Rant Oh come ON!

So how expensive does fuel have to get to overcome those cultural differences?

On the issue of refinery capacity...

The refineries can be configured to make whatever is going to sell. The reason most refineries shut down for a month or so twice a year (called turnaround), is two-fold. One part is major maintainence such as catalyst changes and hydroblasting that cannot be done while the plant is online. The second reason is to reconfigure the plant for differing seasonal fuel demands. The demand for diesel is pretty constant year round, but home heating oil and gasoline are on inverse seasonal demand curves and so in the spring they convert for gasoline and in the fall convert some capacity back to heating oil. One reason sometimes given for high gas prives in the early summer is that many of the refineries are offline for turnaround or have not yet been turned around which restricts supply. How much of this is technical and how much is price manipulation depends on how cynical you are.

 

i don't drive and don't know **** about cars/motors so i may be wrong about this, but i have heard that most european diesel engines use a more refined diesel fuel better suited to the smaller engines. if you tried pumping the truck deisel they sell here into your mercedes it wouldn't run very well at all, and it is actually illegal to sell the stuff in the states. until we can get good diesel fuel in north america, the automakers won't bring good diesel cars over here. i dunno how the volkswagen TDI's fit into this, though.

@cthippo, i'm pretty sure that is paranoia. there are more than enough reserves to sustain turnaround, and the refineries stagger their turnaround times and compensate for each other.

 

This simply isn't true. I have a 2.8 liter V6 Saab that is turbocharged, and is a GM design. It is specifically designed for 95 octane petrol. In fact, most Saabs have a sensor, especially the BioFuel ones, that look at what is in the fuel lines and adjust the engine accordingly. If I put 98 octane in, it has no positive benefit since the ECU adjusts for it. It will even run on Saudi gas, which is the crappiest quality anywhere. Engine knock come from timing and fuel blend, both of which are adjustable in a modern engine. A modern turbo engine does not cost more to operate and does not require the highest octane fuel. I have been told by GM engineers that I could run my car on Absolut Vodka if I really wanted to, and they were confident the ECU would adjust accordingly.

 

Well, Hummers still sell so it seems like it'll have to go a ways. I drive a Honda Accord 1999 4 cylindre 2.3 litre gasoline. not a v8.

 

Part of the problem with that is that us refiners have invested heavily in technology called Coking which extracts gasoline out of gasoil/residual fuel oil and the other lower quality fuels that in europe we (fluid catalytic) crack and desulphurise to make Diesel or Kerosene. The tech to desluphurise gasoline and gasoil is very different and not interchangeable, so while they could run the distilation unit to make slightly different products they could not hit the quality specs using existing tech. To roll out large scale dieselisation gasoline volumes would have to be reduced and billions of dollars would have to be spent on units to produce Diesel lets face it its not going to happen. When they turn around to run heating oil all they do is not run the cokers as high, your heating oil specs can be quite high in sulphur (5000 ppm max) while Diesel spec is 15ppm so you see the problem.

 

My retort to that would be put 7 speed auto's in there ( i would suggest 6 speed manuals but they don't seem to exist stateside [yes, this is a generalisation])


A point in practice though is...say, the SEAT Fabia VRS that I'm looking at getting, 130 bhp and about 233lb ft of torque, six speed manual and you can cruise at 70 at 1300rpm. It will get 60mpg pretty easily doing this sort of driving.

So the fabia is too small for the states, this is a fair one, so look at the two litre passat, it pretty much gives the same figures give or take, and it's a big car.

I do full realise that there is a need for big pickups in the states, I do, you use pickups properly for the most part out there, and i understand the simple mechanics of a old school v8 vs the new bmw v8 in the m3 are great as it means you can fixem yourself (don't try that with the european engines unless you are a mechanic, and even then you might want a degree in automotive engineering), I just think the idea is so alien to us because our diesel and petrol prices are only seperated by 5p roughly so it's not a big price difference for us for the added economy.

 

i love the sound of a turbo firing......

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FdijTTxWwWk&feature=related

 

no no, this (the supra) is a turbo...

 

Turbos, like superchargers, don't fire. They spool up, or wind up.

 

PSSSSSSSSSSSSSCH

 

Cut some slack, english probably isn't his mother tongue

 

Yes sir, sorry sir, won't happen again sir.

 

I know, here we call it "firing" as in "afinaram o turbo para disparar a X RPM" or "they tunned the turbo so it would fire at X RPM".
and yes i know how a turbo works... at least in theory...

pwnd.....

 

This does bring me on to something i haven't thought of before, how often do you americans get your cars serviced? and what's considered an average annual mileage over there?

 

Give the sound of a high revving skyline\scooby over a V8 any day. The thing with diesels is that is actually cheaper to produce that petrol its much less refined hence why diesels were made the problems is that recently diesels have become popular demand is so high they can charge more per liter than petrol.

 

Fraid not mate, not any more. Old diesel fuel was basicly any thing you couldn't refine and a old diesel engine was designed to compress any old rubbish but modern diesel is just as refined as mid grade gasoline (95) just as modern diesel engines are just as refined as petrol engines. To get a decent cetane and sulphur level requires just as much (more since they produce less) energy to produce coupled with the fact that European refiners juggle diesel and Kerosene (jet fuel) production means there is a much bigger market for diesel than gasoline so it ends up being more expensive because there are more buyers.

 

I hate having to continually revive Jim Kenzie links since he's said it all quite well before...:
Jim Kenzi - Diesel and Pollution

If sustainability is a concern, this type of diesel is renewable. It also burns cleaner, but is obviously more expensive to produce. And turbocharged motors do require more maintenance than a normally aspirated engine. More care needs to be taken of the turbo in addition to regular upkeep of the engine alone. For engines with larger, oil-cooled turbines, you'd also need to let the engine run through a 5-minute 'cool-off' period before turning it off to let the hot oil circulate and avoid damage to the turbocharger.

That's way over the top for a B16.

That 80-Supra was ugliest sh*t I've ever seen... He must have been running a T51R or a T88H on 295 rears at least; that's around 1000ps and 90+kgm on effectively illegal tires. It's way too much for the chassis to handle once he decides to take the car to the track for... oh my... corners, the chassis will warp.

 

smaller engine = cheaper insurance... dunno how it is in america, but atleast in europe it plays a big part in peoples decision what car to buy.

 

Our insurance system isn't nearly as straightforward as yours, but engine size does play a part in it. For a given vehicle, the smaller-engined variant will probably be a bit cheaper to insure. Of course, there's also a penalty for forced induction - I'm pretty sure they don't care about engine size, so much as power output.

 

Any normal modern car will leave the fan and coolant circulating after you turn off the engine, until everything -even the turbo- has cooled off. I have yet to see a car, that was built after 1985, that needs to have the engine run for 5 min .