"New Technology Rage/Hate/Praise Thread"

[Martinjmpr]

I have a pair of air-cooled motorcycles, one is EFI and the other is carbureted. Never had any trouble with either of them but then again, they're motorcycles so they don't get used as hard or as constantly as a car.

My last carbureted 4 wheeled vehicle was an 84 Mazda B2000 pickup. That little 4 cyl put out a whopping 90hp. That truck was silver, so I called it "the Silver Slug." Going up a steep hill, people in VW buses were passing me and laughing. It did get 35 MPG on the highway but it was tiny, noisy, had no AC and went through front wheel bearings every other month in the winter. So I have no beef with EFI and am glad to have it on my 4 wheeled vehicles.

I am not happy with the fact that manual transmissions have all but disappeared from trucks and SUVs. My biggest gripe with autos (besides the fact that they seem to suck about 20% of the power out of the engine) is that when they fail they are crazy expensive to repair and generally have to be replaced, whereas a manual transmission or clutch can be repaired. I think the most I ever paid for a clutch repair was around $750 and I never had any issues with any of the manual transmission vehicles I owned that WASN'T related to the clutch.

Besides that, I've always thought that driving a manual transmission vehicle is fun. There's a delicate "ballet" involving vehicle speed, engine speed, gear selection, clutch action, etc, that requires total involvement. Driving an auto transmission vehicle is boring by comparison: Turn the wheel and press the gas or brake.

I'm glad that motorcycles, by and large, have not been infected by the auto transmission virus. Yes, I know there are a few but they are very small in number and really haven't caught on. And I don't think they will because my guess is that within 20 years we will see a majority of vehicles being electric so transmissions will be a moot point.

 

[dreadlocks]

I rejetted my DR350 so it'd stop running so rich and backfiring all the time, runs so much better now up here.. but now its tuned for altitude and if I take it to the coastal dunes I need to rejet it all over again or i'll burn the motor up running it that lean.. I wish it was EFI.

Totally agree about manual transmissions, I can fix anything wrong w/em.. can even swap out gears if needed.. Ive done a dozen clutches and can hammer one of those out in an afternoon, but if I muckup an auto gearbox.. I'm gonna be sending it off to someone else to work on at great expense.. I got rid of my RS6 when it became clear it was soon going to need a $12k gearbox that was just as crappy as the one it just chewed up.. or spend $15k to convert it to manual, naw.. time for a trade in.

 

[85_Ranger4x4]

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 thought about that but the 97-03/04 F-150 has half of them behind the firewall so it is a mild PITA move them around. For #5 I still had to do a little diggin to get to it.

And until I got the computer talking to the truck I didn't know which cylinder was even missing. I was about down to unpugging injectors and seeing which one made it run the best (dead miss + intermittent miss vs just a dead miss)

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.

My Ranger has Duraspark (factory Ford electronic) so parts are everywhere if I need them. Seems pretty reliable so far.

Most of my antique tractors have Delco points distributors, parts are everywhere for them too. I will be pushing snow this year (as I have for the last 10 years) with a point ignition tractor.

Drop in electronic ignitions (like Petronix) are neat but they are very particular on wiring, a bad connection will smoke the little piece of nothing module. And nobody stocks them because no two engines seem to use the same one which means you are dead right there until you get another one ordered in.

 

[dreadlocks]

parts might be everywhere, but they weren't anywhere to be found on the side of the road on highway 96 near the Kansas/Colorado border late at night... and the spare set of points I had at home in my toolbox was not much help either... AAA towed it all the way back to Denver and I had it fixed in 5mins true.. but we said screw this and hopped in an EFI vehicle as we now had to makeup a bunch of time and taking the slow backroads was now off the table.

ive still got the old mechanical distributor floating around in the bus incase the petronix ever gave me issue.. but IMO its far less likely to give me issues than the old one was.. but it dont matter, next up I'm yanking that whole power plant out and putting something modern in that dont need to be rebuilt every 60k miles.

 

[85_Ranger4x4]

That is why I skipped the Petronix route on mine altogether, Duraspark stuff is just as common as points for parts supply and isn't boutique aftermarket.

They make HEI distributors for a lot of engines now that uses standard GM parts which if you have the room and if you can stand the looks of the huge distributor is another excellent option.

I am not shy about carrying spare ignition stuff. My Ranger has a spare good jy ignition module under the seat just the same as my F-150 carries a spare ignition coil and the tools required to change one on the side of the road under the seat (including the elusive 7mm wobble socket no parts store keeps in stock)

Points you can usually scrape with a knife or something good enough to get you home. Cook a coil or a module and there is nothing you can do on the side of the road but wait for help.

 

[85_Ranger4x4]

If we wanted to be practical we could just convert every gasoline powered car in the world over to burn ethanol, effectively and retroactively turning almost every car on the road into a solar powered vehicle without having to make the bonehead mistake of trying to consume our way out of a problem we created with consumption. But we won't do that so I guess see y'all in the post apocalyptic wasteland.

Huh?

That makes less sense than unit wheel bearings...

 

[85_Ranger4x4]

But a lot of people have deeply rooted emotional opinions about ethanol fuel which are unaffected by objective information so instead we'll keep pursuing things that can't work and refusing things that do. Not a smart way to do things but that really defines us as a whole.

That also pretty much defines corn based ethanol. Without the crutches of lobbiests and subsidies it would go away very fast.

 

[vargsmetal]

They're all junk when they're broken.

