I know this is a little off the track, but my motor scooter runs on the high octane unleaded, like a lot of European vehicles. Did you see on TV recently, they recon you get more economy using the high octane petrol???
Regarding claims for better economy on higher octane fuel, I have tried it for a while but didn't notice any difference. There is also the school of thought that ethanol E10 fuel, whilst being cheaper, gives less economy, so you are back to where you started. Any thoughts on this?
From what I have gleaned it doesn't matter one way or the other whether ethanol is used or not. I don't like ethanol mainly on the fact it uses agricultural land to create it. This land is essential for food cropping.
Besides, the 'peak oil' myth has been around for a century. I'm curious to note a recent helicopter crash near Mt Hagen in PNG was to do with an oil drilling rig...so are they getting oil in PNG? Plus there is huge supplies of shale oil available in many parts of the globe including Australia.
But the Greens are against its use like they are against everything...including contact sports like rugby. No. Not joking. Look up their policy page.
I'm not a Greenie, but we have to scale down the pollution & the emmissions, it is starting to get hard to breath, or have we reached the "tipping point" & it's too late! This is where the Emmissions Trading Scheme is supposed to help the Planet, I'm doing my bit. OME
Actually, I think it is the particles in the air from cars, etc, that cause some breathing problems. The smogs and very dense fumes of the past have gone due to better exhaust and chimney systems.
CO2 can't make it hard to breathe unless you lock yourself in a cupboard and let CO2 build up from your own breath. But the Atmosphere only has about 350 ppm...parts per MILLION of CO2 in it. It is only a trace gas. It's like if I gave you $350 out of a$million Lotto win. You would be not impressed by my generosity.
CO2 is a good gas for plants as it helps them to grow. Even if the earth warmed up it would be better than getting colder. More crops can grow faster in more places win warmer places.
Meantime, our $23 a tonne carbon tax is looking silly because the world stocks for carbon trading has fallen to $4 a tonne. Who, in their right mind, would buy stocks at $23 a share when they can be got for $4 a share? Gee, we are smart leading the world.
I was listening to Dr. Carl on the ABC this morning & they had a bit on the Universe. He was saying that light, when it is starting & when it is dying is solid, so when it hits the retina of the eye it is solid. I find this a bit hard to get my head around! Cheers, OME
Light is not solid. It is a mass less particle. Newton first postulated that light was made of particles. He was only half right. Light, like all particles, is also a WAVE in the electromagnetic spectrum. This spectrum ranges from Gamma rays down to long radio waves many miles long.
Light that we 'see' is only a small fraction of these waves. We 'see' violet to red. The particles are really called photons. These photons stimulate cones and rods in our retina attuned to the wavelength of the photons.
The fact that PARTICLES such as light, electrons, etc, are also WAVES at the SAME TIME is what is called the the study of quantum (quanta = small parts) mechanics or physics. This is why it can be so hard to understand and no scientist does understand it all.
Electrons, for example KNOW when they are being measured for either position or movement. You can't measure both with accuracy. How does an electron know?...good question...no answer yet.
BTW, the Romans were a very smart lot. But they thought our eyes sent light out to objects we see. Also, they were the mob who said the Greek, Ptolemy, was correct about the earth being the center of everything. It took up to the 1500s to change that.
Don't take too much notice of Dr Carl! While I like the man he is nowhere near as clever as the image he has built up. He is very good at sidestepping questions he cannot answer by "blinding you with science", so much so that you think he has answered the question.
I was getting very confused listening to Dr. Carl on the ABC. I like listening to his answers to phone questions, but I think nev seems to makes more sense.
Have you seen the little VW car to be released to the masses in China in 2013. It looks like a Gogomobile & is supposed to be as safe as any bigger car on the market, with all the safety equipment on board, even though it looks a bit spartan on the inside. It is a single seater, one cyclinder diesel and is the most economical car in the world. I think it is being released as a Beatle. I wonder if it will come to Australia. Just the thing for doing the shopping in? OME
Talking about economical, I saw an electric car at the RACQ Motorfest today. It was in a display tent by RACQ, showing how they can come out & give you a boost if you happen to run out of electricity in your electric car. They have a small generator in a trailer, which they plug in, give you a boost & you are on the way again; problem solved. OME
So once again we see Australian taxpayers being asked to subsidise car makers; viz, Ford, GM and Toyota. Mitsubishi, Leyland, etc all left long ago. Of course the voters of Geelong and Elizabeth must be placated. I think Ford will go. GM and Toyota might stay. I agree we do need a car manufacturing base.
Pity we couldn't long ago really use our design and manufacturing talent to make a true Australian car. Trouble is, the so called capitalists in Australia don't seem interested investing in such things. They seem to want to spend money on Sydney-Hobart yachts, etc.
The likes of Dick Smith could invest money into such schemes. Instead he tries to flog his brand of Australian food products at higher prices than imports. He rants about imports but made his money selling imported electronics. He rants about Green sustainability but owns helicopters and planes spewing out CO2...why doesn't he sell them and buy an Aussie made Toyota Camry hybrid to get around?
here's a bit of Kilroy-history for you. As countries have their manufactuting abilities increased and technology grows, the size and price of a country's produce, and exports, increases.
