horsepower timing spray
Artikel Terkait horsepower timing spray
HP vs torque: Does torque really matter?
An actual horse doesn’t produce 1 horsepower. It produces about 14.5 horsepower.
320 PS/litre! Top-5 cars with the most horsepower per litre
2020 Proton Iriz: Less than RM 3,100 to maintain it over 5 years/100,000 km
;t due until the 100,000-km mark.That said, it is worth keeping in mind that Proton has shifted the timing
2020 Perodua Bezza: Less than RM 3,200 to maintain it over 5 years/100,000 km
Bezza requires an ATF job every 40,000 km.Furthermore, the Bezza’s 1.3-litre engine utilizes a timing
What's so special about VTEC?
A: VTEC stands for Variable Valve Timing & Lift Electronic Control.
Owner Review: Experience JDM rear-wheel-drive classic - My 1991 1991 Nissan 300ZX Z32
km.The owner did a major service for the car before I made the purchase which saves me lots of time(timing
2020 Proton Persona: Less than RM 3,100 to service it over 5 years/100,000 km
manual transmission fluid isn’t due until the 100,000-km mark.Proton has also shifted the pricey timing
New Golf GTI, Sorento and E-Class; 7 new released models coming to Malaysia!
newly redesigned cabin.Power comes from the reworked 2.0-liter turbo four-cylinder which now makes 241 horsepower
DIY: Scratch your car’s paint? Here’s how to fix that at home
You can also spray some water on the scratch to see if it disappears.
Perodua Myvi: Less than RM 3,200 to maintain it over 5 years/100,000 km
ATF) to be replaced at every 40,000 km interval.Both the Myvi 1.3 and 1.5’s engine utilizes a timing
Proton Saga: Just RM 3,000 to maintain it for over 5 years/100,000 km
100,000-km mark.At the 110,000-km/66-month mark, owners of the Proton Saga need to pay RM 633.85, as the timing
Can fuel additives improve fuel economy and increase horsepower?
Photo: Nates Interactive AutoCan a fuel additive increase your horsepower?
200 PS for under RM 200k, possible but the results might surprise you
It wasn’t very long ago when 200 horsepower was exclusive only to high performance cars.
Toyota 4A-GE 16V/20V - legendary 'tofu delivery' engine, what makes them great?
code follows this logic:4 - engine block versionA - engine family typeG - dual overhead cams (DOHC), timing
Are timing chains better than timing belts?
Today, we’ll be talking about timing belts and timing chains.The timing belt connects the crankshaft
BMW and Mercedes PAUSE on collaboration, timing is not right
suppliers about technology roadmaps until the contract was signed last year.Both sides concluded that the timing
2020 Honda City - Why we'd rather have the 1.5L NA engine over the 1.0L Turbo
improvement over the 1.5-litre NA engine.One more tidbit of info, the 1.0-litre turbo is actually driven by a timing
All-new 2020 Kia Sorento - 35 mm longer wheelbase, new 8-DCT, 227 hp/350 Nm hybrid, PHEV next
options will be offered, starting with the new four-cylinder 2.2-litre diesel engine, producing 199 horsepower
Geely-Volvo’s CEVT says not true that timing chain is superior to belt
buyers shopping in budget car Proton/Perodua range of cars have a peculiar affinity towards the topic of timing
Covid-19: Can alcohol sanitizers be used to clean your car?
Just a drop or two of soap into a spray bottle filled halfway with water would do wonders in cleaning
Review Q&A horsepower timing spray
Why are ship engines so massive yet have so little horsepower?
Why are ship engines so massive yet have so little horsepower? Ship engines produce LOTS of horsepower as in 100,000 Hp However they are large and heavy for that power output compared to smaller engines That is because they run for weeks at a time The weight is much less of a problem with a ship And for efficiency Diesel engines work by spraying the diesel into the air - you need to get the molecules of diesel to meet up with their molecules of oxygen This is done by “swirling” the air - and blasting the fuel in under high pressure It takes a LOT more energy to “Swirl” the air (a gas) than it does to squirt the fuel Diesels in vehicles used to use a “pre-chamber” to swirl the air and inject the fuel at about 400 Bar - when they went away from that they had to up the injection pressure past 1000 Bar - but they got close to 20% improvement in fuel efficiency But even then “Direct Injection” engines swirl the air That bowl you see makes the air swirl like a smoke ring so that the fuel and air can find each other Very BIG diesels - like ship engines are “Quiescent” engines - they are designed NOT to swirl the air The result is that you have to inject the fuel to meet the air - which limits the rpm - so you use low revs But it makes the engine more efficient - so it burns less fuel Low revs means you need a bigger engine for the same power I’m going to emphasise that last point!! Torque, is (very roughly) proportional to size Power = Torque x Rpm So if you rev twice as fast you get twice the ,power, from the same size engine The huge ship engines run a LOT slower - as in about 1/20th the revs So you need an engine 20 times as large to get the same power I will add Paul Haas’s very good point - if the engine is close to prop speed then you need less or zero reduction to drive the prop
What makes a Nascar engine so powerful?
There is a mix of truth and false statements in other answers here. While I drag race, I have owned a few NASCAR style engines. As a matter of fact I just bought a Roush/Yates Ford outlaw engine that is the same basic NASCAR setup maximized for maximum horsepower in a wide RPM range. This particular engine uses an aftermarket Ford cylinder block which is cast much stronger than any production engine block. It is fitted with a special high-strength light weight parts, the total parts cost about $35,000 without any labor. These engines are not especially “high power” by today’s standards, and they most certainly are not “high torque” engines. They are not based on one single engine style, either. They are a high RPM modest-torque engine with a fairly wide power band. Their main attributes are they make a lot of power for the restrictions placed on the air intake system, and they are very reliable in sustained high RPM operation. My drag racing engines are small block Ford push rod engines in the 360 cu in range, but I have a few NASCAR or Outlaw engines I acquired that I have not changed over for drag racing. This is the very first NASCAR engine I bought, around 1990. It is a “Cleveland” based Ford that is nothing like a factory Ford 351C when we look at it. The above engine used early Ford NASCAR legal heads. It made just over 650 HP at 9000 RPM with a single 850 CFM carburetor. (My present drag race engine the same size is 1650 HP, over 2.5 times the NASCAR power. Keep this figure in mind.) Below is one of my Outlaw Roush-Yates engines. It is the same as a typical Ford NASCAR engine, except built for a little more power. It is the same basic platform but has over 400 cubic inches displacement and a little more airflow work and bigger camshaft. It is also very loosely built off the Ford Cleveland 9.2 deck engine, but virtually nothing is the same except dimensions. Don’t delude yourself into thinking these are “old technology” Cleveland engines, or the Cleveland is “special”. (My 1650+ HP drag racing engine is 302 Ford Windsor style, rather than 351 Cleveland style.) This is the Superflow dyno spreadsheet screenshot from the engine above. We made no effort to tune the engine, this was just a pull to prove it was good when I purchased it. Remember it has more horsepower than a NASCAR engine. Horsepower is the middle column, torque is the right column. These are NOT high torque engines: In contrast a high torque engine might be 800 lb-ft torque or more. My drag car engine is over 1000 lb-ft torque. That is higher torque. The NASCAR engines are about half that, but higher sustained RPM. NASCAR engines use lightweight components like titanium valves. They use small but strong valve springs, and the valve lift approaches one inch. A passenger car in contrast might be 0.4 inches lift or less: They spray oil on the springs to keep them cool at sustained high RPM operation: NASCAR engines have years of cylinder head and intake manifold development. They run “dry sumps”, there is no oil in the oil pans. The engine oil is vacuumed out of the crankcase, being pumped and stored externally. The crankcase runs with a vacuum inside so oil vapor does not rob horsepower, and to make the engine safer and more reliable. The belt driven oil pump is external: These are very expensive engines. They last a long time at maximum sustained power. They are high RPM lower torque engines. They were based off early standard small block overhead valve engines from Chrysler, Chevy and Ford, but over the years they have been updated and refined. They are limited in power because airflow is restricted, plus fuel usage is critical, so efficiency is as high as possible. Don’t delude yourself into thinking they are especially high power, and they certainly are not high torque. Here is the dyno of one of my small block Ford 363 cubic inch engines, using Windsor style in line valve heads. It has a single small turbocharger, full exhaust with mufflers, and it is street legal and drivable. This is a high torque, modest RPM engine. It only has to run full power for just over 7 seconds, instead of full power for hours. This is with 28 lbs of boost pressure from the single small turbocharger, it will handle 35 psi or more:
Do giant whales ever ram or collide with submarines or ships in the ocean? Are vessels able to survive the momentum from the impact?
