things, and I don’t like “It’s the way we’ve always done it.” for answer. That’s just one of the things that I’ve figured out is bassakwards in that place. IMHO, if anyone finds only 5% of things that could be improved on (be they equipment design or methodology) of anything, they’re not looking. If you’d like, I can send you a copy of the ~50 page report I gave to the owner of the foundry that I worked at on suggestions of things that they could do to speed things up. Not one thing in there involves the use of cutting edge technology, and little, if any of it deviates from what most people would think would be obvious, but those guys had been doing shit the same way for 30 years! And it’s the same with every other company I’ve ever worked at, there’s all kinds of simple things that they could do to speed things up and cut their costs, but because no one’s willing to really look at what it is they’re doing, they keep doing it the same way.
So explain to me again, why it is that Volvo finds it to be cost effective to drill holes in certain blocks? After all, you’re the one who brought it up.
Assuming you’ve got the parts.
Again, assuming that you’ve got the parts and don’t have to do a whole lot of machining to the block. I don’t know about Volvo, but Ford’s really bad about this (one reason why I dislike them) you can have identical engines, but some of the components will be different, and the only way you can tell for certain which component is on the engine is to tear it apart. I’ve heard Ford mechanics scream bloody murder about this (especially when they discover that the car they’ve just spent the past couple of hours working on is the odd variant one and the replacement parts are going to have to be shipped to the States from Brazil), and I had one mechanic with literally 50 years experience tell me that if I ever brought my Lincoln back to him for service, he’d shoot me because everything on the car was that way.
And how long does it take for the parts to get there?
Cite? Exactly where did I say, “If they come in with bad brakes, offer 'em a rental engine!”?
Again, quote where I said anything about offering a loaner engine when the problem was not engine related.
You really need thicker skin, IMHO.
So could I, but now that you’ve told me that simply implying that you’re not telling the whole truth with your answer is enough to piss you off to the point where you’re spitting mad, I don’t really have to be all that creative if I decide to hurl insults. I just say, “You’re a liar.” and I know I’ve gotten your goat.
Did I say “liar?” No, I pointed out that we only have your word on the matter as to who the person was, what they’re qualifications are, and what they said. That is a fact. They didn’t post their resume here, along with the comment that I’m a dope, you told us everything about them and what they said. If you’re telling the truth, then my pointing out that we only have your word on this, shouldn’t bother you in the least. After all, if you don’t have a guilty consence, there’s nothing to be upset about, is there? I’m just some random asshole posting comments in a medium which was designed so that people could exchange porn and slander one another anonymously.
Yeah, I know, it was a concern for the Tucker Corporation, and they knew that they would going to have to lobby each state where it was illegal (it wasn’t illlegal in all states, just a portion of them) to get the law changed. In the meantime, they were planning on equipping the cars with a decorative cover on the cyclops eye for sale in states where it was illegal to have moving headlights. BTW, Tucker didn’t originate the idea of the moving headlight. I know that it was an aftermarket option for Packards back in the late 1920s/early 1930s, which just happens to be the same time as when Tucker worked for Packard. In the mid-60s, shortly before they closed down automotive production, Studebaker discovered that using a single light bar across the front end was much more effective than headlights, and it wasn’t blinding for the oncoming cars. It was (and probably still is) illegal for such a set up, even though it could save a number of lives every year if car makers will allowed to be able to do this.
How much did the 63 weigh? My Newport tips the scales at 4200lbs. Oh, and I forgot to mention that the 71 I owned had a catalytic converter installed on it. Yeah, I know, the car makers weren’t required to put them on until the mid-70s, but I’m guessing someone at the Chrysler dealership must have suckered my grandfather into getting one installed, as it had one, and even had a sticker in the engine compartment saying as much. The cool thing about the car was with the converter installed, you couldn’t hear the engine running. It was the ultimate sleeper, in that respect. Once I get my Chrysler up and running again (damn tranny went south on me) one of the first things I’m going to do is take it to a shop and have 'em put the quietest exhaust on the thing possible.
Ah, you’re right. That’s what I get for posting in a hurry. I withdraw the comment.
