Re: [AMC-List] E Stick, now Drivers

[adh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Sandwich Maker)]

" From: Tom Jennings <tomj@xxxxxxx>
" 
" 
" The state-of-tune of engines has obviously changed wildly. People
" thought nothing of putting a car in far-too-high gear and just
" let it lug-lug-lug up to speed. My father drove everything
" from VW Beetle to V8 Chevy van that way. If performance isn't
" a concern, gas is dirt cheap, and no one sniffs tailpipes,
" it's a pleasant way to operate a car.

my grandmother drove this way too, even when it produced awful noises
[body resonance].  she'd make a face and say i don't know what makes
it do that, and i'd try to explain she wasn't letting the car go
faster before shifting...

she was -trained- to do it.  my theory is that the cars she learned to
drive on had the off-idle torque to make it possible.  and the
chauffeur she learned from was only concerned with smooth silence, not
strain or wear and tear or mileage etc.

my mother drove a variant of this, taught by the same chauffeur at
almost the same time - fine starting out in 1st but then she'd spend
only enough time in 2nd to engage the clutch before shifting to 3rd.
she could as well have skipped 2nd completely for all the good it did.
it took me a long time to break her of that habit...

early rolls royces - the ghosts and phantoms - could be shifted into
high at a walking pace -- and the '07 ghost was still good for better
than 60!  but as near as i can tell they idled at less than -50- rpm -
unless the biographer i read got the chauffeur's manual wrong.  [it
says 'before engaging clutch, increase revs to between 50 and 100
rpm']



" From: Tom Jennings <tomj@xxxxxxx>
" 
" On Thu, 21 Dec 2006, Sandwich Maker wrote:
" 
" > the problem is that you have to make them extremely precisely and from
" > very hard materials to be efficient [because what you have is very
" > much like a ball bearing] so that you can run very high contact
" > pressures because slippage is death.  monsanto even developed a
" > special lubricant that turns solid under extreme pressure [santotrac
" > iirc] but apparently the technology wasn't there yet or we'd all be
" > driving them.
" 
" Yeh, that variable-ratio stuff so far works only on low
" torque apps.  Ball-and-disc integrators were used in mechanical
" computers around WWII, where the forces were tiny, and still
" slippage required all sorts of compensations.
" 
" The best "converter" so far is powersource --> generator -->
" control circuitry --> motor. That's what locomotives do. It's
" not cheap.

this has historical roots too, though.  and we're talking about
-really-high- hp density - holding steady now at 1000hp in a ~3' cube
traction motor - and efficiency is really important because waste
means waste heat, and it's hard enough already to get rid of.  1000hp
is ~750 kw; if it's 98% efficient that's 15kw -per-motor- the cooling
system has to dump when operating at full throttle.  anything less
efficient would be worse, and in fact i believe this was a major force
pushing the industry to ac traction motors - the part that needs the
most cooling is on the outside in an ac motor.

now add in that steel wheels on steel rails have very low rolling
friction and a 1% grade is considered steep and most trains don't
operate in a stop/start environment, and the situational imperatives
are very different from cars.  motors can produce tremendous torque
for starting, but your cooling system better be able to keep up if you
expect to do it more than once.  either that or your drive-by-wire is
gonna have to hold the throttle back, and you know how motorists would
react to that...

i'd still like to see the numbers for a high pressure variable
displacement pump / variable displacement motor hydrostatic
transmission.

[just figured out the perfect car for a turbo apu / hydrostatic
powertrain - a citroen!  ds/id or sm]

" I think this really where "hybrid" technology will gain; it's a
" really efficient way to transform energy. Its just complicated.
" But complicated technology is what benefits from Fordism, look
" how much complicated crap is in a desktop computer and all in all
" they work really cheap for really long times for little money;
" you just can't fix them.

i saw a total lifecycle cost analysis of lots of cars recently - wish
i could recall where - and their conclusion is that hybrids suck.
hybrid total lifecycle cost averaged per mile is higher than most cars
and even middling [h3] suvs.  the loweat cost per mile - way below the
average - was posted by the scion xb.

[ps. toyota is selling all the xbs they can make, and making all they
can, and the demand is still so high 2yo used are in the $13k-$14k
range - so why are they gonna dump the present car and put the name on
something completely different when it comes up for redesign?]
________________________________________________________________________
Andrew Hay                                  the genius nature
internet rambler                            is to see what all have seen
adh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx                       and think what none thought
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