Mediaeval England, produced meat and grain, then flax and copper, then iron, armour and arrows, then cars and single engined aeroplanes. ( and then it won(?) the war)
Australia has basically been selling its dirt for the coal and iron. never produced much of note otherwise
Japan produced plastic knick-knacks, then transistor radios, then Stereograms, and now cars, from the Australian Iron and Coal. No one else is in the car market, save for usa who basically do not sell outside the usa.
Do you realise how very minuscule the Australian car market is? Japan could supply Australia's yearly needs in a day or so's production. Quite simply put, If the Australian Government didn't bribe ToyoMitsuHonDaihatsu to keep their plants open, than all those workers would become Bank Customer Service People, and .... have to wear red dots on their foreheads.
Built my own 4 berth van when I was much younger, had plenty of good use out of it too, when the kids were young. I made the mistake of letting the then Wife a drive because I was feeling a bit tired. She felt it was getting out of control so she went for the brakes, the whole lot jack knifed, that was the end of the van, very scary. It put me off towing for life! You can't beat a little motorhome, only way to go!!!
Towing something relatively heavy, which sits a long way behind the tow vehicle can be very worrying. I know that when I used to race cars, if you didn't have the yoke at just the right length, the trailer could develop a mind of its own. In my latter days of racing, when I switched to tin tops, I managed to secure the Mini on the tray of a friend's Fargo ute, which make everyone feel more secure.
These days I have a 4WD capable of pulling a fair-sized van, but I don't ... my wife has forbidden it!
I know I carry on about alternative fuels, and add that to my favourite passtime, looking up 'Boats-I-can't-afford, on the web, and I can come up with all manner of weird an wonderful contrivances.
Last night I was dreaming over some overpriced, super expensive catamarans, when I chanced upon a cat for sale. This boat was apparently designed for operation of a charity organisation in remote areas and was powered by a pair of 'sail-drives' (these are usually built as auxilliary engines for racing yachts and have an engine inside the boat with a through-hull fitting and drive-shaft outside and feature a feathering propeller), the reason given for these engines, is that they are not only cheap to run, but they can use coconut-oil as fuel!
It will not come as a surprise, that coconuts are quite plentiful in remote tropical areas ... all you need is a press to squeeze the be-j***sus out of them, to extract the potential fuel and some form of filter.
The only reason that I can think of that would preclude the use of coconut-oil in a diesel car, is that addition that is the cause of about 50 per cent of engine problems in modern cars ... their computer! So all we need is some bright spark to write a program for all the diesel cars that we are going to buy, and we can all run around on sweet-smelling, infinitely renewable, non-poluting coconut oil that can be produced in great profusion in Australia's wet tropics!
I bet Bob Katter would be over the moon with that one ...
The Queensland traffic autorities have got one thing right, and that's allowing car-licenced drivers to ride 50cc scooters. Trouble is these little buzz-boxes are too far underpowered. If they must persist with separate licences for motorbikes then up the capacity of the scooters to 100cc. At least give them a reserve of power to keep up with traffic on 80 km/h roads.
At the moment, they are too slow; a mobile chicane that everyone wants to pass ... and that's how accidents happen. If there is any vehicle that can easily attain the legal speed limit, with a small amount of power in reserve, there is less incentive for larger vehicles to pass.
The other trouble is, that scooter riders have been, by and large, wrongly taught traffic sense. They should be taught to ride near to the centreline on a two-lane road and near the lane markings of a multiple lane road. This makes car and truck drivers pass them as if they were a car, that way there's less chance of contact ... some frustration granted, but less contact.
The tragic accident that happened on the Gold Coast a few weeks ago, when a young rider on a bicycle fitted with a small engine was killed, allegedly going through a red light. Police said that such conveyances are illegal ... well since that time I have seen at least a dozen on the road and parked. If they are illegal, then why aren't the police taking them off the road? There seems to be no attempt by their owners to hide them, why are police not acting?
I rather think that the law in Queensland is like that in NSW. In that you may legally have "motor assisted pedal," but not "pedal assisted motor." Which brings me to a common cock-up by the roads authority. You have all undoubtedly seen signs at the entry to Freeways, stating the kinds of vehicles not permitted on freeways ... ie horse-drawn vehicles, bicycles etc and "Mopeds"! Might I suggest that if any scooter rider who is booked for such an offence, for inadvertently riding his scooter on the freeway ... his defence (if it lands in court), is that he wasn't riding a moped (the terms are NOT interchangable). A moped is so-called, because it has pedals! MOtor-PEDal = MoPed. As a teenager having escaped the NSW Government Railways, I worked for Bruce Small (Malvern Star Stores), and sold and serviced Vespa scooters and Raleigh mopeds, which had a 90cc Villiers motor that could be started by pedalling like mad, and dropping the clutch. There is a big difference.
Firstly, allow me to clarify your thinking, these are ++Electric++ Push-Bikes Powered by Sunlight. Just like the electric cars racing annually from Darwin to Adelaide/ Alice (?)