Actually, you attacked more than that and contradicted yourself. Allow me to elaborate. In post #28 you said
Now, correct my if I’m wrong, but you seem to be saying that there are no car makers who use quick disconnects on either the fuel lines or the wiring harness. Am I misreading your post? Because in post #50, you say the nearly the same thing.
Apparently the answer to that question is Volvo, Ford, and Chevy because in post #67 you say
So which is it? Do they have them or don’t they? And if they do have them, why did you say they didn’t and that no one wanted them? And if they don’t have them, why are you saying that they do? Don’t suppose that you were, oh, I don’t know, lying when you posted one of those comments?
Yeah, but one can increase the displacement of a block without making it larger. They can bore the cylinder walls out. Pretty common in hot rod circles. Of course, by adding the extra cylinder, you can make all the cylinders smaller, and still get a displacement increase. I notice also that you didn’t mention how tall the engine is. Making the cylinders taller will also give you a displacement increase without adding too much length to the block.
Okay, I think I’ve covered everything in your posts, so lay on MacDuff!
Depends upon the type of steel. Some alloys cost more than others. Cheap carbon steel is roughly $0.10 a pound.
And I read an article a few years ago (so it’s admittedly out of date) where a guy bought a carbon fiber panel to be used as the floorboards of his Porsche Spyder kit car, it set him back nearly a grand and I doubt that the panel was more than about 6 feet X 8 feet, if that much.
There’s also the cost of having to switch over production lines, training the employees, and redesigning cars to make use of the carbon fiber. All of that would have to be factored in as well. I’ll note that it takes GM (which admittedly has the highest costs in the industry) $1 billion to get a new model off the line. That’s using steel.
I don’t know about the environmental trade offs between the two things, so I can’t say for sure. Hybrids do use a lot of nasty materials in their electronics.
Did you see the Chemical and Engineering News cover story about three weeks ago on plastics in cars? Hopefully the link will work. A couple highlights:
“This is because plastics help reduce vehicle weight. And every 10% reduction in vehicle weight, says an old auto industry rule of thumb, yields about a 5% increase in fuel economy.”
"Howard Cox, lab group manager for composites processes and materials at General Motors, agrees that plastics play a part in car companies’ fuel efficiency strategy. “But,” he adds, “there is an opportunity for other materials as well, such as advanced high-strength steel, aluminum, magnesium, and composites.”
For example, Cox points out that carbon-fiber-based composites can lower the weight of car components such as structural pillars by as much as 60%. "
There are other, non-manufacturing issues with using carbon fiber as a structural component. One of them is that when a car crashes, the steel around the passengers bends and crumples, which absorbs energy and protects the passengers from impulses that would kill them. Carbon fiber doesn’t do that. It’s stiff, and if you apply enough force it just shatters.
Another problem is repairability. Bent steel can be straightened. Shattered carbon fiber has to be replaced.
These aren’t show-stoppers by any means - crash safety can be engineered around carbon fiber. But these kinds of problems do tend to drive up cost and make a changeover a little less easy than it would otherwise be.
:eek: Holy fucking Christ.
::: Sigh:::
There is no way in hell I am going to try and answer all of that, Tuckerfan. I will try and hit the highlights.
First off engine design.
V5? My bad I assumed you knew a little about cars. ALL of the carmakers that have used a 5 cylinder engine (Audi, Acura, and Volvo) have all used it as an inline engine. While I won’t say a V5 is impossible, it would have some unique vibration characteristics I think.
For the record here are the engine layouts we are talking about
5 cylinder 6 cylinder 8 cylinder
Front of car front of car front of car
Intake intake Exhaust
5 4 3 2 1 6 5 4 3 2 1 8 6 4 2
exhaust exhaust intake
7 5 3 1
Now do you understand my comments about the exhaust on a V8 being in the wrong place if you have a five or a six?
About the starter. Due to the V8’s width there is no fucking room to mount the starter in the conventional position. To move the 5 cylinder starter would cost money, and offer no benefit.