One time while riding the ferry, I got lucky. No, not that kind of lucky. I got to go up to the bridge of the MV Fairweather. Pretty cool boat. 4 water jets, 15,000 horsepower, 32 kt cruising speed, and everything was computerized. All the displays were LCD, the works. The boat stayed on "auto pilot" at all times, unless the captain pressed the red button on the joystick (no wheel in this ship) to avoid something, more on that later. Coming from the other nearly 50 year old ships whose rattling engines keep you awake at night, this thing, built in the early 2000s, was a breath of fresh air. Standing on the starboard side of the bridge, we sped up to top speed to burn the carbon out of the turbochargers. We were going around 40kts, or 45 miles per hour, pretty fast for a ship. Looking slightly aft of abeam the ship, a big humpback whale breached. I'd been on the Alaskan water all the time since I started school. I've heard the whale's spray rain down on the roof of our boat after breathing. I had never seen was one of these whales breaching, and it was beautiful. Our captain said he'd had to press that red button on the joystick several times due to near misses with whales, but he had never hit one himself. That being said, with the number of times these events are bound to have happened, I'm sure some have been hit by ships. I'm discounting the tales of whales being hit by cruise ships I've heard, as they have... questionable "fisherman" sources. ;) On a somewhat related note, I've had killer whales swim not more than several feet below the bow of the ship I was on. Seeing those gigantic animals move with such grace and precision was incredible. Thanks for reading!
What is the difference between horse power and bhp?
The fundamentals of IC engine (Internal combustion) Engine is the combustion take place at the end of compression stroke with the aid of spark plug in petrol engines and by spraying diesel in diesel engine ( The temperature inside the diesel engine at the time of compression stroke is sufficient to ignite the diesel) and the force of combustion will be then transmitted to drive axle with the aid of piston, crank shaft, Gears, final drive and differential and then to axle and wheel to provide the driving force and thrust.. The total power generated at the time of combustion is called IHP or Indicated Horse power, but all the energy will not be transferred for useful energy at the axles, it is get wasted in the form of heat energy and friction., Thus “bhp” is useful energy at the disposal, that is Bhp( Break horse power) = Indicated Horse Power - Frictional horse power.
What are the secrets in a car which only an automobile engineer knows?
EDIT: See the bottom for some more… Some of these have been touched on already, but here’s a few: See that PM schedule in the owner’s manual? Follow it. It’s there for a reason. For that matter, RTFM. So many automobile buyers in the US never read the book that comes with their car. Sure, there’s a lot of silly-to-an-experienced-driver stuff in there, but, even though I’ve got over 40 years in the auto business in some way, shape, or form, I just learned something new today on the rental car I’m driving while my truck is being repaired after a nice lady pulled out from a side street and ran into the side of it: There’s a special button on the HVAC controls of this car that sends the air through the cabin air filter for about 3 minutes, then reverts to regular operation. It has a pictogram on it that I just didn’t recognize, so I looked it up in the manual. Now I know. Yep, unless something else is specified for your car or truck, running regular unleaded is just fine. All the major suppliers use the same basic mix of additives anyway, just under different trade names, and a lot of times, the base gasoline at, say, an Exxon store came from the same terminal, same tank farm, same pipeline as the base gasoline at the Chevron down the street, it just got the Exxon additive pack when it was put into the tanker truck for delivery to the station instead of the Chevron additive pack. This is not always 100% the case, of course, but in many parts of the country, especially areas away from refineries and with distribution terminals fed by pipeline, it’s certainly the case. Modern synthetic oils can indeed have long change intervals. I personally wouldn’t go 25k miles between changes, but there are premium cars (BMW, Mercedes, etc.) out there with oil life algorithms in their computers that, under the right usage pattern, will go 15k miles before lighting the oil change indicator. I’d be hesitant to go longer than that unless you’re sure your engine isn’t a sludge factory like the Nissan VQ-series V6 engines tend to be. There are others (Toyota and GM have had certain engine families notorious for sludge production even with frequent quality oil changes), so do a bit of research on yours to see what other owners and service techs are reporting. When I was in the Detroit area, I was often asked if I knew why Big Oil and Big Auto had suppressed some magic technology that would let cars get stupid-high fuel mileage (such as the “100 mpg Fish Carburetor”) or last forever… the answer was always “Oh, I was given custody of those plans after I passed my initiation. I’m just waiting for the right price to release them to the public.” Yes, sarcasm. The truth is that engineering departments at all automakers have specialists in areas like fuels and lubricants who inevitably keep a “fool file” of various snake oil additives and technologies that the aftermarket keeps foisting on the gullible public. There’s one prominent “engine treatment” that, chemically, is nearly identical to Conoco’s “Germ Treated” motor oil form the 1910s (their TV infomercials feature an engine “drained of oil” and then the exposed valvetrain is sprayed with a fire hose or has sand poured on it — but if you look closely, there’s an oil line that feeds into the engine from the demonstration trailer’s enclosed portion - and that particular 1950s-designed I6 truck engine can certainly keep running against no load with the valvetrain covered in beach sand - talk to me again if you pump a sand slurry into the oiling system and clog up the feed passages for the main bearings, but they don’t do that). Another wants you to think that PTFE (aka Teflon) will magically bond to certain oily internal engine parts if you pour an emulsion containing PTFE particles into your crankcase, and those same particles will slide over other engine parts, reducing friction and wear. Given that getting PTFE to adhere to a cookie sheet in a factory setting is a somewhat involved process involving some serious cleaning and surface prep, you can see why that stuff ended up in the fool file. Also, given the pressure automakers are under to improve fuel economy and emissions, with hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars at stake, doesn’t it make sense that if something like that worked, it’d be done from the factory so the automaker could take advantage of those fuel economy and emissions benefits? That they’re not in use by *ANY* OEM tells you how effective they really aren’t. So, as someone else has said, save your money for scheduled oil and filter changes with quality products, and don’t bother with additives. No, removing the thermostat won’t make your engine run cooler. It’ll just make it take longer to get to operating temperature. The “thermostat” is not really a thermostat like you have on the wall in your house. It’s a “thermally-controlled coolant flow valve” that diverts coolant to a bypass when closed and sends it to the radiator when open. The actual coolant temperature will depend on: ambient temperature, engine load and vehicle speed. Along those lines: most “gauges” in US-market cars are glorified idiot lights. A temperature gauge or an oil pressure gauge has a HUGE flat spot in its response curve where it just sits at the center of the “NORMAL” range. The reason for this is that marketing does focus groups where potential buyers say they want gauges instead of idiot lights, but when you