Diesel Crackdown

[Robin Colbourne]

With regard to John Featherstone's parking fine, it sounds as though there is a good chance his car has been 'cloned'. Someone is driving around in the same make, model and colour of car as his, with copies of John's number plates on it.  All the time John keeps his own car taxed, MOT'ed and insured, the Plod are very unlikely to notice the 'clone'.

Edited By Robin Colbourne on 30/01/2017 11:55:10

[Cuban8]

At least as far as the developed world is concerned, fatalities from infectious diseases, and a whole host of other illnesses that contributed to much early mortality or long term disablement both in adults and children, are now more or less eradicated.

I often wonder whether we don't have enough to worry about now, hence the panic over diesel, climate change etc etc etc..........The air we breathe today is sweet nectar compared to that of earlier times, when back then, smog, lead from petrol and industrial pollution was definitely taking its toll. If you're over 65, you'll have had experience of the pea-souper smogs in the towns - nothing comes close today, thank goodness.

Yes, it's right to move away from diesel because of the particulate problem, but I think it needs to be done fairly and over a reasonable space of time, with legislation to gradually phase it out over say ten or twelve years for private cars or vans. Encourage initiatives such as scrappage schemes, but not with the daylight robbery of punitive charges and taxation, that will as usual only affect those that can least afford them.

 

Edited By Cuban8 on 30/01/2017 12:34:04

[GONZO]

C8, growing up at the Elephant & Castle in the late 40's and 50's I well remember the 'smogs' of those days, now there was a level of particulates and noxious gases to worry about. Then there was the additional lead in the air from the Rio Tinto lead smelting works at Tower Bridge(a few miles from me as the crow fly's) to add to the vehicle exhaust generated lead fumes.

[ken anderson.]

my neighbour who has a Peugeot diesel van ...swears by it ....its done 90K and he's had no problems with it..i wouldn't say he treats it as anything special etc...its just his workhorse......the current debate about the diesel emissions will be sorted by the tech lads and then we'll be told something else is killing us all off...so we better tax that as well...so at least we are paying top dollar to get done in......if I left my car at home and attempted to use public transport-I would spend best part of my day trying to get somewhere...for not so long ago we were all encouraged to own a car etc....and the public transport system was dismantled wholesale....at least up here in the stick's...n/east..we have a metro system that serve's the select few..but even that runs on tracks that were laid out over 100 years ago...and you need to be a millionaire to use it everyday....long live the car... I hear most of you say.

ken Anderson...ne...1........... keep the car dept.

[Martin Harris - Moderator]

There's a bus which passes within around half a mile of our field but no underground or trains, I'm afraid. Carrying a couple of decent sized models, glow fuel and petrol, starting equipment (or even flight batteries and chargers if I was feeling lazy), transmitter case and sunglasses on the bus might be slightly less than practical as would the multiple trips from the bus stop (if anything left there was still around when I got back).

I'm afraid public transport is a non-starter as far as I (and I'd assume 99% of us) is concerned!

[ken anderson.]

good old beeching in his short sight time in charge decided to close our station which in turn connected up with a few other towns and then on to the city in the 60's...and ever since then the council and various other local groups are trying to get it reinstated...the Victorian lads had it sussed and then we dismantled the lot.....so diesel and petrol came to the frontline....we taxed it and taxed it...today locally(125p)ltr for diesel....petrol not far behind......we have a few electric cars running around...but will they contend with the northern hemisphere low temps?....... we'll probably have the breakdown lads coming out with lipo's and quick charger's (joke)....

ken Anderson...ne...1...... beeching/diesel etc dept.

Edited By ken anderson. on 30/01/2017 17:28:24

[Luther Oswalt]

Over here I am not sure what the future is for Diesel, especially where it is going in the pick up truck area! I have a 2007 Chevrolet 3500, Dually (Dual Rear Tires) 1 ton. It is a 365 hp, 600 ft-lb torque, that I use for farm related tasks. That same truck today has 450 hp Diesel engine, 900 ft-lb of torque, and a price tag of over $60,000!( Ford is at $73,000)! Way beyond my pocket book anyway! The major problem is not to buy a trailer which the weight capacity exceeds 10,000 lbs. When I procured the trailer and before the Feds passed these regs I found a very good trailer that had a capacity of 20 tons, now the Federal and State Departments of Transportation do not care about the weight as much they do about the upper limit of the Combined Weight Capacity of the truck and the trailer! In my case this is 6,600 + 20,000 which exceeds the allowed by 600 pounds!