Done for illustration purposes only. Early Pintos came with either a 1600 cc motor or a 2000 cc motor. 429 came in Mustangs and Galaxies. Point is the small engine came with a small light trans, and the big honkin engine came with a big honkin trans. If you put the big honking engine onto the little tiny trans, it would grenade. Same thing would happen if you put our V8 in front of our 5 cylinder trans. The 5 cylinder trans, as good as it is, is not rated of the torque output of the V8.
About the slant 6. Every once and a while the stars align and a design comes out just right. The slant 6 is an example of this. The old 4 cylinder Volvo is another.
About having just one engine
Nice idea, Henry Ford came up with it. The Model T came in any color you wanted, as long as it was black. One engine, one trans.
Problem is nowadays people want choice. Not only in the color of the car, but in the engine room. Add to that the fact that there are some legal requirements for a percentage of our cars to meet a different stricter smog requirement, means we have to have more than one engine. That is the nature of the business. Deal with it.
The difference between the transmissions is the amount of torque they can handle without breaking. The 5 cylinder trans has a limit of about 250Nm, the V8 trans has a limit of 600Nm+. The exact differences are the size of the clutch packs, the internal brakes and the strength of the sprag clutches.
On a professional technician’s board where I hang out sometime, I have seen more than once where a car barely fails smog, and the converter is replaced. The test results with the new “universal” converter are much worse than they were with the factory unit. There is a reason the factory uses so many different part numbers.
Hell we could build the whole car out of titanium, the problem is we would lose our asses doing it. A titanium subframe would not justify the increase in price, and our profit would take a serious hit. Not gonna happen.
First off, since we never certified a V8 2WD auto we would either have to bring the 2wd car up to V8 AWD smog and safety specs or it would be illegal for us to do the conversion. This right here makes this idea a non starter. But getting to your question, if we don’t install the Angle gear (the part that hooks up to the drive shaft to drive the rear wheels) we have two issues. First off we will have one hell of a leak out of the transmission from the big hole the angle gear is supposed to seal. The second problem is that the passenger’s side drive shaft will have nothing to attach to. The angle gear fits between the trans and the drive shaft. Take it out, and the shaft does not reach the trans. Did I mention the big assed leak?
You yourself started a thread with this very idea just 6 months ago Automotive crash testing software. Where you were told that the computer cannot simulate everything. Your assumption was wrong six months ago, and it is still wrong.
::: Sigh::: I’m not going to explain what all the different suspensions choices are, but I can say with no fear of contradiction, none of the suspensions offered by Volvo are designed to accommodate the weight change caused by an engine change.
V8? S40 ::: Snort::: gawd that is the funniest thing yet. It won’t fit. Period. Oh by the way, we did just redo the platform, and it won’t fit.
You got it backwards, we leave out the holes we don’t need for a particular application.
If the dealer places the order by 1 Pm, they will get the part the next day.
About quick connects
Yes all the major car makers use a quick connect. However when I replied to you I assumed that if you were going to change an engine in super quick time you would have to equip the car with dry break connectors to prevent from making a god awful mess. Dry breaks are expensive.
It’s too late, I’m too tired to go into all the details of what is different between these engines, I’ll just say that you are 100% wrong in your guesses.
That said (and I agree with everything Rick has said), platform sharing is much more common than it used to be, and so are common engines and transmissions. For example, the Volkswagon Jetta, Rabbit, Audi TT, and Audi A4 sedan all share the same basic platform.
This is done purely for cost savings. Cars are getting so hellishly complicated to design and sophisticated that auto makers have to leverage the design cost of a new platform over many models in order to make it cost-effective. Also, a common platform cuts inventory count for dealers and service, and allows for other economies of scale.
But platform sharing has problems. For example, cars are getting heavier. When your car shares the same basic platform as an SUV, you’ve gotta know that some of the car’s parts are over-engineered and heavier than they need to be. What you get when you generalize something is the inefficiency that comes from not being able to optimize the design for the mission. So you get heavy cars, and less rugged trucks.
The same is happening with engines and transmissions. New CVT and six-speed automatically transmissions are extremely expensive to develop, so not only are they shared between models of the same company, but consortiums of companies are forming to share the development costs of new ones. For example, GM’s new Hydra-Matic 6T70/75 six-speed automatic transmission was co-developed with Ford, and the same transmission underpinnings will make their way into Ford vehicles as well.