present them with a gauge that accurately tracks a transient value - one that changes under normal vehicle operation - like coolant temp or oil pressure, they bring the car back to the dealer for warranty service because “something is wrong: the temp gauge moves”. Well, duh, it’s going to when you transition from stop-and-go city traffic with no airflow through the radiator to driving 70 mph on the highway with all the airflow through the radiator. And the engine oil pressure will vary with temperature and engine speed. So the automakers put these flat spots into the gauges: they come up to the middle of “NORMAL” quickly, then sit there until something goes horribly wrong. Buyers get the “gauges” they want, and automakers get rid of a whole bunch of expensive warranty claims that have no basis in any real problem other than a lack of owner understanding of how their car really works. There’s a lot more, but this has gone on long enough for now. ,EDIT: Here’s some more: Often the “guts” or basic building blocks of a car are shared among different models in the same brand, and even among different brands under the same parent company. And there are even weirder examples. On the basic side, your Lexus ES350 is a Toyota Camry with a $15k higher price tag, a little different sheet metal on the outside, and fancier stuff inside. The Toyota Avalon is a slightly larger Camry. The Lexus RX and the Toyota Highlander are essentially the same underneath. There are some Lexus models with no Toyota equivalent in the US, but they’re sold as Toyotas in the home market. In the weird-but-understandable-if-you-know-the-history category, the Jeep Grand Cherokee and the Mercedes GL class (formerly M-class) share basic platform pieces, but there’s not really a lot that would interchange between them. Meanwhile, the Chrysler 300, Dodge Charger and Challenger are on a platform that’s basically a cost-reduced version of a 2-generation-old Mercedes E-Class. If you remember when Chrysler was DaimlerChrysler (old joke: “How do you say ‘DaimlerChrysler’ in German? ‘Daimler’. The ‘Chrysler’ is silent), this makes sense. What doesn’t is the Infiniti QX30 sharing a platform and powertrain with the Mercedes-Benz GLA. Infiniti is Nissan’s premium brand (think Lexus to Nissan’s Toyota) in the US market, but Nissan is controlled by Renault. It’s basically just a business arrangement (kinda like how Daimler’s AMG hot-rod division is supplying engines and other bits to Aston Martin these days: the new A-M Vantage carries a slightly different version of the AMG 4.0L twin-turbo V8 that resides in the Mercedes-AMG GT), but at least the two don’t share any outer sheetmetal, so it’s not just a simple “badge-engineering” job. There are a handful of automotive component suppliers that, if they were to go under, would take significant portions of the global auto industry with them. Robert Bosch is a prime example of this. They supply to just about everyone. Likewise Nippondenso (or Denso): Denso goes down, it takes Japan, Inc. with it, starting with Toyota. There are other, lesser-known names that you won’t find at the local auto parts store: Tower International makes frames for most of the pickup trucks sold in North America, for an example. Dana has divisions making everything from axle assemblies to transmission cooler lines. Borg Warner makes a bewildering variety of components. These are just a few examples. This was a real danger in 2008–2009: many suppliers followed GM and Chrysler into Chapter 11 Bankruptcy reorganization (Tower was one). Ford avoided Chapter 11 in the 2008–2009 unpleasantness because then-CEO Allan Mullally essentially mortgaged every piece of company property as collateral for private credit lines. At the time, I thought he was nuts, but it proved to be a shrewd move as Ford didn’t need a bailout under TARP or TARP 2: Electric Boogaloo. They *did* take a grant from the Feds for alternate-fuel/energy vehicle development, but that was very different from the TARP loans that kept GM and Chrysler from going defunct and taking pretty much the rest of the industry with them (as supplier could bring down the automakers, so losing two major automakers would bring down the supplier base to a point where surviving automakers would be hard pressed to get components to build cars and trucks). And by “industry”, I don’t mean just North America, but globally. The only truly British-owned automobile company left is Morgan. TVR is being revived as an British-owned brand, but I don’t think they’ve started production yet. Rolls-Royce? BMW. Bentley? Volkswagen Group. MINI? BMW. Land Rover and Jaguar? TATA of India. Aston Martin? Mixture of American and Kuwaiti investment firms. The MG brand is owned by a Chinese company. Many of the “imported” cars sold in the US are in fact assembled here. “Foreign” companies with US production facilities include: Honda, Toyota, Nissan, Subaru, Daimler-Benz, Hyundai/KIA, BMW, Volkswagen. Some of these plants (notably BMW’s and Daimler-Benz’s) export some of their production back to Europe and other parts of the world. Both Mazda and Mitsubishi used to have US plants as well, but Mazda’s was sold to Ford, and Mitsubishi closed theirs. Toyota, Honda, and others (including US brands) also have production facilities in Canada that supply the US market. Likewise Mexico. GM and Ford have some joint-venture products, notably automatic transmissions. Given the often-bitter rivalry between the two, this may seem surprising, but it’s just one of those economic things. Way back in the ‘60s, Chrysler licensed Ford’s self-adjusting drum brake design because they didn’t have one and apparently couldn’t come up with a design of their own that didn’t infringe on Ford’s or just didn’t work right. Speaking of Chrysler, while what’s regarded as the “1st generation” Hemi engines in the 1950s were outwardly similar, there were very few interchangeable parts between the Chrysler, Dodge, and DeSoto versions. The “2nd generation” Hemi, the famous 426 of the ’60s and very early ‘70s, was just one engine design, used in both Dodge and Plymouth cars. A highly-modified version of this engine still powers Top Fuel and Fuel Funny Car drag racers to this day, making in excess of 10,000 horsepower for about 4 seconds at a time, after which the engine is torn down and rebuilt before the next pass. Including warm-up and burnout run time, mean run time between rebuilds is about 3 minutes. The “3rd Generation” Hemi debuted in 2002 and is still in production today, available in Dodge/Ram pickups, Chrysler 300s, and Dodge Chargers and Challengers. The “Hellcat” version makes 707 horsepower, while the “Demon” version makes 840 horsepower on 100-octane racing gas and about 805 horsepower on 93-octane pump premium. 1965–1970 Shelby Mustangs are titled under their Shelby VINs, but the cars also have a Ford VIN. One way of verifying whether or not a car you’ve found is a real Shelby is to take a rubbing of the Ford VIN from at least 2 of the 3 places it’s found on the car and sending it to the Shelby American Automobile Club, which has the records of which Ford VIN corresponds to which Shelby VIN. They will tell you if it’s correct or not, but if it’s not, they won’t tell you which Ford VIN that Shelby VIN is supposed to have. SAAC also keeps a very complete registry of Shelby cars, and there are a few cases where a Shelby Mustang was crashed, the Shelby mechanicals and VIN were transplanted to another Mustang shell, and, sometime later, the original shell was rebuilt as a Shelby with the Shelby VIN (which typically would be found on a title for said shell). In this sort of circumstance, SAAC notes that the former car was rebodied, while the latter car was re-engined. Both will appear in the Registry. Along those lines, when Carroll Shelby got a heart transplant from a Las Vegas-area bartender who was killed in some sort of crash, there was some discussion in SAAC circles about whether Shelby was re-engined or the bartender was re-bodied. Okay, I’m getting more into folklore now, so I’m going to call it a night. Hope y’all enjoy this.