The regulations require a driver of any vehicle with capacity to haul over 26,000 pounds to have a commercial lincese. This brings on many other requirements. So I am stuck! I may have to sell the trailer.

Leo

[Andy48]

Posted by Trevor Crook on 29/01/2017 21:50:50:

Pete, I just love those old Saabs, very distinctive and well built. However, solid it may be but because of all the modern safety and luxury equipment on cars now, don't assume it's heavier than your wife's car. I did a quick check on tinternet and apparently the kerb weight of a Saab 96 V4 is 873kg. You don't say what your wife drives, but my Fiat 500 has a kerb weight of 950kg, and most superminis are around a tonne, so your two cars probably have similar power to weight ratios. As yours has a bigger displacement, it probably has more torque, assuming your wife's car is normally aspirated, and this will be at lower revs than the newer car, so the Saab will be more sprightly in everyday conditions.

I'd love to run a classic, but I always chicken out and buy something modern!

We used to have a Saab 96 with the V4 engine in it. Solid..... er no! My wife wrote it off in a built up area when a Reliant Robin ran into it. She was doing 20mph. It twisted the body.

When we took it to the Saab garage for an estimate for repairs, the service manager said it was a write off after the briefest of looks. When he saw my puzzled look, he too me round the back and showed me an identical Saab with identical damage to the front and side, but down the other side. Both cars were bought by someone, and one of the car was eventually repaired using parts from my Saab.

Incidentally the Saab V4 with the Ford Taunus 1500cc engine would do 0-60 in 16 seconds. Not particularly fast.

[Andy48]

Posted by SuperNash on 30/01/2017 10:43:19:

Thanks Colin - principle makes sense now.

A few engineering hurdles to get over I would say!

I work in aircraft power systems and although hybrid drives are being mooted (and this would appear on regional prop driven aircraft first I would think, where it is easiest to conjoin the two power plants), a complete electric airliner is not something being talked about right now. Although there are a few prototype setups using a full electric drive on lightplanes e.g. the electric extra http://arstechnica.co.uk/cars/2016/12/extra-330-electric-airplane-record/

The US did test a couple of nuclear power plants for planes during the cold war.

These are now Idaho in a museum. Visited this museum a few years ago.

[Erfolg]

With respect to the parking charge issue. Recently I fell foul of a computer scam. Where a company sent an Email, purporting to be Sainsburys. I did not go through with the transaction which i was being attempted to be lured into. never the less i received threatening Email.

I went to the Police and was put in touch with their Fraud division. The most important bit of information that Police told me was the following. It is possible that the company will gain access to your name and address, quite legally. They will then select a court to have a case against you for "what ever". This court will not be local to you, never the less you must attend the court or have a legal representative attend the court. If not there will be a ruling which allows the use of a "Court Appointed" bailiff to collect their claim. Attend and the case will be dismissed.

The trouble was and is this cost you money, anyway.

In the end, quoting the "consumers protection act" and rejecting any implied contract did the trick. In that I received an Email to say they were dropping their claim.

I suspect that the Police were monitoring what was going on, as I was expressly told not to say that the Police had been contacted. Although the full details were taken by the Police.

As for Diesel vehicles, i thought that Euro 6 diesels (although a minority at present) were cleaner on emissions including particulates than petrol cars.

As some have suggested, it seems, by taste, smell and visually some of the worst offenders are buses. This is particularly noticeable in our car free high street, where in the cold weather you come close to choking on the diesel fumes principally from buses.