But there’s obviously a limit. No, you’re not going to stuff an LS2 V8 into a Volvo S40. And there’s no reason to use a heavy-duty transmission designed to handle 400 HP in a car that only develops 110. That’s just stupid.
FTR, I saw the movie trailer and thought that it was retarded.
That said, The Economist gave the movie a good review.
So yeah, they gave some airplay to the conspiracy theorists, but that shouldn’t imply that the filmmakers agreed with them.
Rick has obviously discussed the technical considerations about this proposal, but you might also want to think about the social considerations–to wit, “Time is money.” If it’s 30 minutes to pull an engine, that makes it two hours total (two rounds of pull & replace, for the loan and return). Let’s say my time and the mechanic’s time are each sixty bucks an hour; this means I have to spend $120 extra on labor, plus lose an equivalent amount due to the loss of my time. And then there’s the aggravation factor about having to wait that extra two hours.
On the other hand, I could get a loaner car in ten minutes and be on my way–plus I get to check out the loaner car to see what it’s like, and if I decide that I like that model, that could lead to another sale for the dealer.
Not just any Christ, mind you, but Christ having sex.
Why not? I won’t expect you to hit them all at once, take as much time as you need.
My bad. That’s what I get for skimming your posts. I did think that the V5 was wrong, but, hey, I know very little about Volvos, so I wasn’t going to quibble on that, and VW has those crazy W engines which no one would have thought would be possible a couple of decades ago. Serves me right for not rereading everything and simply going from memory. IAC, inline or V, it doesn’t really matter if the vehicles have a single exhaust (dual exhaust does make a difference of course, since V8s with single exhaust have a Y-pipe that joins before the convertor, usually [I suppose that there are examples where you’ve got the Y-pipe is *after* the convertors, but I don’t know of any.]) and if you leave the exhaust manifolds attached to the engine (and yes, I know I’m the one who mentioned about disconnecting them, one could do that if one were swapping V engines of slightly different displacements and the blocks were designed to have similar mount points) then it should be possible to make sure that the Y-pipe and the straight pipe from the inline engine join the same distance away from the catalytic convertor.
Again, it’s not an impossible workaround. Sure, a retrofit might be difficult or impossible, but if you design everything that way going forward, it’s not impossible.
But when they design the next generation of engines and transmissions (which are no doubt being worked on as I type), they’re going to have to decide where to put them.
Again, with computer controls, I don’t see the problem. Engines routinely shut down cylinders all the time now, and an engine computer which knew the torque limits of the transmission it was bolted to could be held to the range the tranny could withstand. We’ve long since moved beyond the period of time when engines were big dumb hunks of iron bolted to a chassis.
Hmm. I thought that there was a science involved in engine design. Guess that’s another thing I’m wrong about, it turns out that it’s all related to astrology.
And as you can see here, black wasn’t the only color they were offered in.
And one of the reasons why the Japanese are kicking the US carmakers collective asses is that the Japanese tend to be progressive when it comes to things like emissions regulations, instead of trying to fight them like the US car makers did. Oh sure, the vast majority of any car makers customers aren’t going to care about emission levels (provided, of course, that their car passes emissions), and until recently, they really didn’t give jack shit about mileage, but I’ve always been told that a car which produces lower emissions burns it’s fuel more economically. So again, I don’t really see the problem here. The US has the lowest fuel economy standards in the world, and if the other carbuilders can figure out a way to hit higher ones, it should be no problem for the US carmakers. And given that the number of hybrid models are increasing, it really shouldn’t matter about the engine size. After all, the hybrids are being sold primarily on their fuel economy and not their engine size.
Again, with computer controls on the engines, I don’t see the problem here. IAC, conventional transmission technology is rapidly becoming a “dead tech” since hybrids are becoming more and more popular.