So these Bikes'll proceed at a speed of approx 25 km/h tops, and they'll do this *Without* your assistance on the Pedals. Which also has its positives and negatives, limp leg muscles amongst the negs.
And Cold and rain. Well, it's not your fault, probably, that you live is such a dreary place. Move to the land of sunshine, where, because of water restrictions, showers last no longer than four minutes.
On the contrary, there is plenty more oil and gas to be had. New drilling techniques and deep sea drilling have opened new fields that were thought to be useless. New fields are being found all the time. Back in 1921 an official report said that no more oil would be found!
Coal and oil/gas are the main suppliers of cheap energy in the world and will be for decades to come even if nuclear power is increased. 'Clean renewables' (latest buzzword) will never make more than a fraction toward providing power for modern life and batteries, despite being smaller, will never substitute for raw high power from petrol or diesel.
I don't believe that CO2 which is only 0.04% of the air has any great influence on climate. Anyway, if it does get warmer that would be far better than getting cooler.
I personally believe that not all oil, etc on the earth has come from old forests, etc. There are many mysteries in our Solar System. Some moons around Jupiter and Saturn are very odd. One is made of pure sulfur. One is made of pure water and ice. And one, Titan, is made of pure hydrocarbons...read oil. It literally rains oil onto a methane surface filled with lakes of oil. Where did this all come from?
Myself, I prefer **Bicycles**, they're so very much easier to drive, park, turn, (and pay for). I want a small bicycle-sized wall-less shed, 7 foot high, will be about the footprint-size of one Solar cell taken from a neighbour's roof, to house my bike in overnight, and charge it , or its batteries, during the day.
I'll have free transport for life. Will need to have one set of batteries on the bicycle, and one charging during the day, no big problem. They're about the size of a bicycle pump, and the weight of a loaf of bread.
In a perfect world .. . . There could be sheds everywhere at the other end of the trip, maybe Shopping centres, office blocks, factories (or use a bit of the roof area) will have a universal plug-in for bicycles. But I'll have my little One Solar Panel thanks whle i wait for perfection.
Whose aunt was it was a bit 'wobbly' on her spokes ... The Three or Four Wheel variety will be for her, then. And i'm not talking a Prius, I'm talking a pedi-cab size thing.
And all at 20 km/hour. (Won't Bob Jane and his cohorts be spinning in their graves.)
Beats Shank's Pony, eh?.
Just think of the Positives. Most of which, incidentally have some interest group Depending on their continuance.
For that Reason, i think Toyota, Holden, Ford, Police, Bitumen and Concrete providers, Councils, Council Road Staff, Pollution Councils, Hospital Staff at all levels, Suncorp and other Insurers,and the 'Upper Crust' will all agree this is a laudable idea but in *their particular case* it just would not be feasible.
Fewer pretentious people (Top Hats on a Bicycle are 'out')
Feel Free to add your contribution to the list of Positives for a Bicycle Universe. And also the reason why it would not be feasible in *your particular case*.
I have a friend in Sydney, who pulls two greyhounds around to dog races in a tiny caravan pulled by a postie bike. If you slept in the foetal position, a small man could probably be accomodated ... couldn't cook in it though ... well, you could, but you couldn't sleep AND cook. If you managed to buy one it would probably smell of dog and you could catch fleas.
There are no positives where bikes are concerned! Have you ever tried to go to work on a bike ... at 6 ay bloody em, when it's still pitch black, and it's five below bloody zero, sleet driven horizontally at 60 knots and your back tyre is half flat and you've forgotten your bloody pump? Added to this mild discomfort, you have no rear mudguard and there's a constant spray of freezing bloody cold mud up the back of your coat (no bloody water-proofs ... they are made from petro-chemicals see.)
Just to make things interesting, you are on a constant 1 in 50 gradient, which means that going home, you can, provided conditions remain constant, you can look forward to a raging sleet-filled gale, full in your face, and you have to pedal like bloody mad, just to keep from actually going backwards!
This is not fiction ... this is what it was like when I was a teenager, and the only viable work was shovelling coal to feed the maw of a steam locomotive, you had to ride this damnable velocipede to the locomotive workshops, where a pre-dawn start was the go. When you got there, there was so much steam that soon every item of clothing became saturated with sooty, cooled steam.
Then you were expected to to take an old 'K' class (built in 1923) down to the yard and pick up your load, and then set off on a six-hours of torture from Goulburn to Cooma or alternatively Cootamundra (or Coota-bloody-mundra as my grandfather used to call it, with good reason) ... this, with your flamin' bikes, you would wish on us all again? We weren't all born and raised in sunny Queensland sonny!
We would all revert to such as Britain, in the dark ages, where you needed a coach to go from one town to another, if you could find one ... and it was such a buggar of a trip, that people rarely went. As a consequence, every town and village and even suburbs, developed their own patois, so pretty soon one part of the country couldn't understand what the other half was talking about.
Everone on the NSWGR (Railways) under the age of 35, was saving like mad to buy a car! To get away for bloody push bikes! And all these tree-hugging hippies want to damn us all to their return! Not on your nelly mate!
