Reg versus Premium Fuel experiament in 09 PT Cruiser
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From: Bill Putney on 6 Nov 2009 19:11 Steve wrote: > Bill Putney wrote: >> I bet most people aren't aware that today, lead is one of the powdered >> ingredients in many brushes in the d.c. motors and alternators on our >> cars. I was amazed to learn that when I worked as an >> engineer/engineering manager in a brush manufacturing company >> supplying 60% of the brushes to the U.S. auto industry. >> >> Think about it - lead in the brushes - brushes that wear and create >> dust that gets blown about into the air. Who'd a thunk that they >> would allow that - but it's a fact and you never hear anything about >> it. Whyizthat? >> > > > And of course elemental lead and mercury have an entirely different > toxicity level than lead and mercury compounds. Handling or working with > metallic lead is very different from eating lead compounds in paint, for > example. A senior co-worker tells of how he used to bite the end of > leaded solder wire to flatten it when he was fabricating circuits back > in the 50s, and in my own generation we used to play with balls of > mercury dipped from the open-beaker barometer in the school science lab. > I don't recommend either practice and I'm glad we're more aware of > toxins these days, but it does make me laugh my head off when someone > panics and practically calls in the hazmat squad over the breaking of a > compact fluorescent lamp. :-p Oh - you just wait. I guarandamntee you that Al Gore or someone like him is just biding their time for a few years until we're 99% committed to the flourescents. *THEN* - just when we're over that transition (i.e., getting used to reduced light levels that are claimed to be the same light levels, and too late to re-tool and re-legislate for incandescents), someone will release the latest shocking "scientific" studies to start a HUGE environmental panic over the mercury being "released into the environment" from those bulbs (manufacturing, breakage, discarding into landfills, yadda, yadda, yadda), and some marvelous saviour will be waiting in the wings to "fix" the problem with a solution that he just happens to have ready, and charge us huge bucks in the process. Anybody want to take bets on this? -- Bill Putney (To reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my address with the letter 'x')
From: Bill Putney on 6 Nov 2009 19:16 Steve wrote: > Thomas Tornblom wrote: >> I don't know what you intended to write here, but I can tell you that >> the cam would likely fail in very short time due to the reduction of >> ZDDP additives in todays oils. > > > THAT is the single most overblown piece of misinformation out there. A > substantial percentage of the cam failures initially attributed to > inadequate ZDDP were in fact probably related to substandard material > and processing of a whole lot of lifters and cam blanks. That's a risk > when you're down to only one or 2 vendors still making flat-face lifters... > > I'm running my flat-cammed Jeep and 1966 440 on SM-rated modern motor > oils just fine. So long as the cam is properly broken in (the first > 20-minute run-in) with the proper break-in lubricant, ~800 PPM of ZDDP > is PERFECTLY good for everything short of extremely high-lift high > spring-pressure cams. And there are other additives now being used to > compensate for ZDDP. Don't forget that there is *still* a flat-tappet > cam test required for any oil to get an API rating, including the "low > phosphorous" SM rating. I'm not an expert in this area, but street rumor over the years was that GM cams wore out so suddenly because they nitrided the cams (surface treatment). Nitride is super hard, but once it wore thru that layer, the cams wore like butter. I did have to replace a cam in a 1980 GM vehicle at about the mileage that "they" said was typical of the wearout. I don't know if that relates to anything posted, but thought I'd throw that out there for comment. -- Bill Putney (To reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my address with the letter 'x')
From: Vic Smith on 6 Nov 2009 19:40 On Fri, 06 Nov 2009 16:37:36 -0600, Steve <no(a)spam.thanks> wrote: > >It amazes me that anyone today doesn't realize what a massive effort >went into fixing all the possible Y2K problems before they happened. I >guess thats gratitude for you.... :-( I see some still deny it was a big issue. They obviously don't know how most mainframe systems with mmddyy dates did date calcs. I remember seeing it as a looming problem in the distance when I started programming in 1980. I was happy that I would be gone from that business by then. I put in century checks anyway on anything I wrote and anything I maintained doing date calcs. Still couldn't cover everything, most obviously birthdays. And I was still there when it came about. Not doing the changes, but marveling at what a boondoggle the contracting firms "specializing" in providing Y2K changes were pulling off. What a clusterfuck. But business began selling off their responsibilities in the '90's by paying premium prices for others to do the work and take the fall for anything that went wrong. Part of the "shareholder value" fantasy. Without widespread system changes which began in 1998 the major insurance company I worked at would have ground to a halt. I imagine there were plenty of other companies that would have suffered the same fate. --Vic
From: Bill Putney on 6 Nov 2009 19:44 hls wrote: > > "Steve" <no(a)spam.thanks> wrote in message news:FZednfV4srBJ- >> >> Anyone that thinks Y2K wouldn't have been a problem if corrective >> measures hadn't been put in place is, frankly, clueless. It wasn't a >> problem because a huge effort was committed to fixing it in time. > > I appreciate your opinion. A lot of work WAS done, and a lot of money > was spent, and in the end there wasnt much of a problem, if any. > > And the millenium passed, there was no apocalypse, no battle of Armageddon. > The next end of the world scenario, I understand, is supposed to be > 11-11-09, > after which we will focus on the Mayan predictions. According to my very level-headed daughter (who is into studying all kinds of ancient cultures), the truth behind that is that the Mayan priests were into writing predictive calendars that went far into the future - *AND* their civilization collapsed about the time they had their calendars written up to whatever year it is that modern "geniuses" are saying the Mayans predicted the end of the world. IOW - the Mayans had only gotten that far in extending their calendar when their own civilization collapsed and they stopped adding to the calendar - but when "modern" man looks at that in retrospect, his interpretation of that observation is that the Mayans stopped updating the calendars at the point because they "knew" things were going to end at that point - i.e., there was no more work needed on the calendar, their work was finished. I thought the Mayan prediction was sometime in 2012 - could be wrong. -- Bill Putney (To reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my address with the letter 'x')
From: Bill Putney on 6 Nov 2009 19:51
Brent wrote: > ...Practically any critical system could have been put back in operation by > having the date set to something like 1-1-1970. The data to be fixed > could easily be identified by the date and fixed later once patches were > done... I have no opinion or knowledge on if it was real or not, but it would seem obvious to me that if it was real, your statement would be wrong about, say, the banking industry. Can you imagine the world calamity if interest calculations were all screwed up - even for a day? Stock market...? -- Bill Putney (To reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my address with the letter 'x') |