Edited By Erfolg on 30/01/2017 22:29:05

[Colin Leighfield]

Thanks Andy48. Kennedy cancelled the nuclear powered bomber project after his inauguration in 1961, because vast amounts of money had been spent over a number of years during which the only thing that had been flown was an experimental reactor in a B36. No end was in sight. It was at the same time that he prevented further commitment on the B70/SR70 beyond research flying with NASA. He was probably right, with hindsight!

I know that Airbus are flying a very light all-electric plane right now and are seriously developing an aerial taxi project which I think is electric, although again a few years off I am sure.

Ken, although we criticise Beeching now, I well remember as a kid that we had railway connections between what seemed to be every village, populated by dirty and slow trains with hardly any passengers on them, costing a fortune, needing massive new investment and having a lousy safety record. With a record like that and the motorways coming along, what he did seemed entirely logical at the time. It's easy to criticise with hindsight. Even now it's true that trains are good at getting you from A to B if A to B is your journey, if not they are useless. Like all public transport it has severe limitations. Fortunately new transport strategies such as being considered by Midlands Connect are recognising that private vehicles on roads are essential and with the emissions gradually disappearing over the next few hears, that objection goes out of the window. There's a lot going to change and some of it might actually be good! Wouldn't that be a change.

[Frank Skilbeck]

I think the big short sighted thning with the Beeching cuts was not to turn these old railways into waking and cycling paths, there's an old railway line here that would be ideal for cycling into town on, but it's been broken up and would be very difficult to turn into a continuous path/cycleway now.

As regards diesel and petrol cars I think we are on the cusp of a new technology era, battery technology and solar power are advancing all the time.

[Nigel R]

Posted by Frank Skilbeck on 31/01/2017 09:11:31:

As regards diesel and petrol cars I think we are on the cusp of a new technology era, battery technology and solar power are advancing all the time.

The energy density of lipo batteries is about 1% of petrol.

Batteries have a way to go yet. So the capacity/range problem is improving, and some new chemistry or cell structure may very well provide a step change up from lipos.

But the real problem, which won't change with a different battery chemistry, with electric infrastructure is the inefficiency of coverting energy from something into electricity, and the inefficiency of the distribution network, and then the inefficiency of the charge process itself, and then the inefficiency of running a motor via a battery. By the time you've done that, you've hosed a lot of the original energy. Petrol of course does not suffer the multiple conversion problem, a single conversion is done. And of course the electricity has to be generated from some energy source in the first place, unlike what many green advocates seem to believe the magic electricity fairy does not exist.

[Peter Christy]

Posted by Andy48 on 30/01/2017 18:29:52:We used to have a Saab 96 with the V4 engine in it. Solid..... er no! My wife wrote it off in a built up area when a Reliant Robin ran into it. She was doing 20mph. It twisted the body.

When we took it to the Saab garage for an estimate for repairs, the service manager said it was a write off after the briefest of looks. When he saw my puzzled look, he too me round the back and showed me an identical Saab with identical damage to the front and side, but down the other side. Both cars were bought by someone, and one of the car was eventually repaired using parts from my Saab.

Incidentally the Saab V4 with the Ford Taunus 1500cc engine would do 0-60 in 16 seconds. Not particularly fast.

Wow! Not sure how she managed that ! They were one of the most successful rally cars of their era - indeed the first to win the RAC rally 3 times in succession, with the same driver - the late, great Eric Carlsson! And that was when they only had an 800cc 2-stroke up front! It was the only car that didn't need a roll cage! It had to have one, as the regs demanded one, but it didn't need it, as it already had one built into the roof. They continued with that for years afterwards. Top Gear dropped a 900 onto its roof from over 10 feet up, and did the same with a BMW. The BMW was flattened! The SAAB, you could still open all the doors!

Mind, if you did manage to twist the shell, you would have a very big job trying to straighten it!

And yes, as standard, they weren't very quick in a straight line, but made up for it in the handling department. The biggest problem was the exhaust system. My original car, which I bought new in 1969, was modified after a couple of years by the addition of a twin-choke Weber and a sports exhaust. This HALVED the 0-70 time, without affecting the fuel consumption by a single mpg! Tells you a lot about Ford carbs!