How would you react if one day you opened the door to find you're the only person left on earth? What would be the first thing you'd do?
Go to the nearest grocery store with a truck or van and start stockpiling groceries and potable water and move to a location where you can carefully manage them. Within 72 hours of human desertion with population going from billions to 0, 1, or “small”, then without anyone to maintain infrastructure, things will start collapsing. One of the first things to happen in the first 72 hours is that the fresh fruit and vegetables in supermarkets will naturally ripen, and without humans to buy these items beforehand and consume them, or without store employees to remove overripe food, then then all perishable will quickly rot which will start to draw flies and rodents. Without humans around to spray pesticides or prevent contamination, then within one week, nearly all supermarkets will start to become uninhabitable. The window of opportunity to procure food and potable water to maintain survival for years or decades, starts immediately and ends quickly. One strategy would be to literally take up residence in a supermarket and perform the duties of throwing out rotten food and spraying insecticide like an exterminator. If you already have training and access to the chemical, or if the chemicals were stored on-site, then this is a huge advantage. Otherwise, a person could be at risk if they used the wrong chemicals or applied the incorrect amount, and could even result in the very food that you are trying to protect to become contaminated. Non-perishable food, such as canned or bottled items and dry goods will be important to stockpile. Especially problematic would be how much food that one person can safely store in their own home. Someone could go to an appliance store and procure additional refrigerators and freezers, however it is difficult for one person to move all these items, and time is of the essence. A decision would need to be quickly made regarding taking up residence in a grocery store, or quickly removing as many items that can be stored in your own home and managed, while being kept free from rodents and bugs contaminating your food supply. Except for canned or frozen fruit, vegetables and meats - your window to enjoy anything fresh would be quickly coming to a close, as all perishable would be gone forever, unless you harvested them yourself, which could prove difficult. It is unlikely that even a supermarket full of shelves of fresh water would be sufficient, just in drinking water alone, to last a lifetime. Eventually, within one week to several months, your faucet would run dry and there would not be any more water - because humans are required to operate and manage freshwater supplies - unless you had a well. However, you would not be able to access water from a well unless you have electricity. However, you could commandeer a generator and a supply of fuel to generate electricity, to operate a well and potentially obtain a lifetime supply of water from a private residence with a well that was not on city water. That might be a good place to take up residence. A variety of other things are possible: from nuclear power plants encountering meltdowns because no one is there to staff them and manage their processes. Eventually, the electric grid would fail, resulting in regional outages, therefore a generator is important, as well as a small fleet of vehicles, especially trucks and vans, that are fueled and ready to go. Until a person ensures that their basic needs of clean drinking water, food, air, shelter and warmth are met, as well as electricity, water for bathing and fuel for transport - then it would be irresponsible to freely enjoy the luxuries left behind that you would have all to yourself. Let’s suppose that you forgo the above, and instead, drove to the nearest Lamborghini dealership, swiped the keys, and went for a ride. While certainly a thrill, the opportunity cost for something that could still be done later, would be that food is rotting everywhere, and if you do not get to it before bugs and rodents do first, you will diminished your potential to stockpile a food supply that you need to last the rest of your life. If you drove away in your Lamborghini and out-drove your capacity to handle the car and crashed, then if you are the only person left, then no one is there to help you if you need medical attention due to your own stupidity. Survival depends on procuring essential supplies quickly and with thought and care. Afterwards, there would be all the time in the world for fun and games. Fancy clothes would become lackluster if no one else is around to see you in them. Fast car could prove dangerous if horsepower is not respected. Money itself would have zero value in a world of one. The value of real estate would depend on its sourceability to water, especially potable water. Covering the basics would be the first priority. Within a year and certainly by ten years, supermarkets would go from what we know them as, and morph into cesspools or open swamps filled with wildlife, bugs, rats, snakes or any animal indigenous to the area looking for food, whether it be another animal, or easy pickings from the supermarket shelves. Entry would result in death due to attack, and even if it was possible to retrieve provisions, almost certainly they would be rotten and poisonous. Food and water are about as basic as it gets, and a lifetime supply of the same is not easy to gather, even if it is free, when you have a very limited amount of time to do it all yourself.
If I am a high school track star, can I actually out run a cop?