Of course, this is anecdotal and not scientific. I seriously doubt that a Volvo V8 convertor, if it was hooked up to a Volvo 5 banger would fail emissions, but you’re the Volvo expert, so you tell me. BTW, the folks posting those comments wouldn’t happen to live in states where there were problems with the companies doing emissions testing would they? I know that Ohio and Tennessee both had problems with the companies they initially hired to do emissions testing. Seems that the companies were rather corrupt and tended to fail cars that should have passed emissions. They did this in order to either extort bribes from the vehicle owners or force them to go through emissions again, so that they could collect the fee a second or a third, or a fourth, or a fifth, etc., time. I’ve no doubt that other states have had the same problems, human nature being what it is and all.
The Big Three never thought that the Japanese would outsell them, but it happened. Bill Gates supposedly thought that no PC user would ever need more than 640K RAM, and now we’ve got machines that ship with over a gig of RAM from the factory. Heck, the term “plastic” was once considered derogatory, and now, damned near everything is made out of it, including cars. As for the cost of titanium, yeah, it ain’t cheap, sort of. I’ve seen companies selling Chinese made titanium crowbars for less than the cost of what the bar stock of a similar size and weight would cost me. Now it’s possible that they’re selling them at a loss, I don’t know. Titanium is a bitch to work with, I’ll admit, but the projected cost of an entry level car by the time I’m 65 (which is less than 30 years from now) is going to be over $100K. That extra expense has to come from somewhere and computer components are getting cheaper all the time. Then, again, there’s always carbon fiber. I suppose one could use less exotic materials than either of those, but I’d strongly recommend against using magnesium, since that has a tendancy to catch fire easily as some VW owners can testify.
You know, I realize that this is going to sound nutty, but I really think that everybody would be better served if carmakers had a more progressive attiutde when it comes to emissions. Yeah, I know, putting emission controls on cars is expensive, but I’m not aware of any case when regulations have allowed newer models to pollute more than older ones. Given the absurdly slow pace (though it’s not necessarily a bad thing) that government works at, if carmakers were to look at what the emission target levels were for, say, ten years in the future, and resolve to beat them by at least five years, they’d have that much longer to come into compliance with any new regulations that were announced after that. Yeah, I know, California did have some nutty ideas a while back about requiring zero emission vehicles and the like, but let’s not kid ourselves here and try to claim that emission levels are going to stay the same. Even if the US fails to regain it’s senses and decides to continue forcing the rest of the world to suck on it’s shit, if US carmakers want to be able to sell their cars in other places on the planet, they are going to have to produce lower emission vehicles. I hope you don’t mind me bringing Preston Tucker up again, but I’d like to point out that if he’d had the benefit of modern electronics and things like variable valve timing, he could have gotten his 589 engine working, which would have been a low emissions engine (reason being it had a very low RPM and engines that run at low RPMs burn their fuel more completely than higher RPM engines). Of course, I’ve no idea if it’d meet modern emission standards, but, heck, GM’s managed to get some of it’s old push rod design engines to meet modern standards, so it certainly is possible.
Okay, I’ll admit that my knowledge of 4WD/AWD is limited to Jeep models circa the 1980s, and on those models the transfer case was bolted to the back of the tranny, and ran a smaller driveshaft to the front diff. From the way you’re describing the Volvo system, it sounds like the transfer case (assuming Volvo’s have one) is bolted to the front of the tranny, and that it must be removed when the engine is removed? Am I right? If so, what’s the advantages of that over the system that Jeep’s used? There must be one for Volvo to do it. I mean, I know that Ford uses a different taper on some of it’s tool holders than than anyone else uses, and that I’ve never heard an explaination for why they do so, but Volvo’s different, and everything that they do is for a reason that makes perfect sense as soon as you hear it, and they’d never do something just because they’ve always done it that way, would they?
Didja miss the qualifier where I said that “though not all,”? Yes, I know that physical testing can reveal things that computer simulations can’t. As was pointed out in that thread, if you’re playing around with new materials, it’s better to smack a real car around than a simulated one. However, in the cases I’m talking about, you’re not dealing with nearly as many unknowns. Not to mention, that even car makers admit that the crash tests required by the gov’t are limited in their usefulness. Heck, it wasn’t even the Feds that discovered the problems with Ford Exploders, it was newspapers. Another thing that was pointed out in the SciAm article I read was that computer simulations don’t have the problem of dealing with a crash dummy’s head moving and blocking the camera.