My current one has the same mods, and whilst not quick by 21st century standards, it is certainly quick by 70's standards, and is well able to keep pace with modern traffic.

Here it is at the European Model Helicopter Championships in Ballenstedt, East Germany, a few years ago:

It earns its keep!

--

Pete

 

 

Edited By Peter Christy on 31/01/2017 09:45:19

[Cuban8]

Posted by Martin Harris on 30/01/2017 17:04:33:

There's a bus which passes within around half a mile of our field but no underground or trains, I'm afraid. Carrying a couple of decent sized models, glow fuel and petrol, starting equipment (or even flight batteries and chargers if I was feeling lazy), transmitter case and sunglasses on the bus might be slightly less than practical as would the multiple trips from the bus stop (if anything left there was still around when I got back).

I'm afraid public transport is a non-starter as far as I (and I'd assume 99% of us) is concerned!

The wife and I rather liked the idea of a day out in London to visit the Science Museum. Thought that rather than driving, we'd take the train from Colchester in to Liverpool Street.............easy. Trouble was that the cost, even after trawling the 'net for the best deal, would have been £90 return for the both of us - and that's excluding the fare for the Underground to and from South Kensington and and parking at Colchester station.

So in all about £116 before anything else. Absolutely rediculous, so we took the car to Epping Underground (an hour's drive) and parked for six quid all day, 'Tube tickets were £25 for both of us, so including fuel (diesel ) the cost was about £40. I should add that this was on a Saturday, I dread to think what the overground fare would have been during the week.

On the diesel issue - is all this stuff just pie in the sky ?http://www.dieselforum.org/about-clean-diesel/what-is-clean-diesel

 

Edited By Cuban8 on 31/01/2017 10:06:54

[Peter Christy]

P.S.: Andy,

In 1958, the Americans were considering buying the Princess Flying Boats that had been kept in storage after the project was cancelled. They were intended to be test beds for conversion to nuclear power. However, the deal came to nothing, and eventually the airframes were discovered to be seriously corroded, and had to be scrapped.

Some info here:

**LINK**

and here:

**LINK**

--

Pete

[Erfolg]

Those of us who were about in the 60s, remember the railways as described by Colin. Moving into the 70s, the railaways as was also true for the UK as a whole racked by strikes.

For passengers, the ticket office at your local station had a guy reluctant to provide a ticket, although he would have nothing else to do. The station platform had a guy , moping about with a worn out brush, sweeping dirt from one place and back again.

Goods trains were in decline as it took would take a day to assemble a train, then it trundled slowly through the night to the next goods/marshalling yard, where if lucky be emptied. If unlucky assembled into the next train. The service was slow and more expensive than the road service. Which was then dominated by a nationalised British Road service, before competition of the private hauliers really killed of much of the rail freight business.

Like Supernash, although I believe in a non political world, the Diesel has life in it yet. Again as has been highlighted, the more prime stages your energy processes go through, the less efficient the overall system is. Just transmitting electricity involves energy losses. Stepping voltage up and down, conversion of electricity into other forms be it Electro Chemical, Kinetic systems and so on all come at an efficiency cost. One of the fundamental aspects some like to ignore is that the costs of chemical processing for batteries, waste, reprocessing, creation of a complex grid system and so on, uses a lot of energy. Many of the saviours for green energies a look like fudges to create the appearance that all the issues are easily fixed and the whole becomes incredibly efficient. Just like Nuclear power, all is well, until waste disposal rears its ugly head.

The problem with enrgy there is an incredible amount of politics involved, togeher with a belive in the free, clean energy fairy.

[Frank Skilbeck]

Posted by SuperNash on 31/01/2017 09:34:19:

Posted by Frank Skilbeck on 31/01/2017 09:11:31:

As regards diesel and petrol cars I think we are on the cusp of a new technology era, battery technology and solar power are advancing all the time.

The energy density of lipo batteries is about 1% of petrol.

Batteries have a way to go yet. So the capacity/range problem is improving, and some new chemistry or cell structure may very well provide a step change up from lipos.