I was a cop. Lots of guys I arrested could easily outrun me. In my whole career as a cop, not one ever got away. Not one. If you have committed a violent crime and are a danger to everyone, then I won’t stop until I get you. I can call in for help from dozens of other cops. I usually don’t waste a lot of time before I bring in a K-9 police dog. The dog can follow your trail through water, over buildings, into tunnels - everywhere you can go, he can go. You can run all day but the dog won’t give up and there is nothing short of shooting him that will stop him. And if you shoot him, we simply get another — and then the resolve to get you increases by tenfold. The old trick that you see in movies of putting down red pepper to deter the dogs — that doesn’t work anymore. The dogs are trained to avoid it — go around it and then pick up the trail on the other side of the pepper. If you committed a lesser offense and have been identified and/or photographed on security cameras, then I am much less pressured to chase you right now. Within a day or two, I can get your name and address and then simply wait until I can arrest you without incident. One guy that had robbed several stores was finally captured by a camera and identified. He was known for living way up on a mountain and in a jungle area. An army could not catch him out there. I knew he also went to bars. I passed out his picture to all the bartenders and waited. About 10 days later, I got a call, went down to a local bar and arrested him without any running or fighting. That was 6 months after he ran away from me. A young man in his teens that worked at a skin diving tourist business on weekends was stealing from the tourists. He always wore a hood but was identified by a unique tattoo. I called in about a dozen kids from the local high school and asked them for help. They quickly identified the robber from my description. I got him at his shop 3 days later. A young boy who worked as part of a team snuck into houses of people at work by climbing in second-floor windows and then letting in other robbers. I and other cops were called to a house in a duplex in which the neighbor heard noises and knew the residents were gone. He called it in. We surrounded the house but the kid easily evaded us and ran away. I called for a dog. We followed the dog for nearly two hours. The kid was found in a box, in a tool shed behind a house. He was exhausted. He also gave up all the rest of his crime team. Cops take on the challenge of getting their man very seriously. Nowadays, they have dogs, infrared night vision goggles, helicopters, and the ability to coordinate dozens of officers with person-to-person communications. Getting help by using television, the internet and newspapers is also a commonly used tool. Offering a reward has also made crooks turn in other crooks or created citizen bounty hunters. Using cameras, fingerprints, and DNA, they can identify most suspects within hours and track them down within a few days. Here is a ,secret, that you probably don’t know or may not have heard yet. You have heard of the ink-packs that banks use. They explode and put indelible red ink all over the money and the robbers. The money is then useless and the ink won’t wash off. Most banks use these ink packs. The idea is a good one so the cops have expanded the use. In crowded, riot or party situations with lots of people, there is a new weapon. It is a squirt gun attached to a special camera. The squirt gun can shoot out 30 feet or more with a clear liquid that does not discolor the clothes or skin. It does, however, fluoresce under UV light. It glows a bright color only when lit by ultraviolet light. It is very hard to wash out of the clothes and it stains the hair and skin also. In a riot situation, different cops will use a clear spray that glows in different colors. The camera is also taking video and still pictures in high resolution and it is designed for low light situations. The camera is a special kind called a ,“light-field”, ( or a ,plenoptic) ,camera that has some unusual qualities — for instance, you can focus the picture “AFTER” you have taken the picture. I know that sounds crazy but it is true. Read the link. Bottom line, if you feel something wet as you run from a crime, you probably have just been tagged for future arrest. Just one more trick being used. Light field camera - Wikipedia You should also know that running away from a crime usually brings on two to as many as five more charges added on to whatever they did in the first place. Running away just makes it worse. I have had several guys tell me that it is a miserable life trying to avoid every LEO or anyone that might be looking for you. Bottom line — Yes, you can outrun a cop but that does not mean you will get away. UPDATE: I’ve gotten a lot of questions and decided to add an update: There is a long list of protocols for dealing with vehicles that can outrun the cop cars. In most places, the chase ends when it becomes apparent they are faster AND the cops have gotten a vehicle description and/or license plate — usually with a photo image. In some places, they may use a helo,. To reduce risks to other citizens, a lot of places have “no chase” policies beyond an initial attempt over a short distance. Road spikes are commonly used but simple use of radio and coordination of multiple cars and departments means a bad guy can go really fast but he is almost always going ,toward ,another cop. One interesting fact is that a lot of bike riders are not very good bike riders. Out on the open road, away from heavy traffic, road bikes are surprisingly easy to catch. They are very poor judges of how fast they can take a turn and will often wipe out. Most bikes have way more horsepower than traction and frequently wipe out on a straightaway. Dirt bikes are another issue. If the bike is designed for it, they can easily lose a cop by going off-road. This only works where there is a very large forest or remote area devoid of all roads. If a helo is not available, and the area is too big to surround, then the cops just go home and wait for the next time. If a helo is available, game over. Most have IR imaging and can track even in deep woods and at night. There are always exceptions. Some cops enjoy the chase and will go until they bust up their own car. In some areas, they will chase at 100 MPH or higher. These kinds of chases are decreasing as LEO departments learn they can be expensive. It is much cheaper to buy a $300 high-resolution dash-cam than to pay $10,000 for car repairs or $50,000 for insurance premiums. There are also very fast cars, very good drivers or bike riders and situations in which the bad guy can get away. It happens. Not often but it does happen. But think about it. Most bad guys are not trained in high speed driving like the LEOs are. Most do not live in areas where there are too few cops to coordinate a relay chase. I am reminded of that often-seen video of the 400+ hp corvette racing across the desert and easily outrunning the cop cars. At speeds in the 140 MPH range, the helo is at the limit of its speed to keep up and then it captures the video of the corvette smacking into a truck that was only going 60 MPH, (80+ MPH slower). The Vette disintegrates. He had a fast car but had no idea how to drive it at 140+ MPH. You might be interested in a new trend. The use of drones to follow and find bad guys. Drones with IR cameras are much cheaper than helos and can be carried around in cop cars. Other drones have the ability to lock onto a specific car and then track it without further input from an operator. I predict in 10 years, most city police departments and most state police will have and use drones. One other item that has been under development for a long time is a vehicle disabler. All kinds of designs have been invented but a new one that is in selected trials now is sort of an EMP dart. It is fired into any metal part of the car or bike and it emits a signal that disrupts the car’s electronic ignition or control computer. It is reusable and costs much less than the typical damage and costs of a high-speed chase. It is likely to be adapted and used by most departments within the next 5 to 10 years. Being a bad guy is getting really hard. UPDATE - Dec 2020: A more advanced version of the vehicle disabler described in the last paragraph is now on the market. It does not use an EMP dart. It can do it entirely wirelessly. It is called the “,Jankel Integrated RF Safe-Stop system” . ,It works on cars, trucks, boats, drones, motorcycles, etc. 2021 UPDATE There are two new techniques that I failed to mention but that are becoming very popular among police departments that can afford them or that can get government money grants to buy them. The first is a cell phone scan and inventory. This is done in coordination with the cell phone companies. All phones now have a built-in GPS. This is required by law to assist in 911 calls. It is activated by a trigger signal sent by the cell towers to a specific cell phone number but it can also be sent out as a blanket or scanner signal to every phone registered to any given cell phone tower. The result is an immediate collection of all of the cell phone numbers of everyone in a given area - they can use computers to build a digital “geo-fence” with embedded sub-zones that can isolate phones and people into very specific areas at very specific times. Once the phone number is recorded, they can track that person wherever they go and arrest them any time they like. The other technology that is growing fast is facial recognition. A recent test conducted in London showed that this technology is not at all foolproof but it is catching on and the price is coming down fast. What is very common is the use of “sensor fusion” in which multiple techniques are mixed and matched in a multiple layered confirmation process. For instance, the cell phone scan will locate phones at a specific crime scene. Then each number is tracked and cross-referenced with camera images to find a picture of the person carrying that tracked phone. Then that image is tracked across multiple camera images. This is how they tracked rioters into the Capitol building on Jan 6th. Finally, it should be noted that some of these methods are expensive but the price and ways to do them is coming down fast. For instance, there are already service companies that can receive riot films and they do the identifications and return the results as a report back to the police department. Some college campuses are using such services now. Reply
What is something movies always get wrong?