Listen to me all you good GOTers ... this is what happens when you begin drawing pictures of someone on fences and walls, and telling everyone that 'Kilroy was here' ... They're like bloody politicians, they get carried away with their own publicity, and get us all riding flamin' push bloody bikes again ... Once more, not on your bloody nelly mate!
To Kilroy ... may you cotter pin get all caught up in your derailleur sproket, mate!
I agree. Brisbane CC has been pushing (excuse the pun) riding bikes for years. But Brisbane is very unsuited for bikes unless you are young and quite healthy. It is a very hilly place where learner drivers have a fit trying to use a manual car from a standing start. The sun is extremely hot even on a cool winter day. The streets are too narrow. About 1850 a NSW governor said Brisbane would never amount to anything. So, the main streets which were staked out to be about 50 metres wide were reduced to 25 metres wide.
The BCC can't seem to realise we are not Amsterdam or even Maryborough...last time I was there it seemed full of bikes but the roads are wide and the land is flat.
More bikes are now involved in accidents. Only 2 days ago just near a blind corner near our house a 9 year old boy nearly clipped us on his bike. Then at the corner he could have been killed had a car been coming along. We have had to be very careful there ourselves. If a car had hit him the driver would be called the 'world's worst' yet they could have done nothing to prevent a collision.
Like General Electric ... the world's only company to combine the manufacture of jet engines and loan-sharking!
I know how you could make your motor scooter do 200 km/h too ... push it off a cliff! If you want to still ride it: and get about double its normal power output; you could mix up a tank full of about 95 percent nitro-methane and five percent benzol ... it will go like the clappers for about ten kilometres. Then you have to replace the piston (it will have a large hole in the blunt end), the barrel (presuming it is a single cylinder), it will have score marks like coarse grit sandpaper and you'll probably have to replace the big end bearing too ... it's bound to have more slop than a pig's bucket ... but you will have had the ride of your life! Mind you, the meth/benzol mix will set you back about $75 a litre, that is if you can find a supplier.
Alternatively, you could run it on ether, with a little light castor oil thrown in and it will run pretty well too ... trouble is, everyone down wind will be feeling extremely drowsy. And when Constrable Plod wakes up and figures out the reason for the plague of community sonambulism, you'll have spent an evening, with bed and breakfast in the local slammer ... and all for about $30 a litre from your local chemist, if you tell him it's fuel for your model aeroplane.
There's a wide world of alternative fuels out there, if you're willing to give them a go and have deep enough pockets to support it. I have seen a 1927 Rugby, running quite happily on mineral turpentine and a diesel milking machine run on cream ... both are very expensive as a fuel. But when you don't have an option, and you have to be some place quicker than a horse or a bike can take you, and the closest bus/tram stop is 10 metres from you destination, you'll try anything.
This then is the debate. The more intelligent guess is, that we are about five years from a $5 per litre price for petrol; 10 years away from a battery which will give a two-seater a 300 km range at 80 km/h. Diesels are OK, they can happily run on all kinds of heavier renewable oil. However electric ignition (petrol), vehicles are more problematic ... My money (for the moment), is on ethanol. Sure it has its problems ... but then so did petrol ... anyone in the 70 year old bracket will remember all the multiplicty of brand names (most of which no longer exist), and all the 'additives' ... Remember 'Atlantic?' One of its products was Atlantic 'Ethyl' have a guess what the 'Ethyl' was? There were all kinds of nasty chemical stuff added to the fuel of the 1950s.
The good thing about ethanol is that the most efficient feed stock in its manufacture is sugar ... and good old Oz has one of the best supplies in the world. This would make us self-sufficient, which in theory would mean cheaper fuel (but knowing how avaricious governments can be), it probably wouldn't.
The one thing that no one has thought of in all this fuel debate is plastics. All those wonderful things that make other products air-tight, waterproof, keep fresh, easy carry, throw away ... and all the other thing we in our modern society have grown to love/hate ... guess what their largest component is? That's right petro chemicals! And it's not just in containers ... it's in detergents, cables, insulation, boat building, car body components, in fact just about everything you can think of.
So which would you rather, that smart brief case, or a litre of petrol ... that ag pipe for the garden, or a litre of petrol? You get my drift ... I reckon we had better make up out mind which way we're going to jump, or forever feel sorry about all those plastic shopping bags we threw away!
High octane V ethanol
Regarding claims for better economy on higher octane fuel, I have tried it for a while but didn't notice any difference. There is also the school of thought that ethanol E10 fuel, whilst being cheaper, gives less economy, so you are back to where you started. Any thoughts on this?
BB
From what I have gleaned it
From what I have gleaned it doesn't matter one way or the other whether ethanol is used or not. I don't like ethanol mainly on the fact it uses agricultural land to create it. This land is essential for food cropping.
Besides, the 'peak oil' myth has been around for a century. I'm curious to note a recent helicopter crash near Mt Hagen in PNG was to do with an oil drilling rig...so are they getting oil in PNG? Plus there is huge supplies of shale oil available in many parts of the globe including Australia.
