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RE: Chevrolet exits all ICE production by 2035
So the Post Office just signed a 10 year contract for new vehicles and apparently most of them will be ICE. I can't think of a more appropriate use for an electric vehicle than mail delivery. I don't know what the breakdown of the vehicles ordered is but this order really surprises me, especially under the new administration.
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Groover
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02/25/21 11:10am |
Tow Vehicles
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RE: Wonder if truck makers will start making 10001 # 1/2 tons.
We need to stay focused on solving the problem without getting hung up on how it is done. I am probably going to buy a Tesla soon but if we can solve the CO2 problem some other way that is great, options are always good.
Porsche claim to have one of these other ways and it shouldn't be ignored.
Porsche green fuel
I have heard other big names like Exxon, GM and CAT claim to have a green fuel but fail to bring it to market so I am a little cautious but here's hoping it is for real this time.
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Groover
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02/24/21 05:22pm |
Tow Vehicles
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RE: Ford 7.3 Gas motor
Yes speaking of numerical ratios because they are precise and easy to understand.
I knew a guy who ordered a car with the towing package and the lowest gearing available. The dealer gave him something in the order of 2.27 gears. The car could barely get started going up a hill but the engine was purring softly at 80mph. It is much less confusing to talk numerical ratios.
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Groover
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02/24/21 12:04pm |
Tow Vehicles
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RE: Wonder if truck makers will start making 10001 # 1/2 tons.
"3 decades later, air in most places is cleaner, and a lot more cars driving a lot more miles. It is a fact the pollution controls have helped.
Now was the auto industry and technology ready for the regulations? Bell no! My '73 Nova burned nearly twice as much gas as my '72 Super Cheyenne. But because of market forces and government regulations ICE cars run much cleaner, and burn much less fuel."
I agree that we are better off with current technology than what we had in the 1960's but there is an irony in this statement. By forcing control of selected emissions but ignoring others we ruined gas mileage for about 15 years and greatly accelerated global warming which now is the most intractable problem to deal with. To keep those gas guzzlers going we imported a lot of fuel and exchanged a lot of our wealth to those oil producing countries, damaging our economy and enriching many who have used it to harm us.
I would have greatly preferred doing like most other countries and first going straight to the source of the problem by taxing oil consumption in a meaningful way. Not a sudden slam but well planned and scheduled to phase in over 10-15 years so that everyone new what was coming and could plan for it. What we got instead were cars like my mother's 1978 Chrysler that dipped as low as 2mpg around town in cold weather. Sometimes forcing change too quickly just creates more problems.
I see irony in saying we should have slow change. For example you youngsters may not know it, and likely will not read what I say because history is not taught in schools, and is not allowed on this site. But at one time a evil organization called OPEC proved to the world they could pretty much destroy the economies of the world. The man that was president at that time put solar panels on the roof of the White House. How much more developed would the solar industry be if a major consumer like US government put it's power behind it for 40 years? Where would the EV industry be now if the next president would of said "In 10 years 25% of cars bought by Gov will be EV. Any company that can't supply the EVs will not supply the ICE vehicles? That would of made a market for millions of EVs every year for the last 30 years.
But instead, remove the panels from WH, and make sure the power of OPEC is returned to the oil companies.
I am very flattered that you think that I am a youngster. If that fits me then you must be geriatric. OPEC is the primary organization that I referred to as the beneficiary of the poor decisions that were made in the 1970s. That same President that put up the solar panels on the White House as a symbolic move made a lot of other poor decisions that led to both a lot global warming and his removal after one term, even though the two weren't yet connected.
The way I see it is that our nation has a phobia of attacking the
root source of much of our problems which simply put is fuel consumption. The best way to do that is through a fuel tax, not in addition to other taxes but in lieu of them. Then let capitalism work. Virtually every other nation has done that and has a lot more to show for their efforts than we do.
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Groover
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02/24/21 08:00am |
Tow Vehicles
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RE: Do you let you kids drive your motorhome
I let 2 of kids drive it but not the other 2. My son is the only one that I have let take it anywhere without me but that is due to the complexity of the operation of the coach more than the driving skills. I haven't let him borrow it lately because he left me with too much cleanup the last time he used it.
One of my daughters has good driving skills but the other two just don't seem like they even want to try diving it and certainly would struggle with the systems to keep it going.
I would probably be most willing to let my son-in-law take it. He has a lot of driving skills, mechanical competence and is willing to clean up after himself.
As a rule though, don't loan anything that you can't afford to replace unless you have extreme confidence that the borrower would make it right if something goes wrong. That might qualify two of my friends but I don't think that either would ever ask for it.