Here’s something I don’t think any other Quorans have mentioned: ,aviation,. Now, I’d like to explain, first and foremost, that I’m a very low-time private pilot. I’ve never flown jets. I’ve never flown helicopters. I’ve never flown anything like a big Boeing 737 or anything like that. I’ve never been in the military, either. My knowledge of the handling characteristics of different types of aircraft isn’t perfect, or by any means extensive. What I’m about to delineate for you is a brief list of egregious aviation-related errors I’ve seen in various Hollywood movies and American TV shows. These errors are, of course, open to interpretation, so if anyone—aerodynamicists, flight engineers, or high-time pilots—would like to correct me on what I’m about to say, I’m completely open to that. Leave a comment below, please. So! Here’s what I think movies consistently get wrong about aviation: #1. Renegade, daredevil, alcoholic, or just plain unsafe pilots. Think about the last pilot character you saw in film. It was probably somebody like this, right? The Mummy,, 1999 Or this? American Made,, 2017 Or maybe this? The Rundown,, 2003 Whenever there’s a non-airline pilot in a film—a bush pilot, or a mail pilot, or a retired fighter pilot, or an air taxi pilot, or a flightseeing tour pilot—they’re almost always an eccentric, goofy, roguish, weird-looking sort of character, implied to be a little bit batty, or even completely bonkers (“Howling Mad” Murdock from ,The A-Team,, anyone?). They have odd habits, or believe wild conspiracy theories, or are untidy and slovenly in their appearance, or whatever. And they do incredibly stupid and unsafe things, both on the ground and in the air: unnecessary risks, chancy flight maneuvers, and other hair-raising things that would cause a real-life person to question their sanity and their ability to pilot an aircraft. I got news for you. This is what pilots actually look like. And I’ll tell you something else. There ain’t no pilot legally flying today that would knowingly put his or her passengers in danger, no matter how cool it would make them look. My flight instructor told me something I’ll never forget: “There are old pilots, and there are bold pilots, ,but there are no old, bold pilots,.” There are no pilots who fly airplanes that are falling to pieces and are held together with chewing gum and baling wire (see below, ,Un-airworthy aircraft,). A pilot’s first and foremost concern is, and always should be, safety—for his or her passengers and for himself or herself. I’ll tell you what ,really ,happens to alcoholic pilots—they get their licenses revoked so fast it makes their heads spin. You’ve seen ,Flight,, right? That might be the most realistic portrayal of a pilot facing the consequences of his alcoholism I’ve ever seen. Pilots never seem to get a fair shake in film. They’re portrayed either as weirdos or as unsafe nutjobs. And speaking of unsafe… #2. Un-airworthy aircraft. This is what bush planes and other small, privately owned airplanes in movies look like: And more frustratingly yet, ,nobody seems to question whether a plane that looks like this could safely fly,—not even the pilot. There’s an annoying scene in the film ,It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, where Melville Crump and his wife Monica (played by Sid Caesar and Edie Adams) charter a private plane to take them to Santa Rosita. The plane turns out to be a WWI-era “Jenny,” that is so fragile that one of the bracing wires snaps off in the pilot’s hand. ,The pilot just laughs this off,, and proceeds to get into the plane and fly the Crumps to Santa Rosita. The pilot’s wife freaking, crosses herself ,after removing the chocks from under the wheels. True, the un-airworthiness of the plane is being played for laughs, but it’s still unrealistic and annoying for a pilot like me. It strains my ,willing suspension of disbelief. In reality, the airworthiness of an aircraft is tightly controlled and monitored by the FAA. Airplanes must undergo frequent mandatory inspections. Every so often, the Federal Aviation Administration will issue an “AD”—an Airworthiness Directive. This notifies pilots that a certain make and model of private aircraft has a known deficiency or maintenance risk which must be corrected immediately before the plane flies again. Violating an AD or skipping mandatory inspections is a good way to get your airplane grounded and your pilot’s license revoked. Here’s another example—not necessarily of ill repair and un-airworthiness, but lack of understanding on the screenwriters’ part of how airplanes work. Remember that godawful third ,Mummy ,movie? Let’s set aside the fact that the CG airplane in this film is a Bristol Beaufighter, a two-seat long-range fighter-bomber from the Second World War, and was not designed to carry either passengers or cargo. Let’s look at how it’s loaded. There’s a goddamn ,yak ,in the back of the plane. It doesn’t look particularly well-secured, either. That would play all ,sorts ,of havoc with the ,weight and balance, of the aircraft. The average weight of a fully grown male yak is 770–1,300 pounds. I’m not sure how much each person in that airplane weighs, but I’m betting it’s not more than 770–1,300 pounds. That means that airplane would be ,really ,heavy on the tail section and would fly with the nose sticking up into the air. That would make it very difficult, not to say dangerous to land—assuming the plane could even get off the ground. (The gross weight of a Bristol Beaufighter is more than 25,000 pounds, and the empty weight is not quite 16,000, so I assumed that the plane could still fly even with the pilot, the passengers, the cargo, and the yak aboard. But it would probably stall on takeoff if its nose was kept tilted back into the air.) The pilot is obviously too stupid, too foolhardy, or too dangerous to compute the weight and balance of his airplane. Not to mention that he’s also dumb enough to land the plane on an icy ,glacier ,which slopes downward to a goddamn ,precipice,, instead of landing upslope and into the wind like any sane pilot would. And he didn’t buy any seatbelts, either. It’s like the man’s ,actively trying to kill himself and his passengers,. No wonder he’s relegated to flying in some far-flung part of the world with no official oversight. Ugh. That movie scene pisses me off whenever I see it. But you know what ,really ,pisses me off? #3. Universal pilot’s licenses. Speaking of “Howling Mad” Murdock, did anybody here watch ,The A-Team,? I can’t vouch for the television series; I’m just talking about the recent feature-length film with Bradley Cooper, Liam Neeson, and Sharlto Copley. Copley’s character, “Howling Mad” Murdock, seems to be able to fly ,anything he sees,. During the course of the film, he pilots a Bell “Huey” helicopter, a C-130 Hercules, and an MD530 helicopter (going so far as to ,snag a parachute with one of the skids,). Now, I’ll grant you that Murdock is a military man, and I’m not sure what kind of military or civilian flying career he’s had before we meet him in the film. It may very well be that he’s managed to acquire licenses and type ratings for all of these diverse aircraft. But it seems highly unlikely that he’d have that diverse flying experience. Seems like a bad case of “universal pilot’s license” if you ask me. If ,The A-Team ,was an isolated example, I’d be willing to let it go. But it ,isn’t ,an isolated example. Screenwriters (and novelists, and video game developers) never seem to do much research into FAA requirements, and habitually portray pilots as being people who go to flight school for a little while and then suddenly know how to fly anything with wings or rotors. The worst example of this is probably ,Air America, (1990). Every single goddamn pilot, in that film (including Mel Gibson and Robert Downey Jr.’s characters) seem to have both their fixed-wing pilot’s licenses and their helicopter licenses, not to mention type ratings for everything from a single-engine Pilatus PC-6 Porter to a gigantic twin-engine Fairchild C-123 Provider. Seriously, Hollywood. These are nothing alike. There’s an