But the Greens are against its use like they are against everything...including contact sports like rugby. No. Not joking. Look up their policy page.
Not a Greenie
I'm not a Greenie, but we have to scale down the pollution & the emmissions, it is starting to get hard to breath, or have we reached the "tipping point" & it's too late! This is where the Emmissions Trading Scheme is supposed to help the Planet, I'm doing my bit. OME
Actually, I think it is the
Actually, I think it is the particles in the air from cars, etc, that cause some breathing problems. The smogs and very dense fumes of the past have gone due to better exhaust and chimney systems.
CO2 can't make it hard to breathe unless you lock yourself in a cupboard and let CO2 build up from your own breath. But the Atmosphere only has about 350 ppm...parts per MILLION of CO2 in it. It is only a trace gas. It's like if I gave you $350 out of a$million Lotto win. You would be not impressed by my generosity.
CO2 is a good gas for plants as it helps them to grow. Even if the earth warmed up it would be better than getting colder. More crops can grow faster in more places win warmer places.
Meantime, our $23 a tonne carbon tax is looking silly because the world stocks for carbon trading has fallen to $4 a tonne. Who, in their right mind, would buy stocks at $23 a share when they can be got for $4 a share? Gee, we are smart leading the world.
Doctor Carl.
I was listening to Dr. Carl on the ABC this morning & they had a bit on the Universe. He was saying that light, when it is starting & when it is dying is solid, so when it hits the retina of the eye it is solid. I find this a bit hard to get my head around! Cheers, OME
Light is not solid. It is a
Light is not solid. It is a mass less particle. Newton first postulated that light was made of particles. He was only half right. Light, like all particles, is also a WAVE in the electromagnetic spectrum. This spectrum ranges from Gamma rays down to long radio waves many miles long.
Light that we 'see' is only a small fraction of these waves. We 'see' violet to red. The particles are really called photons. These photons stimulate cones and rods in our retina attuned to the wavelength of the photons.
The fact that PARTICLES such as light, electrons, etc, are also WAVES at the SAME TIME is what is called the the study of quantum (quanta = small parts) mechanics or physics. This is why it can be so hard to understand and no scientist does understand it all.
Electrons, for example KNOW when they are being measured for either position or movement. You can't measure both with accuracy. How does an electron know?...good question...no answer yet.
BTW, the Romans were a very smart lot. But they thought our eyes sent light out to objects we see. Also, they were the mob who said the Greek, Ptolemy, was correct about the earth being the center of everything. It took up to the 1500s to change that.
Doctor don't know
Don't take too much notice of Dr Carl! While I like the man he is nowhere near as clever as the image he has built up. He is very good at sidestepping questions he cannot answer by "blinding you with science", so much so that you think he has answered the question.
Brackenboy
Thanks Nev & BB!
I was getting very confused listening to Dr. Carl on the ABC. I like listening to his answers to phone questions, but I think nev seems to makes more sense.
Thanks OME
What I Recon
I recon just stick to what is recommended for your vehicle & you can't go wrong!
VW for China
Have you seen the little VW car to be released to the masses in China in 2013. It looks like a Gogomobile & is supposed to be as safe as any bigger car on the market, with all the safety equipment on board, even though it looks a bit spartan on the inside. It is a single seater, one cyclinder diesel and is the most economical car in the world. I think it is being released as a Beatle. I wonder if it will come to Australia. Just the thing for doing the shopping in? OME
Don't tell my Hubby! Anything
Don't tell my Hubby! Anything that's very economical on fuel and he thinks it's the best in the world! I don't want one!
Actually, he's probably read about it in the Motor magazines.
Electric Car
Talking about economical, I saw an electric car at the RACQ Motorfest today. It was in a display tent by RACQ, showing how they can come out & give you a boost if you happen to run out of electricity in your electric car. They have a small generator in a trailer, which they plug in, give you a boost & you are on the way again; problem solved. OME
So once again we see
So once again we see Australian taxpayers being asked to subsidise car makers; viz, Ford, GM and Toyota. Mitsubishi, Leyland, etc all left long ago. Of course the voters of Geelong and Elizabeth must be placated. I think Ford will go. GM and Toyota might stay. I agree we do need a car manufacturing base.
Pity we couldn't long ago really use our design and manufacturing talent to make a true Australian car. Trouble is, the so called capitalists in Australia don't seem interested investing in such things. They seem to want to spend money on Sydney-Hobart yachts, etc.
The likes of Dick Smith could invest money into such schemes. Instead he tries to flog his brand of Australian food products at higher prices than imports. He rants about imports but made his money selling imported electronics. He rants about Green sustainability but owns helicopters and planes spewing out CO2...why doesn't he sell them and buy an Aussie made Toyota Camry hybrid to get around?
Progressive Industry
Yo Neville,
here's a bit of Kilroy-history for you. As countries have their manufactuting abilities increased and technology grows, the size and price of a country's produce, and exports, increases.
