7000 mpg

http://green.yahoo.com/blog/ecogeek/361/7-000-mpg-car-wins-eco-marathon.html

 I think we're going to need a new class of vehicle here in the US. Something for secondary road use that would have more in common with a motorcycle than a Suburban. Something with weather protection and exempt from all the heavy safety requirements.

     Bill

 Another shinning example of corporate America's values.

 http://nbb.grassroots.com/EPA_AskTheAdministrator_Details/?lk=5253840-5253840-0-26468-j7-Ia3j3/ugoRq4rf3J/jr9-fu94F1zI

                                         Bill

 Some interesting biodiesel test results in listeroids

http://www.poweranand.com/biodiesel_test_report3.htm

                                                  Bill

  Does anyone know how much water expands when it's heated. There must be a formula, but I can't find it. I need to allow for expansion in my unpressurized cooling system which utilizes a cast iron radiator. The hot inlet is almost at the top, so the radiator needs to stay completely full to keep the loop intact. Thought I'd run a small line from the bleed screw to a reservoir which I'd like to be as small as possible as it's in my living space. Trying to get it right the first time.

                                                   Bill

  Back in the day, early 80s, when I thought running a motorcycle around a race circut was the most fun tou could have with your pants on, we were running a 6 hr endurance race in New Hampshire. A friend of mine was also entered on a watercooled Honda V4 which were known to have cooling problems under race conditions. At a pit stop/rider swap his team mate warned him that the engine was so hot it was burning him through his leathers. No way to add coolant without letting the engine cool for a long time. My buddy, with stout heart and a pocket full of credit cards, continued the race on his air cooled bike which predictably DNF'd several laps later.
  That evening, sitting around the pits drinking brews and telling hero stories, he told me that he ran about 3/4 lap on 2 cyls before it finally quit. We hit the starter and the engine spun, much to my surprise. Sounded like the compression was OK too. We did some quick digging and found that it had quit because the the ignition triggers had melted. Now I don't know what the melting point of ign.triggers are but they were located in the coolest part of the engine, under an outer crank cover. The top end must have been aproching the temperature of the sun.
  A few days later ( I' getting to the point) I stopped by his garage where the engine was torn down. All the oil lubricated surfaces looked fine. The cams run right in the alum. head and the journals looked great. Rod & main bearings, cyl walls, everything looked fine. Turned out he'd been running a new (at the time)synthetic oil. Made a believer out of me.
  Fast forward 20+ yrs.  Now I've got this replirelic and nothing I know about oil seems to apply. The oil in this thing bearly gets hot to the touch, perhaps if it ran 24/7 but mine might go 4-6 hrs at a clip.  They were designed in the SA, SB era but shouldn't I take advantage of improvements. Anybody have a clear understanding of what the service ratings specifically mean?
  Multigrades vrs straight wts.  If it really protects like a 30 but flows like a 10 thats good, no?  How about for intermittant duty. My Metro manual recommends 10w at current temps. (try and find it ) Sounds like 3n1 to me.
  Gas vrs diesel. I've been told that the main difference between oils for gas & diesel engines is that the diesel can deal with the sulfer residues in the diesel fuel. True? Mine run exclusively on bio so am I OK with gasoline service oil or is there more to it?
  Detergent vrs nondetergent. I understand the rational for nondetergent oil but the only ones that I can find are SA or SB and that makes me nervous. Maybe it shouldn't. What about "fortifieing" an underachieving oil?
  Synthetics post breakin? Expensive but very good. What if it was pumped through a remote oil filter at regular intervals? Wouldn't be hard to rig up.
  Anything else to consider?

  My '06 Metro 6/1 was getting reluctant to start when the temps got under 30F. Found out about glowplugs (thanks Bruce ) on this forum and ordered up one from Utterpower hoping for a 10 minute fix to my problem. It arived quickly and looked to be a nice piece of work. Unfortunately Metro changed their head design recently and the standard plug protruded much too far into the precombustion chamber. George had heard of this and offered a refund if I wanted, and said that some had been successfully installed by making a spacer to shim it out to the correct depth. So much for the 10 minute fix.
  A quick check with a caliper convinced me that there would not be any handy spacer material in my scrap inventory and machine shops are a long ways away. Also, the top end hadn't been checked on this engine and I'd read some pretty low compression ratio numbers in this forum and maybe this was an opportunity to improve things a bit. More fun than cleaning house anyhow.
  Pulled the head . The casting was much nicer than my older Metro (part of the "redesign"?) clean, generous cooling passages, everything lined up nicely. Checked the deck height -.070"-damn. Pulled the barrel and found 2 1/2 gaskets! A .007 gasket had been torn almost perfectly in half perpendicular to the crank. (Has anyone seen that before? Please tell me it's not the way they true their block decks.) The stud holes were cut to the outside and I'm guessing (hoping) that they use tear aways during assembly and the lunch whistle blew at the wrong time.
  Measured the head volumes and did the math and came up with a CR of just over 14:1. Dismal. The spherical cut in the stock plug held 5.5 cc's and if it was eliminated, it would still only bring me up to just under 16:1. Decided to reduce the plugs volume but keep a spherical shape. A 2 inch circle fit nicely in the stock plugs cut, I'd use a 3 1/2 inch circle for my sphere (or about the size of a wornout 4 1/2 inch grinding disk).

  Real machinists should find another thread at this point. Everyone else should understand that YOU SHOULD NOT DO THIS! At least not this way.

  I needed to spin the plug to make a reasonably accurate cut, the idea being that I'm going to take the Utterpower plug and cut it back to the dimensions of the stock plug and then give it a shallow spherical face. I am without a lathe so the trusty drillpress and a mandrel seemed like the way to go. The Utterpower glowplug setup uses a CS valve plug that has been machined to accept a glowplug. Because the glowplug sits deep in the plug they use a brass rod that screws onto the GP as an electrical extension. A fiber composition plug fits snugly over the brass rod and into the bore hole of the plug. A nice setup. Probably not designed to be a mandrel though. Tiny threads, soft metal. I knew that. What we need is a 12X1.25 bolt to go in the GP hole but, alas, that's not real common and the nearest one is probably as far away as the machine shop. So..if we're real careful, (and we were) and it spins reasonably true (and it did) maybe it will work (got lucky). Took an old glow plug that I'd saved for just such an occasion , cut the nose off and reassembled the plug and extension. Chucked it in the drill press and ran the table up til it was just touching to try and stabllize things as much as possible. Spun it slow and gently put a hacksaw to a line I'd made and, by golly,it worked. Cut the last bit by hand to avoid binding. Got the table out of the way and held the angle grinder, precicely positioned by eye, with the edge of the wheel to the center of the plug. Carved a lovely sphere. Polished it with a stone and the darn thing looks fine. Capacity is just over 1 cc so thats a reduction of 4.5cc which puts the CR at 14.86:1 Maybe I screwed up the math or measurment someplace.
  Anyhow, engine runs well, but then it did before too. Maybe a little less smoke. The glowplug is great, first compression stroke fires.
                                             Bill

i've seen some pictures showing very nice flexible exhaust couplings, similar to what you might find on some automotive headpipes. they appear to have a woven stainless cover. short of buying a $160 headpipe and cutting out what i need, where might i find such an item. thanks, bill