As currently designed, you mean. Though I do have a couple of questions for you: What’s the weight of Volvo’s 5 banger? What’s the weight of the V8 and what’s the maximum amount of weight that a 5 banger Volvo can haul around?
So, I take it I’m right in that pro mechanics like engine compartments where they can’t swing a wrench? You know, I never could understand why anyone could be excited about an engine compartment designed so that you have to dismantle half the engine to change the spark plugs (as one has to do on some GM and Ford models), given that you’re a pro mechanic, could you explain to me why this is a good thing?
No, I don’t have it backwards. I went by exactly what you said. Having worked in a foundry I can tell you it’s a heckuvalot cheaper to cast something with the holes already in it, rather than add them later on. Not only do you save on your machining costs, but you also save on your material costs, since the more holes that are in a casting, the less metal it requires. The less metal, the lower the costs. Not only because you’re not buying as much metal, but because you don’t have to use as much energy to melt a smaller mass of metal.
Hey, that’s a better turnaround time than I’ve ever seen. I mean, I’m sure that it depends upon the parts ordered (certainly a part ordered for an older car would take much longer than a newer one), but I’ve not heard of anything coming in so quickly. See my comments in my previous post about Ford.
Wonder why they’re so insanely expensive? After all, as you well know, air compressor lines have dry breaks on them, so it’s not like it’s a high tech gizmo. In fact, I can’t remember a time when air compressors didn’t come with dry breaks on them, thought there surely must have been a time.
Which engines? Do you mean the inline 5 and 6? Because on those we just have your word that they’re a marvel of engineering. They may well be, but without a little more info on them, we don’t know what’s different, and it could be something as simple as I suggested.
And it’s going to get even more common. I’ve seen predictions, though I don’t buy them, that one day all car makers will literally be selling the same car, and the only difference between say a Ford and a Honda will be how the dealer treats you. IMHO, that’s a load of crap, and car makers are now just beginning to exploit areas of cost savings that they hadn’t thought of in the past. I remember watching an interview with an auto exec who was truly surprised that consumers didn’t care if the door handle mechanism on their Caddy was the same as that used on a Chevy. If that ain’t proof there’s fundamental problems at GM, I don’t know what is!
As far as platform sharing goes, have you seen GM’s plan for hybrids?
Now, I can’t imagine that a fuel cell powered Corvette is going to have the same HP output as whatever the fuel cell version of the Chevette is going to have, so there has to be some difference between the two set ups. From the way the article describes it, any changes made will be “drop in,” but that’s not GM saying it, so there could be errors. And yes, I know that a fuel cell powered vehicle is vastly different than an IC powered vehicle, still the concept of modularity has oodles of merit.
You make valid points, I’ll admit, and no one knows exactly how fast an engine could be swapped out if you added optimized quick disconnects to the car. The figures I cite for the Tucker’s engine apply to a 60 year old design and not a modern one. They’re also the official times quoted in the corporate literature, in practice, the engines could be yanked in 15 minutes. Again, that’s a 60 year old design, and not a modern one. However, I wasn’t kidding when I said that there were modern engines you had to disassemble the top half to get to the spark plugs. Now, I’ve no clue as to how long that takes, but even if it takes you two hours to tear the top of the engine apart, replace the plugs, and reassemble the engine, you come out ahead if it takes you 30 minutes to yank the engine, 15 minutes to change the plugs, and another 30 minutes to drop the engine back in (assuming that’s possible), and it works even if you give the customer a rental or not.
As for checking out the rental, yeah, you’ve got a point there, but some dealerships (though not all) use strippers of their low end models as rentals. If I’ve brought in a more expensive model to be repaired, and the dealership gives me a loaner of their base model, I’m probably not going to be interested in making a trade.