But the real problem, which won't change with a different battery chemistry, with electric infrastructure is the inefficiency of coverting energy from something into electricity, and the inefficiency of the distribution network, and then the inefficiency of the charge process itself, and then the inefficiency of running a motor via a battery. By the time you've done that, you've hosed a lot of the original energy. Petrol of course does not suffer the multiple conversion problem, a single conversion is done. And of course the electricity has to be generated from some energy source in the first place, unlike what many green advocates seem to believe the magic electricity fairy does not exist.

True, but an electric motor is much smaller and less complex than an IC engine, with it's turbocharger, fuel system, lubrication system, multispeed gearbox, exhaust and emissions control system. Plus an electric car puts energy back in the tank when you slow down, so far I've not seen my fuel tank doing the same an the efficiency of an IC engine is way less than an electric motor. So take the whole package and it's a lot closer.

Petrol doesn't suffer multiple conversion problems, I'm afraid it doesn't come out of the ground as petrol (my day job is project management of oil production facilities), there's energy involved in the extraction, transportation, refining and then distribution to where you fuel up and then if you are lucky you convert 30% of the energy into motion. Combined gas turbine power stations where the exhaust heat is then used to make steam for steam turbines are now at 55% efficiency.

[Frank Skilbeck]

BTW an interesting fact, for every gallon of crude oil produced there's 8+ gallons of salty contaminated water to treat and dispose of, and we currently produce over 3,000 million gallons of oil a day, I'll let you work out how much waste water that is.

[Colin Leighfield]

Good memories there Erfolg. I recall that in my early days working for W. Canning in Birmingham, (1963/73), I was frequently asked by customers in the Bristol area to send urgent deliveries by Red Star Passenger train, to Bristol Templemeads. I can honestly say that in not one case did the delivery ever arrive, they always used to disappear en-route. It caused a lot of problems and never got sorted out. Absolutely horrendous.

Fascinating being reminded about the original Saab 96. It made its name as an amazingly successful rally car, driven by Eric Carlsson. It was sad when the emission and fuel efficiency problems lead to the abandonment of the quirky three cylinder two stroke engine and replacement with the V4 Ford engine. I believe that the Ford engine was originally designed for the Transit van with the very short nose, and later put into the cars. The original two stroke wasn't unique, the DKW Junior and Wartburg Knight had very similar three cylinder two stroke engines. I had a ride in the Wartburg in 1972, it was sold in the UK for a while in rhd form and was a lot of car for a very low price. I was astonished at how smooth and refined it felt, bearing in mind that it had the same firing pattern as a straight six four stroke and excellent dynamic balance. It also had a free-wheel device, similar to the one that Rovers used to have until they were made illegal in GB. I am sure that I heard somewhere that the reason for the engine similarity was that all were based on an original DKW design. There is a similarity there with the BSA Bantam 125cc two stroke motorbike, because that engine was actually a German DKW (Das Kleine Wunder) design, granted to BSA as part of war reparations.

As far as the diesel pollution issue is concerned, there is no point in swimming against the political tide on this one because it's unwinnable and if you dare argue against any of the current environmental nostrums, no matter how shaky some of them undoubtedly are, you are likely to be personally slagged off and branded as low-life uncaring and a menace to humanity. The political hypocrisy is obvious because the knowledge of fine particulate emissions in these air-quality measures was perfectly well-known during the years that government was persuading us to buy diesels for political reasons. It has also been suggested that the frightening statistics being thrown at us now about associated deaths are very politically convenient and it's well-known that the way some of these are put together might have some of us scratching our heads. It's a bit like lots of numbers quoted by governments, because they often come from the Office of National Statistics we are expected to believe that they must be bona-fide. That is far from the truth.

[john stones 1 - Moderator]

Humanity is a menace to Humanity, now't will ever change that whilst we're still here.

Keep Calm n Carry On.

John

[Erfolg]

Frank

I am a little surprised that you see the Petro Chemical industry in such a poor light. I see many if not all so called Renewable and sometimes called green industries in a similar vein. Very poor availability, requiring subsidies.