aggravating scene in ,Air America, where Mel Gibson’s character Gene Ryack looks at Robert Downey Jr.’s character Billy Covington’s pilot logbook and rattles off Covington’s flying career. “Fourteen months of bush flying up in Canada.” “Two months of crop dusting outside of Fresno.” “You flew traffic for Eye in the Sky? You flew a chopper?” I’m really not sure where Covington somehow learned to fly a goddamn ,C-123 Provider ,while he was bush flying up in Canada. It’s always possible that he was flying a C-123 while he was up there, but I doubt it. It’s also possible that he was checked out in the C-123 after arriving in Laos, but that’s never shown. I’m more inclined to believe that the scriptwriters just assumed that a pilot’s license permits an individual to fly anything. The truth is…not so simple. After you get your pilot’s license—typically in a single-engine airplane with an engine of less than 200 horsepower—that’s ,all you’re permitted to fly,, a single-engine airplane with an engine of less than 200 horsepower. Wanna fly seaplanes? You need a seaplane rating—an extra signature in your logbook and an extra qualification on your license. There’s no set amount of time the FAA requires you to have in seaplanes before you get that rating—you just have to “demonstrate proficiency.” It typically takes 5–10 hours of training before you can become proficient in landing and maneuvering a seaplane, and a certified flight instructor can sign you off on that rating. Wanna fly an airplane that has retractable landing gear, an adjustable-pitch propeller, and adjustable flaps (a so-called “complex” aircraft)? That’s another rating. Again, no minimum flight hours, but it could take you 5–10 hours of flight time with an instructor to get the hang of it. Wanna fly an airplane with an engine capable of developing more than 200 horsepower? That’s a high-performance rating. Wanna fly an airplane with more than one engine? That’s a multi-engine rating. Wanna fly a helicopter? If you’re already a fixed-wing pilot, you can do a “helicopter add-on” to your pilot’s license, which I believe is 20 hours. If you want a ,commercial ,helicopter rating, that’s another 150 hours. It seems that both Billy and Gene have those, because they jump back and forth between Bell Hueys and those Pilatus Porters like it ain’t no thang in ,Air America,. A Fairchild C-123 Provider is a complex, high-performance, multi-engine plane. Most bush planes are not. But Billy Covington just jumps right into one. Annoying. #4. Laughably unrealistic aerobatic maneuvers. I’m not going to go into a great amount of detail on this, because this answer’s dragged on long enough. Suffice it to say that there are a great many movies that have airplanes or helicopters in them doing maneuvers it would be ,patently impossible ,for that particular type of airplane or helicopter to perform. Some of the worst offenders are: Jesus Christ, Hollywood, those are SPAD S.XIII biplanes, not X-Wings. Yeah, there’s no way you can do barrel rolls or loop-de-loops in a Bell Huey unless it’s got specially modified rotor blades. You also ,can’t recover from a complete rotor stall, apparently. Um…can anybody tell me how a Beech Baron managed to get up to the cruising altitude of a Boeing 747? And why the Baron’s pilot isn’t using supplemental oxygen…? Some other films which represent airplanes inaccurately include: Airplanes are ,not ,full of secret crawlspaces, Jodie Foster! From KLM’s blog: As a pilot, ,Con Air, was hilarious. The scene where the airplane barrels down the Las Vegas strip, losing its wings and leaving a fuel-infused inferno behind still makes me giggle. Airplane fuel is only flammable when it’s sprayed; jet engines have complex nozzles and air swirlers in their combustion sections. The fuel is actually designed to be quite flame resistant as a liquid – you could use it to douse a lit match. That waterfall of kerosene gushing from the airplane is more likely to extinguish a stray cigarette butt on the road than to cause an explosion. Well, there you go, Quora. All the things movies routinely get wrong about airplanes, pilots, and aviation in general. If I’ve said anything inaccurate, please let me know ASAP in the comments section. And thanks for reading.
What is it like to own the classic Volkswagen Beetle when it was new?
Question: ,“What is it like to own the classic Volkswagen Beetle when it was new?” I do not have to guess at this. In the 1960s I drove two of these cars when they were new, a 36 horsepower version and the “more powerful” 40 horsepower car. Lots of memories. First of all the VW Beetle was bog slow. The maximum top speed was 68 mph for the 36 hp car and 72 mph for the 40 hp version. But that was only attainable on a perfectly level road or a down grade if there was no headwind. A breeze would slow the car down. Getting up to that speed took forever. In an era when an American Oldsmobile Super 88 did 0 to 60 in 8 seconds, the German VW Beetle took about 28 seconds! They used to joke that the last VW Beetle to run the quarter mile at Daytona had not come in yet! And that acceleration (?) was only possible if there were no passengers. Put a friend in the right seat and the car was slower still. If two additional people were squeezed together in the back seat as well you actually had to slip the clutch pulling away from the curb in first gear. Driving the VW you learned to take advantage of any down grade to gain speed, go as fast as you could before you climbed even the slightest grade, and once up to speed did your damnedest to avoid having to slow down once you got the VW up to cruising speed. You had to plan way ahead just to maintain speed. And passing another vehicle required strategy equivalent to invading another country. A common insult at the time was to claim that someone’s car or truck was so slow that it was passed by a VW pulling a boat. And a company called MG Mitten sold a large plastic key, like the wind up key on spring motor powered toy cars, that you could attach to the VW’s engine cover. The VW Beetle’s 4-speed plus reverse synchromesh transmission was shifted via a long stalk that came up from the central tunnel on the floor boards. The spindly shift lever was connected to the gearbox by a long rod. This was not a nice short gated gear change lever that neatly snicked into gears. No. It was more like a broom stick that was vaguely connected to the gearbox via rubber bands! The thing had so much play in it that the driver when shifting gears looked like he was rowing the car to provide motive force! The gear shift was not the only quirky control in the VW. The 36 hp version did not have a gas gauge. Rather there was a bent lever sticking out of the center of the firewall just to the right of the driver’s feet. When the engine began to cough because it was running out of fuel (OK. Now imagine that happening while you were passing a truck on the highway.) the driver would take his right foot off of the now unresponsive gas pedal and nudge the bent lever from its normal vertical to a horizontal position. Doing that would turn a valve and connect the tiny fuel pump to a fuel pickup located lower in the front mounted fuel tank safely mounted just in front of your feet giving you an extra gallon of fuel so that you could get to a gas station. After a few coughs the engine would catch. After market suppliers sold a VDO fuel gauge which could be installed in a false radio grill to the left of the VW’s speedometer, which by the way was its only instrument. This was one of the first additions I made to that car. The windshield washer/wiper knob was the other quirky VW control. There was no windshield washer motor. Rather, to actuate the washer pump the driver had to take one hand off of the steering wheel, grasp the wiper control, pull it out, and then rapidly pump the stupid thing in and out until water sprayed from the jets onto the filthy windshield. Later versions obviated this cartoonish system. But they did so by using the air in the front mounted spare tire to supply air pressure to windshield washer fluid tank. This worked OK…except that if