So who is “the real culprit?” Again, I don’t buy that it’s GM or even the government. EVs just have too many shortcomings for most people. I know I couldn’t use one. My daily commute is ~70 miles total, and I work second shift, so I use the headlights a lot, not to mention that in the summer I have to use the AC (90 degrees at night with 90% humidity makes for a miserable Tuckerfan) and the winter I have to use the heat. Factor in that I quite frequently have to work 12 hour days (so the car couldn’t be plugged in more than 6 hours at a stretch, given that I’ve got an hour commute one way and have to leave more than an hour before work starts so I don’t get stuck in traffic and wind up late for work) and it wouldn’t be long before I was stuck on the side of the road with a bunch of dead batteries. (Hey! I just thought of something! With electrics, if your battery goes flat you have to get a tow, whereas with a hybrid or IC, you can get a jump and be on your way again.)
Until fuel cells come along, it looks to me that dual mode/full hybrids are going to be the best bet for folks.
It also looks like the concept of a Continental SuperGrid would address not only the issues of the electrical grid being overloaded, but also hydrogen distribution.
----- So who is “the real culprit?”
Beats me.
----- Again, I don’t buy that it’s GM or even the government.
Me neither.
I’d go see the film but I lack sufficient pain tolerance.
The Star Ledger review claims that the movie offers a variety of hypotheses. Other sources mention California Air Resources Board and its ties with Evil. But the Wall Street Journal (FWIW, YMMV (ha!)) says:
Wow: 800 drivers! That seems somewhat less than a full production run.
Maybe the sheer oddness of the story has a quirky charm. Apparently GM leased these cars to 800 brave consumers, who loved them. Then, when the leases ran out, GM recalled the vehicles, claimed there was no demand – and sent the all the EV1s to the car crusher. Only a small number of museum pieces remain. I suspect that the cars were destroyed before the batteries needed replacement.
Wasn’t an EV-1 driver. Did have three on my daily commute. I can tell you one thing: They were road hazards in the bad snow. Worse than SUVs for spinning out or getting stuck.
Segway? I’m not going to drive a segway. Oh, you meant segue 
The technology does exist, and has existed for at least a decade. Your argument, like that of many others, is that if electric cars don’t work for the guys who drive 100 miles to work on 70mph highways, then they won’t work for anyone. That’s simply not true. There are lots of folks with relatively short commutes on city roads. Heck, we have some people around here that drive electric golf carts all summer.
And of course an electric car is “different mechanically than an internal combustion engine.” To start with, it has no engine. But every new technology requires repair shops. That’s not a big deal.
We’re just not on the same page, Sam. Let me try to explain what I’m thinking. I’m not trying to figure out the best investment possible for $30K over the next ten years. I’m not trying to just wing a plan without thought and drop off the grid. Here’s what I’m after:
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I want to produce as much of my own power as possible for a variety of reasons, ranging from a desire to be environmentally responsible to being sick-and-tired of power outages from the grid.
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I live in an area with a lot of wind.
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I understand that I’m not an expert on solar or wind power, but I’m working on it. I was an electrical engineer, and I understand the fundamentals. Now I’m researching the available products and state of the technology.
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I believe that I can design and size a system that will provide all of the power needs for my home and an electric car, and will prove to be cost-effective over the long term.
The big key, though, is that I’m not trying to prove anything to anyone but myself. If it ends up costing more than I expected or producing less power than I expected, then I will have reduced my personal contribution to our pollution problem, learned a lot about alternative power sources, and had some fun doing it. I win, either way.
Regarding the quick change caability of the Tucker: the Tucker was designed in an era when car engiines needed major overhaul by 30,000 miles. People wound up paying for valve jobs and piston rings, along with other major work. Todays wngines have hardened valve seats and chrome-moly alloy piston rings, and so major overhauls are rare. However, there was one car where the capability of major engine swaps was useful-the V beetle. It was so hard to work in the engine (in situe) that pulling it out and replacing with an exchange made sense.
Wombat? Part of the extreme efficiency of the EV-1 was the low-friction tires. I’d go so far as to call it a major part, really. I repeat, in my experience, and after talking to a driver, they were poor in deep snow weather, and not so great in the rain, especially on bad roads. Or, for that matter, on good roads, after a light rain, after a period of no rain… you know, when they get all greasy?
How’s your commute look?