Mediaeval England, produced meat and grain, then flax and copper, then iron, armour and arrows, then cars and single engined aeroplanes. ( and then it won(?) the war)
Australia has basically been selling its dirt for the coal and iron. never produced much of note otherwise
Japan produced plastic knick-knacks, then transistor radios, then Stereograms, and now cars, from the Australian Iron and Coal. No one else is in the car market, save for usa who basically do not sell outside the usa.
Do you realise how very minuscule the Australian car market is? Japan could supply Australia's yearly needs in a day or so's production. Quite simply put, If the Australian Government didn't bribe ToyoMitsuHonDaihatsu to keep their plants open, than all those workers would become Bank Customer Service People, and .... have to wear red dots on their foreheads.
Caravans
Built my own 4 berth van when I was much younger, had plenty of good use out of it too, when the kids were young. I made the mistake of letting the then Wife a drive because I was feeling a bit tired. She felt it was getting out of control so she went for the brakes, the whole lot jack knifed, that was the end of the van, very scary. It put me off towing for life! You can't beat a little motorhome, only way to go!!!
OME
I'm with you OME ...
Towing something relatively heavy, which sits a long way behind the tow vehicle can be very worrying. I know that when I used to race cars, if you didn't have the yoke at just the right length, the trailer could develop a mind of its own. In my latter days of racing, when I switched to tin tops, I managed to secure the Mini on the tray of a friend's Fargo ute, which make everyone feel more secure.
These days I have a 4WD capable of pulling a fair-sized van, but I don't ... my wife has forbidden it!
Cheers,
JC
A big carry-on ...
I know I carry on about alternative fuels, and add that to my favourite passtime, looking up 'Boats-I-can't-afford, on the web, and I can come up with all manner of weird an wonderful contrivances.
Last night I was dreaming over some overpriced, super expensive catamarans, when I chanced upon a cat for sale. This boat was apparently designed for operation of a charity organisation in remote areas and was powered by a pair of 'sail-drives' (these are usually built as auxilliary engines for racing yachts and have an engine inside the boat with a through-hull fitting and drive-shaft outside and feature a feathering propeller), the reason given for these engines, is that they are not only cheap to run, but they can use coconut-oil as fuel!
It will not come as a surprise, that coconuts are quite plentiful in remote tropical areas ... all you need is a press to squeeze the be-j***sus out of them, to extract the potential fuel and some form of filter.
The only reason that I can think of that would preclude the use of coconut-oil in a diesel car, is that addition that is the cause of about 50 per cent of engine problems in modern cars ... their computer! So all we need is some bright spark to write a program for all the diesel cars that we are going to buy, and we can all run around on sweet-smelling, infinitely renewable, non-poluting coconut oil that can be produced in great profusion in Australia's wet tropics!
I bet Bob Katter would be over the moon with that one ...
Cheers,
JC
Addendum
The Queensland traffic autorities have got one thing right, and that's allowing car-licenced drivers to ride 50cc scooters. Trouble is these little buzz-boxes are too far underpowered. If they must persist with separate licences for motorbikes then up the capacity of the scooters to 100cc. At least give them a reserve of power to keep up with traffic on 80 km/h roads.
At the moment, they are too slow; a mobile chicane that everyone wants to pass ... and that's how accidents happen. If there is any vehicle that can easily attain the legal speed limit, with a small amount of power in reserve, there is less incentive for larger vehicles to pass.
The other trouble is, that scooter riders have been, by and large, wrongly taught traffic sense. They should be taught to ride near to the centreline on a two-lane road and near the lane markings of a multiple lane road. This makes car and truck drivers pass them as if they were a car, that way there's less chance of contact ... some frustration granted, but less contact.
The tragic accident that happened on the Gold Coast a few weeks ago, when a young rider on a bicycle fitted with a small engine was killed, allegedly going through a red light. Police said that such conveyances are illegal ... well since that time I have seen at least a dozen on the road and parked. If they are illegal, then why aren't the police taking them off the road? There seems to be no attempt by their owners to hide them, why are police not acting?
I rather think that the law in Queensland is like that in NSW. In that you may legally have "motor assisted pedal," but not "pedal assisted motor." Which brings me to a common cock-up by the roads authority. You have all undoubtedly seen signs at the entry to Freeways, stating the kinds of vehicles not permitted on freeways ... ie horse-drawn vehicles, bicycles etc and "Mopeds"! Might I suggest that if any scooter rider who is booked for such an offence, for inadvertently riding his scooter on the freeway ... his defence (if it lands in court), is that he wasn't riding a moped (the terms are NOT interchangable). A moped is so-called, because it has pedals! MOtor-PEDal = MoPed. As a teenager having escaped the NSW Government Railways, I worked for Bruce Small (Malvern Star Stores), and sold and serviced Vespa scooters and Raleigh mopeds, which had a 90cc Villiers motor that could be started by pedalling like mad, and dropping the clutch. There is a big difference.
Cheers,
JC
Push Bikes - Whatcha Gunna Do?
Firstly, allow me to clarify your thinking, these are ++Electric++ Push-Bikes Powered by Sunlight. Just like the electric cars racing annually from Darwin to Adelaide/ Alice (?)