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Groover
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02/24/21 07:13am |
Class A Motorhomes
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RE: Wonder if truck makers will start making 10001 # 1/2 tons.
"3 decades later, air in most places is cleaner, and a lot more cars driving a lot more miles. It is a fact the pollution controls have helped.
Now was the auto industry and technology ready for the regulations? Bell no! My '73 Nova burned nearly twice as much gas as my '72 Super Cheyenne. But because of market forces and government regulations ICE cars run much cleaner, and burn much less fuel."
I agree that we are better off with current technology than what we had in the 1960's but there is an irony in this statement. By forcing control of selected emissions but ignoring others we ruined gas mileage for about 15 years and greatly accelerated global warming which now is the most intractable problem to deal with. To keep those gas guzzlers going we imported a lot of fuel and exchanged a lot of our wealth to those oil producing countries, damaging our economy and enriching many who have used it to harm us.
I would have greatly preferred doing like most other countries and first going straight to the source of the problem by taxing oil consumption in a meaningful way. Not a sudden slam but well planned and scheduled to phase in over 10-15 years so that everyone new what was coming and could plan for it. What we got instead were cars like my mother's 1978 Chrysler that dipped as low as 2mpg around town in cold weather. Sometimes forcing change too quickly just creates more problems.
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Groover
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02/24/21 06:57am |
Tow Vehicles
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RE: Ford 7.3 Gas motor
I haven't towed with one but I think expecting 10-11 towing is very optimistic. Fuelly says the average MPG is a little under 12, which would include towing and not. I think Fuelly tends to be pretty close to real world. I'd probably bank on most folks getting more like 8 towing. Obviously driving habits play a big role.
The downside of Fuelly is that you don't know how much is towing or even what type of towing. I would bet that in general the more capable rigs are worked harder than the less capable ones and comparing their towing economy numbers is misleading.
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Groover
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02/22/21 08:14am |
Tow Vehicles
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RE: Towing with F150 Poweboost
Powerboost is the only F150 with a 30 gallon gas tank. That’s it’s only gas tank option. Battery space has to come from somewhere.
Depending on the wheelbase & cab, standard tow package could have a 23 or 26 gallon tank with the other engines. HDPP & Max Tow get the 36 gallon tank non hybrid.
Bottom line: 30 gallon ain’t bad.
My 2018 has 36g tank
You have an EcoBoost, not a PowerBoost. The PowerBoost is the new for 2021 Hybrid.
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Groover
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02/21/21 02:32pm |
Tow Vehicles
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RE: Tesla Semi truck unveil & test ride set for Oct 26th !
New Tesla Model 2 = Game OVER for Gas
https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/50959766876_9972574c40_o.png
Wont hapen any time soon
Why make cheap Tesla when they cant meet demand for their expensive models?
Want cheap get Chevy Bolt
Yes. That is the elephant in the room. They haven't produced the base Model 3 they promised so why would they make this low margin car when they are a capacity with the higher profit vehicles.
They need to keep perfecting the middle/higher level product and branch out to new markets later.
Tesla did produce their base model for awhile. It didn’t sell well and for the extra 3000 bucks the plus model seemed like a worthwhile upgrade for many. At 36900 they’ll still sell a ton of cars and it’s actually pretty good bang for the buck.
Jmho.
It did not sell because they were not trying to sell it. In fact doing their best to discourage it. I don't blame them. But if you think it was due to lack of market interest I don't believe that to be true. This is a car company trying to survive and become the leader in the electric vehicle market. Don't take that as a negative as that is not what I am suggesting.
Why make the cheap model when you have people lined up to buy the expensive model? Every time a new pickup comes out they start out making the expensive models too. When they catch up with demand for those they start offering more variety. Tesla is doing the same thing.
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Groover
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02/20/21 06:03pm |
Tow Vehicles
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RE: Start
We have already had a 3 page discussion on this but didn't get far due to a lack of information from you. Without some detailed info possibly including some pictures don't expect this thread to be any more productive than the last one.
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Groover
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02/19/21 11:00am |
Class A Motorhomes
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RE: 2021 Ford F53 Chassis v8 engine
The 7.3V8 has about 21 year newer technology and from the reports I have read it shows. Not the the V10 was bad, but Ford learned a lot in those 21 years.