you used the windshield washer you also deflated the spare tire. The Germans had a unique sense of humor. The VW’s “heater” was obviously designed for use in a tropical climate by engineers who thought that having cold fingers and toes was a normal state. In Wisconsin the thing was useless. The only way to get warm in that car in winter was to set fire to the rear seat. Being air cooled the VW had no source of hot water for a normal heater core. Thus, the VW used air boxes below the engine which served as heat exchangers “warming” the passenger compartment and attempting to defrost the windshield with waste heat from the engine. The heater had no thermostat. You turned the thing on by giving a knob between the front seats a dozen or so counter-clockwise turns. This wound up a cable that connected to a couple of levers that pulled open metal flaps in the air boxes under the engine. These were, of course, exposed to the snow and road salt and would invariably stick closed and eventually rust out. The “heated” air was supposed to come out of two tiny vents near the sides of the front footwells and slots at the bottom corners of the windshield. There was no electrically powered heater fan. You got whatever flow could be scavenged from the engine fan. And, of course, this meant that if you were driving at city speeds in traffic or stopped at a light there was no heat. The only way to keep from freezing to death in those conditions in a Wisconsin winter was to keep the stupid car in second gear so as to keep the fan speed up. Later VW offered an optional gasoline powered heater called the Samba which resembled the American SouthWind Heater from the 1930s. This did produce a lot of heat. But it also took up most of the space in the already small front mounted trunk and it sounded like a very large industrial hair dryer. The VW weighed 1600 pounds. That was one-third the weight of an American Oldsmobile. It was quite easy for a group of guys to lift one up. And that made the idea of doing that too tempting. Twice friends of mine lifted my VW, carried it, and put it down somewhere other than where I parked it…usually between two posts from which it could not be driven out! The quality of the VW was, at least relative to other imports, quite good. The body was so tight that air would be compressed when you closed the doors making it necessary to fully push them closed. And the tight body construction and the fully sealed under pan meant the the VW would float on water. But the car did have problems. Besides the heater boxes which would invariably rust out, there were other problems. The clutch was actuated via a long cable that ran from the pedal through the central tunnel to the rear mounted clutch. This cable could and did break. The clutch throw out bearing was made of iron and would inevitably wear causing shifting problems and requiring replacement. Knowledgeable owners would know to replace this with a ball bearing unit from the commercial VW Transporter. The front hood, which had to be lifted to fill the front mounted gas tank, was supported by a cheap metal support rather than a spring or a gas strut. This poorly designed support required that the hood be first lifted slightly before being lowered. Gas stations attendants, not being familiar with this stupid design, would attempt to lower the hood like they would do on any hood or trunk lid of an American car, and bend the hood putting a crease in it and requiring a trip to the body shop. There were other problems. VW in the 1960s built thousands of Beetles using plastics that were incompatible with American gasoline. The plastic spacer attaching the tiny mechanical fuel pump to the engine, and through which the actuator rod ran, would soften from exposure to fuel and fumes and seize the actuating rod causing the pump to fail. Many of the parts were cheap zinc based die castings. One of these was the directional signal lever. If you bumped it getting in or out of the tiny car it would break off. VW dealerships stocked these parts by the gross. The little lead acid starting battery was not externally vented or protected and was mounted in the passenger compartment under the back seat. This could and did leak acid and damage the rear floor of the car. The car had no oil filter. There was only a mesh screen, not capable of filtering out anything much smaller than a nut that a mechanic dropped into the engine. That screen was surrounded by a removable plate around the engine oil drain plug. The VW’s little bumpers could not survive the slightest impact without denting and bending. And the bumper guards were below the bumper level of most American cars. Thus, it was common to see VW’s with bent bumpers and dents in the engine cover or front luggage compartment lid. The car could not survive even a low speed crash without being crushed. There were no crush areas. (Well that was where the gas tank was.) And there were no door beams. There was nothing that protected the passengers. The VW by any standards was unsafe. The car required frequent servicing: 3000 mile oil changes and chassis lubes. The plugs, points, condensers, rotors and distributor caps had to be replaced and ignition timing and tiny little carburetor adjusted every 10K miles. Periodic valve adjustments, done from underneath the car, were necessary. But the engine which displaced a relatively large 1200 cc but produced only 36 or 40 hp was so under-stressed that it was quite reliable and this reliability was aided by the simplicity of the air-cooled design. But the VW Beetle had a reputation for starting in any weather. The rear mounted engine which put most of the car’s weight over the driving wheel and the swing axles insured that the car had terrible handling and was very susceptible to cross winds generated by trucks going the opposite direction. But those same design defects made the VW Beetle easy and fun to drive even in deep snow. The original Volkswagen Beetle was, at $1,649, inexpensive to buy. The only optional extra was the $49 AM band radio and antenna. The Samba gas heater which cost about $125 was excellent if you lived in the land of snow and ice, but very few people bought it. The Beetle delivered an actual 32 miles per gallon, which was very good for the time. The Beetle’s popularity meant that there was a dealer who could service the car in every large and medium sized city. And the car was considered to be reliable…especially compared to other small foreign imports. The Beetle worked well as either a second car in a multi-car household or as a car limited to city use or trips of less than 100 miles. Used that way it was fun to own and drive. Its only real competitor in the United States was the more modern 4-door, 845 cc, 36 horsepower Renault Dauphine. But Renault had a much smaller dealership sales and service network which limited its sales in the United States.
Why do people highly modify old cars when they have bad aerodynamics?
Modifying cars may or may not have to do with performance of the car. Many people modify cars simply for aesthetic reasons and not for power/speed. A lot of guys want a ridiculously high horsepower car (often an increase in displacement) because it's more manly. Some want a lot of torque which requires more horsepower on the low end of the power band. High torque is great for street racing (don't ask me about my days on Francis Louis Blvd). Some want better track performance which often means better suspension and durable brakes. Some guys want a ,very loud, car and they'll spend $5k on a custom exhaust kit. Yet other guys want forced induction hacks like nitrous or meth sprays so they can get a better 1/4 mi time at the drag strip. It isn't actually common to work on aerodynamics. In some cases guys will add larger spoilers to improve downforce but those are hard core track guys. In most cases body kits and other aerodynamic mods are done for aesthetic reasons. Even assuming it is a performance based modification, many people do modifications simply for the ,fun, of it. It doesn't matter how old your ride is... it's the process and the result that counts.
Beranda