That said, I'm definitely in the fuel injection camp. I know a carburetor can be tweaked and tuned to run perfectly and efficiently, but it is much easier to achieve with EFI.

Whether you like EFI or not modern engines are nice in that they don't leak. O-ringed flanges, aluminum pans/valve covers instead of stamped steel, and machined gasket surfaces make for sealing ability approaching vehicle life. The 350 in my 78 GMC is always needing one seal or another to keep from leaking. It's to the point I need to pull the engine and replace every seal. The 5.3L I have has never leaked, and is so much nicer to work on.

A scan tool with data logging can tell me anything I need to know about how the engine is running from the drivers seat. It just works, no matter the outside temperature or vehicle angle. No fiddling with the carburetor or checking timing and reading plugs. I own both carbureted and EFI vehicles, and can make both work right and get the job done, but if I had the choice my 78 would have a turbo diesel or modern EFI gas engine.

As for modern electronic automatic transmissions I'm still on the fence. The only real problem I've had with my 1990 is the 4L80e. I like automatics for offroad but it did fail me the last time out and I had to limp it home. It still has some issues I need to work out.



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[85_Ranger4x4]

The RFS (the subsidy you're talking about) expired in 2011 and presently ethanol fuel trades at market value. There are still ag subsidies which are designed to bolster the industry as a whole but those apply as much to zucchini and almonds and wheat so it would be a stretch to refer to them as a fuel subsidy.

US taxpayers do give the petroleum industry over $4bn in subsidies yearly though...

Corn ethanol is a coproduct of the meat and dairy industry, even if we didn't use it as fuel it would still be necessary to manufacture it because DDG is a staple feedstock and stores, transports, dispenses more easily than whole meal and produces healthier animals than whole meal . So if we didn't use the coproduct as a fuel we would need to find something else to do with all that sugar or just dump it in a pit.

There was a study done in the 1970s on the net energy value of producing corn ethanol and the authors of that study incorrectly assumed that the solids from production were simply discarded, so they declared the process net negative. People to this day keep using that study as an example of why they think corn ethanol is bad, which at this point is about the same as using prehistoric cave drawings of goats to support opinions about brain surgery.

Got any other outdated info to retire?

Ethanol and biodiesel: dropping below the production cost of fossil fuels? : Biofuels Digest

One would think if they cost about the same to produce that if you mix it in a 90/10 ratio it would cost about the same. But the E10 I put in my F-150 costs $2.33 right now and the straight 87 ethanol free I put in my tractors is $2.73. If 10% of that $2.73 was free it would still cost more than E10 at $2.46. The price difference gets farther apart as you go down the line with E15, 20, 30 and 85.

So how does that work?

Whether you like EFI or not modern engines are nice in that they don't leak. O-ringed flanges, aluminum pans/valve covers instead of stamped steel, and machined gasket surfaces make for sealing ability approaching vehicle life. The 350 in my 78 GMC is always needing one seal or another to keep from leaking. It's to the point I need to pull the engine and replace every seal. The 5.3L I have has never leaked, and is so much nicer to work on.

I got sick of the stamped covers on my 302 oozing so I put aluminum covers on it, not really new tech they were out in the 80's too. To be fair I had stamped chrome Edelbrock covers that I think were made from a heavy grade of tin foil.

Some newer stuff has plastic oil pans and valve covers too...

 

[85_Ranger4x4]

The author of that link made an arbitrary choice to inflate the stated value of a barrel of ethanol based on its relative btu content, which is not reflected in the pump price. Its right there in the article you linked.

It must be cheaper than water if you can add 10% of it something and come out 15% cheaper.

 

[shade]

Corn ethanol is a coproduct of the meat and dairy industry, even if we didn't use it as fuel it would still be necessary to manufacture it because DDG is a staple feedstock and stores, transports, dispenses more easily than whole meal and produces healthier animals than whole meal . So if we didn't use the coproduct as a fuel we would need to find something else to do with all that sugar or just dump it in a pit.

Go vegan. Problem solved. You're welcome.

Seemed an apt addition to this thread.

 

[SnowedIn]

I saw this and thought, what a great thread.

I'm on the side of....

the best 4x4s came with carburetors

My grandfather owned his own repair shop for decades; several of his sons - my uncles - turned wrenches with him for decades. 60+ years of working on vehicles and his unambiguous opinion was that love for carburetors was nostalgia and rose colored glasses, and that fuel injection was better in virtually every way.

This was for daily drivers, though, and remote travel could conceivably change the equation. But people do tend to overlook the downsides.

 

[billiebob]

My grandfather owned his own repair shop for decades; several of his sons - my uncles - turned wrenches with him for decades. 60+ years of working on vehicles and his unambiguous opinion was that love for carburetors was nostalgia and rose colored glasses, and that fuel injection was better in virtually every way.

This was for daily drivers, though, and remote travel could conceivably change the equation. But people do tend to overlook the downsides.

yes, 30 years ago EFI was a great standard, yes an improvement over a carb.... maybe...

My comment was more related to the thread title and todays mobile nannyized computer labs. If you want to get away from needing to deck the car to a dealer to reboot all the computers after a dead battery..... buy something with a carb.

 

[b dkw1]

It might surprise you to learn that retailers can set their own margins and they know 100% petroleum fuel has increased perceived value as a motor fuel among some people, as well as an objective value for use in seasonally operated equipment

It's not a percieved value if you have anything with a carburetor. Ethanol in a carb will end badly unless it is driven constantly. I will spend the extra rather than clean the white pudding out of my carbs everytime it sits for more than a couple days.

 

[Deleted member 9101]