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Maintenance & Repair Automotive Science or Voodoo?
113 messages, Last post on Oct 11, 2006 at 7:17 AM
You are in the Maintenance & Repair Forum. Your Host is mr_shiftright
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Replying to: isellhondas (Mar 22, 2005 6:58 am) Is that the one?
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Replying to: isellhondas (Mar 22, 2005 6:58 am) Every once in a while I would go out to the R&D organization and look in the warehouse where they put all those carburators, and their design documents, test results, etc that the company had bought up. There were dozens of them!!!! The company merged with another major. They then combined both companies bought-up carbs. It made an even larger amount. As I understood it, there was a rotation list of major oil companys names. Whenever one of these devices came near to being marketed, or having widespread public knowledge, the next company on the rotation list had to 'take care' of it. Fuel injection then came along. Since it had gotten into the public eye years ago, there wasn't much to be done about it. Mercedes, Corvettes, etc had developed it years ago. The car makers really needed it to reach the new government polution specifications. So, the auto manufactors started using them. But, when the private inventers started improving on it, just like they had done with the carb, and getting V6 fuel injected motors up over 200mpg, the oil companies started buying them up too. The last trip I took to the warehouse, the latest positions in there were the new high-milage fuel injection systems. And just think, I've only seem the storage for 2 majors. Think about what is out there in the other majors storage bins. It must be hundreds and hundreds. It's the truth.
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Replying to: bolivar (Mar 22, 2005 9:36 pm) 
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Okayyyyyyyyyyyyyy.... I love stories like this! |
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Replying to: bolivar (Mar 22, 2005 9:36 pm) Not much they could do then. |
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Well American car companies did a pretty good job all by themselves of holding out for about 30 years after Mercedes put FI in a production car (1954 Mercedes 300SL) . Even VW beat Detroit by almost 20 years (1968 Squareback) . It's pretty sad. Oil companies don't need to block Detroit from introducing innovation. They've always been very good at preventing it themselves. A carburator couldn't possibly give the same mpg as fuel injection. It is too imprecise an instrument, being mechanically controlled and almost impossible to interface accurately with engine management systems. Probably the Europeans hit the optimum mpg you could achieve with a carburator on a real car driven on real roads at real speeds, something around 40 mpg in a Renault 4CV. But these were very small engines. Eight big American pistons are going to gobble fuel unless you have some very sophisticated controls and overdrive gearing(e.g., Corvette). So I think all claims for high mileage carburators are groundless. |
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| and I also think that the folks who invented the latest, greatest fuel saving device, but failed miserably, can easily blame the big fuel companies instead of facing his friends, relatives, and peers with the truth. | |
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It's very egotistical (polite term) isn't it, to think that Exxon is after YOU! "We must destroy that genius inventor Shiftright. The stakes are too high!" |
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at parties, I suppose... I was so smart, I scared three major oil companies into making me lose my business due to bad research, no backing money, and unreliable suppliers... |
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Replying to: 0patience (Mar 22, 2005 8:24 pm) I remember the articles and people talking about it but I never actually saw one. |
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