US bull

The Volkswagen Lupo 3L turbodiesel and the Audi A2, which use the same
engine, have both edged close to 80 mpg. That's better than a hybrid. On
the downside, that amazing three-cylinder diesel doesn't meet U.S.
emissions standards. US standards? The Cummings in Dodge Ram, the
Duromax in GM's and Ford Powerstroke that get 10 to 15mpg do meet US
standards?

DON'T PISS ON MY LEG AND TELL ME IT'S RAINING!!

 

That sounds very unlikely, somehow. I'm thinking it may have mroe to
do with the 15 second zero to 62mph acceleration in (for example) the
Audi A2 than just emissions. There are other regulatory problems
getting minis (the only thing the 3 cylinder diesel's gonna be able to
push) legalized in the US that have nothing to do with emissions.

Do you have any other info on the engine not meeting US emissions
standards, or is this the start of another urban myth? I"ve got no
dog in this hunt, but it's just hard to imagine an 80mpg engine NOT
meeting emissions standards (unless it's attached to a moped).

Mark Hickey
Habanero Cycles
http://www.habcycles.com
Home of the $795 ti frame

 

And we all know just how emissions-friendly the moped is... No regs for
<50cc 2-strokes, even. They're stinky on campus here.

 

It is a sad truth that emissions/mi. standards would make a lot more
sense than %NO2 and CO,
but the various legislatures are too well lobbied by auto makers to
realize this.

MadDog

"We could say that Congress spends money like drunken sailors.
But that wouldbe unfair to the sailors.
They, at least, are spending their own money."
- Clayton E. Cramer

 

Getting that kind of mileage out of a 3-liter diesel is actually an
improvement over what has previously been done.

Little VW diesel pickup trucks were around in the
70's or 80's and I remember that they would get up and run at 80 mph,
but they took forever to get there.

I witnessed an economy demonstration at the California Speedway
several years ago. A small penny stock company was trying to get
diesel manufacturers interested in buying licenses to produce cars
that took advantage of their proprietary information.

They called their idea "pulse charging" and compared it to what
happened with the air flow through V-1buzz bomb engine.

I took the engineer who leaked that information to mean that it had
something to do with modifications to the induction tract of the
engine.

But when I looked under the car's hood out at the speedway, I saw that
it had a 3-into-1 exhaust header.

The engine was a 1500cc Yanmar 3-cylinder that was intended for
industrial use, turning a generator.

The company first claimed they were going to drive across country and
get 90 mpg, but they realized they would have no public to witness the
trial. That's why they rented the speedway for a day.

And the test drivers went out and drove the car around and around the
speedway at a steady 45 mph and achieved about 90 miles per gallon at
the steady speed where the exhaust header was doing its thing.

I could still smell diesel fuel in the exhaust, but the exhaust system
wasn't loud even when it was enhancing economy at 45 mph. That
probably meant the engine was only turning 1800 RPM, though.

After the initial flush of success when the penny stock's price rose
to $3.25 a share for an hour or two, the stock went into a gradual
decline back to
only a penny a share.

But the company wanted to prove that a diesel could achieve the same
mileage as a hybrid gasoline-electric car, so they went out and bought
a Toyota Prius and did another test, over the road, against their
Yanmar-engined Geo Prizm.

The Prizm got 90 mpg on the highway, when driven at a steady 45 mph.
Critics complained that 45 mph cruising was not real world driving
conditions, but the company countered that 45 mph was normal in other
parts of the world.

Somebody else pointed out that diesel fuel has a higher BTU content
than gasoline, so that explained part of the increased fuel economy.

They were also trying to get a contract to rebuild Eastern Bloc diesel
bus engines to meet more stringent emissions requirements and the lone
engineer developing the "pulse charging" system was working at a truck
repair company near Oxnard.

He had a dynamic fuel flow indicator and he was talking about trying
to achieve a specific fuel consumption of about 0.25 pounds of fuel
per horsepower hour.

He explained how diesel engines ran without generating any vacuum
because they ran wide open all the time, and just controlled the fuel
injected.

That means that diesels don't have as much "pumping loss" inducing air
into the engine.

He has probably died by now, I've heard nothing about "pulse charging"
for years.

 

At least the two of US know how to build a REALLY clean bike, right
Phil? ;-)

Mark "unless I had beans for dinner" Hickey

 

Unbelievably, in terms of CO, NO and particulate emissions, about the
cleanest engine out there is a diesel running a cat and CRT. Cleaner
even than one running on propane or compressed natural gas (unless said
engine has a CRT fitted too).

 

Think CO emissions.

 

And then some.

Common rail technology, which itself would not really be possible
without modern electronics, has revolutionised diesels. Fuel injector
pressures of 1000 bar or more, technology that allows you to vary the
ignition timing[1], small initial fuel charges that then light a later
charge squirted in: modern diesels are amazing.