In the case of the wind turbines requiring energy hungry concrete bases, road infrastructure the interconnectors, often the dual conversion of the electric power at each end of the transmission process. The shocking aspect of all of this is that the life of turbine itself seems short of 20 years. What then?

Solar power was even worse in the past, if this has really changed i do not know. In the past it took more energy to create the crystals than they ever generated. That is without considering the treatments of the chemical residues. They certainly make sense where it is difficult, or should I really say expensive to provide a hard wired power source.

At present efficiencies of 45% are being claimed for a modern diesel engine. The high efficiencies claim of 55%, steam turbines will be combined Heat and Power plants, of which very few exsist. Even then it all depends on how you calculate the energy saved against energy used in construction. My experience of steam turbine plant was approx 33%. The extra few percent improvement, hard fought for.

The only true way of assessing efficiencies is the aggregation of all the energy in, to create a system, to dismantling, to the energy out.

What always amazes me that the real target of many Greens seems to be the freedom that personal transport provides. On the basis that all should use public transport, because they think that is what people should do.

This does not mean I will not drive an electric car, although at present i cannot drive even 60 miles to the nearest city and back, using a single charge.

[Stuart C]

"What folly it was to abolish trolley buses and replace them with diesel buses at this stage of civilisation."

Ronald Bell MP, Diesel Fumes Bill, Parliament April 1962.

[Former Member]

[This posting has been removed]

[Colin Leighfield]

In Birmingham we had a comprehensive tram network running from Sutton Coldfield to the Lickey Hills and everywhere else, trolley buses and conventional buses. All of the trams were very old, but I loved them as a kid. They were abandoned in 1953, ostensibly because of cheap oil, and I remember standing with my grandparents at Erdington Six Ways island watching them on the last day, when they were paraded in convoy. As the last one went past, I saw chalked on the back "The Last of the Many". That one was preserved in Birmingham Science Museum with the chalk writing still on it, but disappeared along with an absolute treasure trove of amazing exhibits when the Musrum was closed and replaced with the dismally inadequate display we have now in Millennium Point, where there is hardly anything. Massive amounts of money are now being spent to create a couple of tram routes, (trams made in Spain!) made largely impractical because of the loss of the original track line opportunities caused by road development.

The trolley buses survived for a few more years in Birmingham (sixties)? and longer in Walsall, (seventies)? They were very smooth and quiet and I loved them. Hard to believe that it's all so long ago, the memories are still very clear. All of these decisions at the time were made on the basis that oil was cheaper and abandoning electricity saved money. Also route maintenance charges must have been very high and the fixed use of road space hampered other traffic flows. That problem is coming back as we see the introduction of bus lanes, which are empty for 90% of the time. Between 1997 and 2012 when I stood down from my operations role I travelled to my office in Bradford every Monday and one of the daftest things I ever saw was the introduction of the guided bus route into the city centre, in which the standard diesel buses with side-mounted guide fittings are channelled down a concrete"tramway", taking out about a third of the road and increasing other traffic congestion. It cost millions, caused massive disruption and like most other bus services, only had lots of passengers briefly in the peak times morning and evenings. Most of the rest of the day they drive around with very few people on board, costing a lot of money and with very high emissions per passenger kilometres. Crazy.

I remember managing a project involved with particulate filtration from a process using large bag-filters. Very expensive in capital terms and using a lot of electricity. I looked at the standard data for emissions from power generation at the time and found that the total emission profile with filtration was much worse than without because of emissions at source. As a result I managed to develop a strategy that was acceptable and got around the problem. Although electricity derived from nuclear or "renewables" theoretically gets around that issue, total dependence on those is still a long way off and as others have pointed out, a massive swing to electricity as a replacement for fossil fuel driven vehicles will massively increase electricity needs. There's little doubt that the most efficient way to use energy is to apply it directly within the vehicle, i.e. as we do with internal combustion engines. Sadly with the politicised use of science these days we don't see much honesty in decision making and the current fashion of pillorying the Diesel engine is a perfect example of that. Things always come out in the wash eventually, but it takes a long time and truth is the victim because of vested interests and reputations.