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Groover
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02/18/21 04:05pm |
Class A Motorhomes
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RE: 1991 Ford IDI engines/trucks for towing
I had a 1991 with the 7.5 gasser. As I recall the diesel was only rated for 14,000lbs GCWR. Since the truck that you are talking about weighs over 6,000lbs its trailer tow rating is less than 8,000lbs. Having said that, I have seen people pull much much more than that and get away with it. The other other question is How much do you want to pull up a hill with only 150hp? I remember driving a friends F350 1992 diesel and it didn't have much get up and go without a trailer.
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Groover
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02/18/21 11:49am |
Tow Vehicles
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RE: Towing with F150 Poweboost
New F150 Powerboosts are not known for fuel mileage when towing. Many, many reports on this issue.
Every test that I have seen so far seems to have been designed to avoid taking advantage of the regen capability of the hybrid. Accordingly, the test results are roughly what should be expected from a non-hybrid doing the same test.
My experience with my two 3.5L Ecoboost engines is that they do burn more fuel than a diesel but noticeably less than my old 460 or V10. In terms of $/mi the Ecoboost is on par with the diesel at local fuel prices.
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Groover
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02/15/21 11:21am |
Tow Vehicles
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RE: It might begin very soon
Well ... as an example to all complex-technology trusters out there, here's a harmless failure mode that happened last night to my daughter's fairly modern "slightly high tech" Lexus SUV:
It was just sitting in the driveway in the dark outside of her home when an electrical equipment failure began. Every 2-3 minutes it's rear hatch would open and the interior lights would come on. After a few seconds the hatch would close and the lights would go out. This strange failure cycle lasted who knows how long into the night, as she had to get some sleep so she could use a borrowed vehicle to go into work today.
Self-driving technology only belongs in freight trains - not in airplanes or public road vehicles. Not all gadgets that work for the good of some work for the good of all.
It wasn't that many years ago that I refused to have a vehicle with power windows because they were so failure prone and expensive to fix. Now every vehicle that I have but one old beater pickup has them with no failures. Three of those have well over 100,000 miles on them. I could list several other technologies that have become reliable and affordable during that time frame. The benefits of self driving far exceed the benefits of power windows. Talk to Tesla drivers and you may find that self driving is not as new or unproven as you think.
New planes and larger boats without autopilot are getting few and far between. Almost all commercial flights are at least partially flown by autopilot.
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Groover
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02/11/21 12:04pm |
Tow Vehicles
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RE: Hitch Receivers and Trailers
That sounds like a good plan to me. I don't have that problem right now but I will keep the solution in mind, unless I forget that too.
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Groover
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02/11/21 10:40am |
Tow Vehicles
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RE: It might begin very soon
I would be curious how automation would deal with icy roads and heavy snow fall when the edges of the road cant be identified or sensors packed with snow and ice. I am sure they have a solution for this, but at times when you cant see the road and gps may not have road exactly laid out the way that it physically is, not sure how they automate that.
How should a human respond? Program in that response.
A self driving truck may have an option that a human doesn't: Stop and wait it out. After all the computer isn't going to freeze to death while it waits.
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Groover
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02/11/21 09:14am |
Tow Vehicles
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RE: It might begin very soon
What happens when the road isn't where it is supposed to be? Like in a construction zone where the road was moved over a few feet. I know. The car runs into the guard rail. Seen it happen.
Without local augmentation, which is the vast majority of the country, GPS is not accurate to a few feet. Even if it was there are things other than guard rails that move so all self driving cars have methods of detecting these things. Tesla has had a few cases where they failed to properly interpret stationary objects but there are far more cases where they have successfully driven on unmapped roads, just relying on their sensors to find the way.
Tesla and the competition are addressing issues as they come up and are making a lot of progress. My understand is that Tesla has done at least two complete re-writes of their software to address deficiencies in detection. These re-writes have moved them away from being data driven to operating more like humans and using live, real time observations for determining the best path. Unlike humans, they do have radar and other methods of detecting things that cannot be detected visually for even more complete information.
Even though the number of Teslas on the road is increasing rapidly I have not been hearing about FSD failures nearly as often as I used to. It seems to me that they are steadily getting better.
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Groover
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02/11/21 08:00am |
Tow Vehicles
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RE: It might begin very soon
A lot of comments about potential risks here. I have confidence that just like with the 737MAX, defects will be discovered and dealt with. When that is done all vehicles on the road will get the update and it won't happen again. Unlike human drivers where everyone has to be taught from scratch. Also, if there is a road change the first automated vehicle to encounter it can quickly file a report and notify every other automated vehicle on the road to avoid it. Just yesterday I had to stop, turn around and backtrack with a large heavy trailer because of a poorly marked road closure. That could easily be avoided with automated vehicles. Who knows, we might even be able to get the humans making the changes to post them on a shared data site. Emergency vehicles could broadcast a geofence around themselves and troubled areas.