The thing is, they're mostly in Europe. The US simply doesn't get the
diesel thing. You really, really need to sample the diesel engines that
the likes of BMW and Jaguar are using. 300ft/lbs of torque, 145mph, and
40mpg economy.

[1] To avoid arguments here, I'm using the word ignition to mean the
point at which the mixture ignites....

 

California's unique geology and weather conditions drives the entire
country's air pollution legislation.

Nobody wants what happened to California to happen across the entire
USA.

Europe is different geologically. The Alps and the Pyrenees run east
and west. Africa and Europe are two continents joined and separated by
those mountains. The Mediterranean sea filled up only recently,
perhaps within the racial memories and myths of modern humans.

Driving through Greece and Italy reminded me of California's central
valley. The fog and smog and lack of visibility and the oleanders and
the diesel trucks could have been on the Plain of Thessaly, or near
Tulare.

Diesel fuel is cheap in Europe, but costs more in California than
regular grade gasoline, partly due to state and federal taxes.

There are far more trucks on European roads than private automobiles,
travellers can take the trains everywhere.

If a diesel truck in Germany belches out a lot of soot, Hungary and
the Ukraine get the particulates.

I was sitting in a sidewalk cafe on Capri, as a diesel truck drove by
and belched soot on my food.

The marble buildings in Pisa are chocolate brown from diesel
emissions.

Parisians who own marble buildings were allowed to choose between
cleaning the soot off their facades or paying their taxes.

Got earthquakes and 14,000 foot tall mountains in Europe?

Blame it all on plate tectonics. The Pacific plate is trying to crawl
under the North American plate and that has raised up high north/south
mountain ranges that act as walls to trap air pollution in the Los
Angeles basin and the San Joaquin valley.

Los Angeles county actually is better oriented to get rid of smog than
the central valley. The San Gabriel mountains are to the north of the
populated areas.

When the wind blows, Los Angeles' air pollution gets blown over the
pass between Mt. San Gorgonio and Mt. San Jacinto into the low desert
around Palm Springs.

Then the winds turn around and the Santa Anas blow the smog back to
Los Angeles.

It sucks to live in Pomona or Chino. My college friend said that he
lived in Pomona for six months before he saw Mt. Baldy.

California's SJV is about 600 miles long and 150 miles wide. It's a
wonderfully warm agricultural, dairy, and beef raising area.

Hoardes of smoky diesel trucks replaced the older railroad system that
hauled oranges and milk and oil to market. Dairies in Tulare county
produce more milk than Wisconsin or Switzerland, but that milk has to
be moved to market by endless lines of diesel trucks.

Environmentalists have revised cow pollution emissions downwards by
half. They are now saying that only 6 pounds of volatile emissions
come out of a cow's ass every day.

see clear to Fresno, 100 miles away. From Morro Rock in Sequoia
National Park, you could see the ocean, 150 miles away.

The naturalist John Muir could see the snow covered peaks of the
Sierra Nevada mountains 150 miles away as he walked from San Francisco
on his
explorations a century ago.

But that was before air pollution filled up the central valley. There
is no wind in the morning and cool air from the north causes a fog
which is an essential component of smog.

The diesel emissions and the cow farts are the other component, the
sun powers smog too, and the sky here is reddish grey. Some of the
color is from dust raised by farmers' plowing.

The smog is killing the trees in the forests. The ecosystem is dying,
why speed up the process by
building more diesel engines?

The American Motorcyclist Association published the smog emissions
limits for 2008. Motorcycles have to be cleaner running now.

Lawn mowers and weed whackers and stationary diesels were listed in
terms of tons of air pollutants emitted.

But diesel engines in trucks were mysteriously absent from the
legislation.

 

Oh, for ****'s sake. This has nothing to do with emissions regulations
*at all*.

Greece still has antique trucks (and cars) belching diesel. Italy much
less so. I dunno when you were there, but I can assure you, in the
last few years, the country has changed.

It costs more than regular petrol does in the UK. It's marginally
cheaper than petrol in many European countries, but "cheap"? In
France, where I was driving a diesel car last week, it cost a minimum
of 1 euro (US$1.32) per litre. That's about five bucks per (US)
gallon. And you think that's cheap?

What are you on? You're talking complete nonsense. In Britain there
are 400,000-odd commercial vehicles, and 23 million private cars. Are
you seriously suggesting that trucks outnumber private vehicles?
You're in a dream world.

But modern trucks *don't*, because of the new Euro emissions laws.

Yes. Both.

<snip a load more crap>

You know *nothing* about European legislation, commercial vehicle
development, diesel engine development, vehicle markets and even
geology.

 

When exactly did that stop our lovable krusty kritter from expounding on
a topic?