So these Bikes'll proceed at a speed of approx 25 km/h tops, and they'll do this *Without* your assistance on the Pedals. Which also has its positives and negatives, limp leg muscles amongst the negs.
And Cold and rain. Well, it's not your fault, probably, that you live is such a dreary place. Move to the land of sunshine, where, because of water restrictions, showers last no longer than four minutes.
Incidentally, go to http://www.eldersweather.com.au/dam-level/qld/ to see the effect that shortening showers has on water levels.
But back to the main thrust, there IS NO MORE PETROL, no shale oil, Natural Gas, The world is going to go, not with a bang, but with a whimper.
So in the words of some less than talented songwriter of recent years " Whatcha Gunna Do? "
.
On the contrary, there is
On the contrary, there is plenty more oil and gas to be had. New drilling techniques and deep sea drilling have opened new fields that were thought to be useless. New fields are being found all the time. Back in 1921 an official report said that no more oil would be found!
Coal and oil/gas are the main suppliers of cheap energy in the world and will be for decades to come even if nuclear power is increased. 'Clean renewables' (latest buzzword) will never make more than a fraction toward providing power for modern life and batteries, despite being smaller, will never substitute for raw high power from petrol or diesel.
I don't believe that CO2 which is only 0.04% of the air has any great influence on climate. Anyway, if it does get warmer that would be far better than getting cooler.
I personally believe that not all oil, etc on the earth has come from old forests, etc. There are many mysteries in our Solar System. Some moons around Jupiter and Saturn are very odd. One is made of pure sulfur. One is made of pure water and ice. And one, Titan, is made of pure hydrocarbons...read oil. It literally rains oil onto a methane surface filled with lakes of oil. Where did this all come from?
Save the Planet!
What we need is a Solar Powered Electric car, it is the only way to save the Planet from car fumes.
Solar powered Something, for sure !
Myself, I prefer **Bicycles**, they're so very much easier to drive, park, turn, (and pay for). I want a small bicycle-sized wall-less shed, 7 foot high, will be about the footprint-size of one Solar cell taken from a neighbour's roof, to house my bike in overnight, and charge it , or its batteries, during the day.
I'll have free transport for life. Will need to have one set of batteries on the bicycle, and one charging during the day, no big problem. They're about the size of a bicycle pump, and the weight of a loaf of bread.
In a perfect world .. . . There could be sheds everywhere at the other end of the trip, maybe Shopping centres, office blocks, factories (or use a bit of the roof area) will have a universal plug-in for bicycles. But I'll have my little One Solar Panel thanks whle i wait for perfection.
Whose aunt was it was a bit 'wobbly' on her spokes ... The Three or Four Wheel variety will be for her, then. And i'm not talking a Prius, I'm talking a pedi-cab size thing.
And all at 20 km/hour. (Won't Bob Jane and his cohorts be spinning in their graves.)
Beats Shank's Pony, eh?.
Just think of the Positives. Most of which, incidentally have some interest group Depending on their continuance.
For that Reason, i think Toyota, Holden, Ford, Police, Bitumen and Concrete providers, Councils, Council Road Staff, Pollution Councils, Hospital Staff at all levels, Suncorp and other Insurers,and the 'Upper Crust' will all agree this is a laudable idea but in *their particular case* it just would not be feasible.
Feel Free to add your contribution to the list of Positives for a Bicycle Universe. And also the reason why it would not be feasible in *your particular case*.
. . . . Kilroy
Just Imagine
Imagine pulling a caravan with a bicycle!
Caravanning
I have a friend in Sydney, who pulls two greyhounds around to dog races in a tiny caravan pulled by a postie bike. If you slept in the foetal position, a small man could probably be accomodated ... couldn't cook in it though ... well, you could, but you couldn't sleep AND cook. If you managed to buy one it would probably smell of dog and you could catch fleas.
Cheers,
JC
Push-bloody-bikes indeed!
Kilroy,
There are no positives where bikes are concerned! Have you ever tried to go to work on a bike ... at 6 ay bloody em, when it's still pitch black, and it's five below bloody zero, sleet driven horizontally at 60 knots and your back tyre is half flat and you've forgotten your bloody pump? Added to this mild discomfort, you have no rear mudguard and there's a constant spray of freezing bloody cold mud up the back of your coat (no bloody water-proofs ... they are made from petro-chemicals see.)
Just to make things interesting, you are on a constant 1 in 50 gradient, which means that going home, you can, provided conditions remain constant, you can look forward to a raging sleet-filled gale, full in your face, and you have to pedal like bloody mad, just to keep from actually going backwards!
This is not fiction ... this is what it was like when I was a teenager, and the only viable work was shovelling coal to feed the maw of a steam locomotive, you had to ride this damnable velocipede to the locomotive workshops, where a pre-dawn start was the go. When you got there, there was so much steam that soon every item of clothing became saturated with sooty, cooled steam.
Then you were expected to to take an old 'K' class (built in 1923) down to the yard and pick up your load, and then set off on a six-hours of torture from Goulburn to Cooma or alternatively Cootamundra (or Coota-bloody-mundra as my grandfather used to call it, with good reason) ... this, with your flamin' bikes, you would wish on us all again? We weren't all born and raised in sunny Queensland sonny!
