"New Technology Rage/Hate/Praise Thread"

billiebob

Well-known member
The better 4x4s came with injectors and burned combustible fuel.
I've never been stranded with a carburetor, EFI not so lucky. Pretty sure they both burn combustible fuel.
Carbs also came with cast iron blocks, cast iron transmissions, cast iron transfer cases and mechanical levers to control it all.
 

Pilat

Tossing ewoks on Titan
Both are called "internal combustion engines" though. Although I gather you want to differentiate between petrol = "flammable", kerosene and diesel = "combustible".
 

shade

Well-known member
Yay !
A walking excavator without a boom & bucket.
More fun to design, build and show off. Driving it will get old real quick.
Looks like he can drive it just fine.

It's electric, btw.

Steam is the way forward, anyway.
Better for the environment.
 

shade

Well-known member
Sure is. Combustion to create steam can be much cleaner than combustion pressing on pistons.
But mobile steam power sucks bad. Either its huge energy wasting total loss system, or you have a Hugh Jazz condenser to haul around.

Lose the condenser. Vive la France!

 

dreadlocks

Well-known member
I've never been stranded with a carburetor

I have a few times thanks to vapor locking at high altitude in the middle of the summer.. installed this fancy electronic fuel pump on a switch that let me power through those situations as pinning clothes pins on the fuel lines was not cutting it.
 

85_Ranger4x4

Well-known member
My F-150 has been giving me fits. It got so it would missfire going up a hill. Idle fine, around town it ran fine, going down hill fine, drop the hammer from a stop and it wouldn't miss a beat. But going uphill warmed up with the cruise on it was a wing and a prayer. Didn't missfire enough to set the CEL or throw a code. Figured it was a coil but they are $40 a pop for parts store stuff and I have 8 of them so it would get painful kinda quick to start throwing coils at it. I could take it to a dealer and pay them whatever they get for diag but where is the fun in that? So I do research, download Forscan on my laptop this past weekend (for free.99) and after acquiring a WIFI OBDII adaptor I start poking around... #5 had a missfire 3.32% of the time, minimum threshold is 23.04% to throw a light if I am reading it right. I throw a coil on #5 and it runs perfect. The coil I replaced was original with 180k on it so it didn't do too bad. It had corrosion on the contact so the coil was probably ok but it was overheating because of the increased stress because of the bad connection. It was really infuriating though because I thought the point of this electronic stuff was to make diagnosing easier...

Then I crawl under it while I have it in the shop because something has been feeling loose in the front end, the newest balljoint on the truck (a 2yo Moog) is shot which is neither here nor there with the roads the truck sees... potholes, washboards (or corrugations depending on local vernacular) Also notice while I am under there a CV boot is torn so yay... a new adventure awaits on that.

The '85 Ranger I had been driving in the mean time has one easily to get at $15 coil that requires no special tools to change and not a single cv boot to be found anywhere...

My '85 has a carb (with an electric fuel pump) and I really have no complaints, the new FITech type fuel injection setups look mighty tempting for better off camber operation though. If they existed when I originally built the the truk almost 9 years ago I probably would have gone that route. (Holley and others had TBI kits but they were really pricey back then) Being a flatlander I did a couple mods I saw on the internet to my Edelbrock before we went out to Ohio for a trail ride last fall and I was really quite impressed with it.
 

dreadlocks

Well-known member
It was really infuriating though because I thought the point of this electronic stuff was to make diagnosing easier...

Next time just move coil packs between cyls, if the fault moves and follows the cyl you know its the pack.. if it dont move you know its something else like spark plug or leads to the coil pack.. it is easier to diagnose than just throwing parts at it blindly like you'd be doing w/out em.

I got stranded once because $3 set of points broke on me in BFE on the way to my sisters wedding.. after that I converted the distributer to full electronic and it never wore out and left me on the side of the road again.. old school mechanical everything is not as great as everyone makes it out to be.. yeah its easy to fix when it brakes, if you carry spares everywhere.. otherwise, all things mechanical will eventually wear out and fail.. the 44 year old EFI system on my Westfallia is still working perfectly, probably all the lead in the solder.. but it still needs the valves, timing, and everything retuned every few thousand miles to stay running in top shape which is rather obnoxious.
 

Forum statistics

Threads
185,527
Messages
2,875,538
Members
224,922
Latest member
Randy Towles
Top