;-)

--
Later,
John



'indiana' is a 'nolnn' and 'hoosier' is a 'solkk'. Indiana doesn't solkk.

 

Well, exactly.

He's good on subjects he actually knows something about, but he seems to
think that he's equally good on subjects he knows FA about. And that
includes Europe.

His claims:

There are more commercial vehicles on European roads than private
vehicles.

Diesel is cheap in Europe[1].

The implication that Europe doesn't have earthquakes. I mean, just
google for Italy+earthquake. Even France has quakes, ferchrissakes.

The implication that we don't have high mountains in Europe.

The mind absolutely fucking boggles at his ignorance. But you'll never
get him to admit he's talking bollocks.

[1] It is, actually, in one or two countries. Greece. The Czech
Republic.

 

Well, exactly. There's a reason I killfiled him. His posts on subjects
that he knows about had been repeating for a while, with no new ones, so
the S/N ratio was going way down. Problem solved.

On a totally other note, I recall we had a brief discussion of MotorRad
some years back; you told me that it was a fine magazine. Well, I
finally got around to looking to see whether I could get it here in the
'States, because I was thinking that it would be a fun way to brush up
on my German. AFAICT, I'd have to try paying the generic "Ausland" rate
for it (that is, no US distributor that I can find), which makes it
$150/year or something insane like that. And their website is pure crap,
too. <sigh> Guess I'll just have to stick with BIKE! ;-)

--
Later,
John



'indiana' is a 'nolnn' and 'hoosier' is a 'solkk'. Indiana doesn't solkk.

 

So how does produce get to market in England? Is it carried in
coconuts tied together by a string and carried by two African
swallows?

Or does it move by railway, considering there are so few
trucks(according to you) ?

Everybody knows about the deadly smoke and fog they used to have in
London. What did they do to clean it up, give everybody a Vauxhall and
tell them to fend for themselves?

 

I never pay much attention to you. You're kind of like an echo in a
canyon, bouncing oof the walls in all direction.

When I answer a newbie's question, I'm not interested in getting into
a debate with all the regulars, I'm interested in helping that
individual.

 

It moves, mostly, on lorries (trucks).

You have walked into this face first, so you have nobody but yourself to
blame for making you look a fool. For some years I worked for the
Freight Transport Asociation in the UK, editing their truck magazine. It
was my job to know these things.

However, for reference:

http://www.pathfinder-one.com/Pages/articles/dec99trans.htm

Read the first paragraph. "However there are something in the region of
400,000 large goods vehicles moving a variety of non-hazardous goods
ranging from corn flakes to booze on Britain's roads every day of the
year "

Or try this one:

http://www.cfit.gov.uk/plenaries/0501mfp3.htm

That is a UK government site, by the way.

"HGVs (Heavy Good Vehicles)
There was a steep fall off in the numbers of goods vehicles over 3.5
tonnes licensed in the early 1990s and then very gradual growth since
then. There were 460,000 such vehicles in 1990, falling to 410,000 in
1993 before climbing steadily to 433,000 in 2002."

So now: do you really think we have more commercial vehicles on our
roads than private vehicles?

"Used to have" is your phrase, not mine. Good Heavens, you're right for
once. Google for Clean Air Act.

 

Check my other post. He's been given chapter, verse and index on why
he's wrong.....

 

Are you really this ignorant? The old "London Particulars" (the pet
name given to the city's legendary fogs, quite properly now identified
as smogs) had *nothing* to do with vehicle emissions.

Here's a clue: the term was used by Charles Dickens. How many motor
vehicles do you think were on the roads and streets in his day?

 

I don't remember that! Motorrad certainly used to be the best bike
magazine in Europe. I'm biased, though, and think that Bike is superb:
certainly way ahead of the other British magazines. It's years since
I've seen Motorrad, and I don't speak german anyway, though as a
French speaker, I always buy their mags whenever I'm in the country
(wich is often).

Returning to diesels, I'd love to see someone put a decent diesel
engine in a bike. Years ago, there were rumours that BMW was looking
at a diesel version of the K series, but nothing materialised and I
think it was, indeed, just rumour.

But imagine something like an 1100-1300cc modern turbodiesel four.
Power output.... hmmm, well, they're getting 70bhp/litre these days.
So maybe 80-85hp. But think of the torque: Ford/Jaguar gets 470ft/lbs
(Ye Gods!) from its new 3.6 litre V8 diesel. You should be able to get
150ft/lbs easily from 1300cc, and that would be a fabulous tourer.

You'd need quite a strong bike gearbox to cope with that torque, of
course, but something like a diesel Pan-European, or K1200RT rather
appeals. Especially given that it ought to return 60mpg easily, and
thus have a range of 300 miles. And very low emissions as well; lower
than petrol engines.