We would all revert to such as Britain, in the dark ages, where you needed a coach to go from one town to another, if you could find one ... and it was such a buggar of a trip, that people rarely went. As a consequence, every town and village and even suburbs, developed their own patois, so pretty soon one part of the country couldn't understand what the other half was talking about.
Everone on the NSWGR (Railways) under the age of 35, was saving like mad to buy a car! To get away for bloody push bikes! And all these tree-hugging hippies want to damn us all to their return! Not on your nelly mate!
Listen to me all you good GOTers ... this is what happens when you begin drawing pictures of someone on fences and walls, and telling everyone that 'Kilroy was here' ... They're like bloody politicians, they get carried away with their own publicity, and get us all riding flamin' push bloody bikes again ... Once more, not on your bloody nelly mate!
To Kilroy ... may you cotter pin get all caught up in your derailleur sproket, mate!
JC
I agree. Brisbane CC has been
I agree. Brisbane CC has been pushing (excuse the pun) riding bikes for years. But Brisbane is very unsuited for bikes unless you are young and quite healthy. It is a very hilly place where learner drivers have a fit trying to use a manual car from a standing start. The sun is extremely hot even on a cool winter day. The streets are too narrow. About 1850 a NSW governor said Brisbane would never amount to anything. So, the main streets which were staked out to be about 50 metres wide were reduced to 25 metres wide.
The BCC can't seem to realise we are not Amsterdam or even Maryborough...last time I was there it seemed full of bikes but the roads are wide and the land is flat.
More bikes are now involved in accidents. Only 2 days ago just near a blind corner near our house a 9 year old boy nearly clipped us on his bike. Then at the corner he could have been killed had a car been coming along. We have had to be very careful there ourselves. If a car had hit him the driver would be called the 'world's worst' yet they could have done nothing to prevent a collision.
Ooh yeah!
Like General Electric ... the world's only company to combine the manufacture of jet engines and loan-sharking!
I know how you could make your motor scooter do 200 km/h too ... push it off a cliff! If you want to still ride it: and get about double its normal power output; you could mix up a tank full of about 95 percent nitro-methane and five percent benzol ... it will go like the clappers for about ten kilometres. Then you have to replace the piston (it will have a large hole in the blunt end), the barrel (presuming it is a single cylinder), it will have score marks like coarse grit sandpaper and you'll probably have to replace the big end bearing too ... it's bound to have more slop than a pig's bucket ... but you will have had the ride of your life! Mind you, the meth/benzol mix will set you back about $75 a litre, that is if you can find a supplier.
Alternatively, you could run it on ether, with a little light castor oil thrown in and it will run pretty well too ... trouble is, everyone down wind will be feeling extremely drowsy. And when Constrable Plod wakes up and figures out the reason for the plague of community sonambulism, you'll have spent an evening, with bed and breakfast in the local slammer ... and all for about $30 a litre from your local chemist, if you tell him it's fuel for your model aeroplane.
There's a wide world of alternative fuels out there, if you're willing to give them a go and have deep enough pockets to support it. I have seen a 1927 Rugby, running quite happily on mineral turpentine and a diesel milking machine run on cream ... both are very expensive as a fuel. But when you don't have an option, and you have to be some place quicker than a horse or a bike can take you, and the closest bus/tram stop is 10 metres from you destination, you'll try anything.
This then is the debate. The more intelligent guess is, that we are about five years from a $5 per litre price for petrol; 10 years away from a battery which will give a two-seater a 300 km range at 80 km/h. Diesels are OK, they can happily run on all kinds of heavier renewable oil. However electric ignition (petrol), vehicles are more problematic ... My money (for the moment), is on ethanol. Sure it has its problems ... but then so did petrol ... anyone in the 70 year old bracket will remember all the multiplicty of brand names (most of which no longer exist), and all the 'additives' ... Remember 'Atlantic?' One of its products was Atlantic 'Ethyl' have a guess what the 'Ethyl' was? There were all kinds of nasty chemical stuff added to the fuel of the 1950s.
The good thing about ethanol is that the most efficient feed stock in its manufacture is sugar ... and good old Oz has one of the best supplies in the world. This would make us self-sufficient, which in theory would mean cheaper fuel (but knowing how avaricious governments can be), it probably wouldn't.
The one thing that no one has thought of in all this fuel debate is plastics. All those wonderful things that make other products air-tight, waterproof, keep fresh, easy carry, throw away ... and all the other thing we in our modern society have grown to love/hate ... guess what their largest component is? That's right petro chemicals! And it's not just in containers ... it's in detergents, cables, insulation, boat building, car body components, in fact just about everything you can think of.
So which would you rather, that smart brief case, or a litre of petrol ... that ag pipe for the garden, or a litre of petrol? You get my drift ... I reckon we had better make up out mind which way we're going to jump, or forever feel sorry about all those plastic shopping bags we threw away!
Cheers,
JC
Motor Cars
Lotsa things come under General, even General Motors!