I like the story a few pages back about the stop sign coming and going. It reminded me of a time when apparently somebody had run over a stop sign. It was a road that I was not very familiar with and I didn't realize that the stop sign was missing until I was blowing through the intersection at 50mph. My wife didn't see a stop sign once due to heavy rain in the dark and did the same thing. Very fortunately, nobody was injured in either incident and vehicle damage was minor though for her it came very close to being much worse. Tesla FSD would have prevented both incidents altogether.
What I am really looking forward to is having the automated vehicles do a lot more of their driving at night to reduce daytime congestion. They can drive around the clock without fatigue to get things where they need to be faster. We won't have acres of trucks idling all night every night to keep a sleeping driver comfortable while consuming fuel and emitting pollution. Heck, we won't even need nearly as many truck stops taking up prime real estate along interstates and won't have nearly as many trucks getting on and off the road for the driver to a leak and get a snack. Automated driving may force us to deal with chronic problems that humans put up with or don't know who to complain to like potholes, ridiculous speed limits and poorly designed intersections. If a truck is involved in an accident it will be well documented as to what happened.
The biggest threat to automated driving is stupid drivers in cars around them or even worse, idiots bullying automated trucks with the knowledge that the trucks will yield to them. Submitted evidence of this behavior should result in traffic tickets being issued to the offending driver. The next big obstacle is how to deal with vehicle failures, like flat tires. It is not widely reported but even John Deere recognizes that tractors need to be equipped with sensors to detect whatever a human drive might, light vibrations, strange noises or smells. It can be dealt with. If it turns into a fire that could be a whole different story but a solution could be found.
All in all though, I see self driving as a tremendous benefit to our society but I don't deny that there will be bugs to work out. The stickiest bugs will be those deliberately caused by humans.
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Groover
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02/11/21 07:39am |
Tow Vehicles
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RE: Car and Driver pickup pull
The heaviest truck pulled the sled the farthest .... who knew!
In dirt tread is going to make a lot of difference and a strong start is important as it allows you to build momentum. I agree with the testers that whatever electronic nannies led the Ford to a weak start hurt their performance.
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Groover
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02/07/21 10:23pm |
Tow Vehicles
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RE: 5th Wheel Broken Stud Theory
One of the characteristics of steel is that it will last forever if the stress applied is kept to less than 50% of yield strength. One you go over 50% it lasts a number of cycles of the stress being applied and removed with life going down as the stress goes up. A bolt stressed at 90% yield strength will last forever if the stress is not relieved and re-applied.
In a proper design a bolt that is properly tightened holds 2 objects together with such force that they will not be pulled apart, thus changing the stress on the bolt. The rigidity of the flat face of the wheel against the flat face of the spindle should far exceed that of the bolts. So, unless there there is a mechanical defect in the flat faces causing them to rock the bolt should not be stretched enough to change the stress on it IF IT IS PROPERLY TIGHTENED. BEING OVERTIGHTENED WILL NOT CAUSE THE BOLTS TO FATIGUE WHILE IN USE or result in a failure while in use. Failure from overtightening should only occur during the tightening process.
Most fatigue failure is caused by bolts not being tightened enough! This allows the wheel to pull away from the hub at times, creating a cyclical stretching/stress increase.
So the failure in use is due to LOW TORQUE, mating surfaces that are not flat or possibly the stretching/shrinking cycle resulting from brakes heating up and cooling off and the different coefficient of expansion of the two metals. Having said that, the aluminum wheels that I just bought have steel inserts in the bolt holes to help prevent this situation.
If my trailer was to have trouble with studs breaking I would make sure that the lug nuts are tightened enough, that the wheel to hub mating surfaces are flat and smooth, that there are steel inserts in the aluminum wheel lug holes and that the brakes are working evenly so that one or two are not getting much hotter than they should.
On edit, one more thing to consider, especially if the trailer did not come with the wheels on it. I changed my trailer from steel to aluminum wheels and had a terrible time finding lug bolts the right length. The lug bolts that came with the steel wheels were too short and all that I could find at the parts houses were too long, in both the unthreaded shank and overall length. I finally found some on Amazon with the right shank but were still too long. I was able to cut them to length. I actually just got that done a couple of weeks ago so it will be a while before I can swear that they are reliable.
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Groover
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02/07/21 10:14pm |
Tech Issues
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