K this is getting outta hand, but let's do this shit. I'ma cut out a few bits but I bet it won't help.
TestECull said:
the engine is designed to accept tolerances so loose a modern engine with them could be mistaken for a metal band's drummer, the electrical system is so stupidly simple even Clarkson could fix it properly. The interior is crumbling but it just won't give up, still starts up every time, still highly dependable.
Just don't let the Hilux catch wind of this, it'll be war...
Mind you, doesn't seem to do my bike any harm having a stoneage carb, still runs fine and economically.
My Ford does just fine with that stone-age old tech too. Just proof you don't need five million computers to get from A to B I guess.
Does smell a bit, mind. Probably because it's uncatalysed. But at least it's running on unleaded...
(early ECUs were) underpowered and drastically unreliable.
To a point. They weren't unreliable as in the engine would just abruptly stop running, but they were unreliable in that it would randomly start running like arse. Teething problems, basically. (snip)... the EEC-IV feedback carbs, which can be fixed for free by just unplugging a couple of things.
Hmm, that WAS one of the typical ways to quick-fix a misbehaving small capacity electronically controlled VW engine ... figure out which sensor was broken and disconnect it. System would go into a safety / debug mode which retarded the timing some, overfuelled a little, etc, so that it would keep running in a reasonably usable, smooth and safe fashion. It just got a bit thirsty and was a touch down on power. Never had to bother with it myself other than getting to the parts store to pick up a fresh coolant temp sensor and to reset the ignition timing after replacing the distributor, but some people had woeful tales to tell.
TBI in the US was often used as an interim step between carbs and port injection. It fell out of favor right around 1990 or so.
Hehe... so we got it (on mainstream, affordable cars anyway - injection had been around as a cost option since the fifties after all, and even that little dub had a couple multipoint/port injection engines at the top of the range... one being supercharged...) just as you phased it out. Maybe there were suddenly all these unwanted brand-new TBI (or CFI, SPI...) units sitting around with nowhere to go until some bright spark thought, "europe!"...?
The 1.6L in that 200SX was worth 80HP @ 5600RPM and 115FT LBs @ 4200RPM. Even a low-end V8 over here, say GM 305, makes over twice that.
But is also twice the capacity, as it's two of those engines welded together!
That IS more the output I was expecting from the size and the era, though on the high side of expectation. (Really, a "sports" car that isn't an MG/classic Lotus/some tiny 2-seater drop top with less than 100hp?) ... I guess the 200+ hp 2-litre was turbo'd, then?
About the same torque as mine, but it has to work harder to reach it. I can at least dial it in on the motorway without having to make the engine shriek ... unless I want to of course.
Fun thing: The most modern turbo diesels make 130hp out of that same capacity, and something crazy like 240lbft torque... which is actually capped at that level to avoid torching the clutch & tyres or breaking the transaxle. The dyno curve looks like someone's sliced the top off of it across the peak area. Can put out 80hp without even nudging 2000 revs, and would probably match that old Nissan for performance with only 1000cc's. How small can they go but still provide decent power with the next advance?
Yup. When I got the truck it had 200K on it. The clutch at that time only engaged in the upper half of the pedal travel. I put another 65,000 miles on it after that. Hard ones, too. It towed a broken '88 Dakota on a four corner trailer about thirty miles or so, a load two thousand pounds above it's rated capacity. It's gone through standing water up to it's floorboards. It's gone over a rocky creek bed. It's pulled smaller trailers around. It's pulled cars out of ditches. It's carried everything from big block V8s to gokarts in the bed, and it's push-started a few cars as well as been push started a few times. I, uhh, haven't babied that thing at all. It's a truck, dammit I'm going to use it as one!
I lol'd
And am well encouraged to hear that, rather than it just being an enormous metal posing pouch! Sounds like fun... and massively respectable too.
You could fit the Taj Mahal under my floorboards. SOOOOO much room under there between the frame rails. I did not have to jack it up to get the gearbox out, and with the gearbox out I could almost sit up in the tranny tunnel while I pulled the flywheel off/reinstalled it. The only tools I needed were a normal socket set in SAE(I used the 9/16, 1/2 and 5/8" sockets therein, and a couple of times matching wrenches), a floor jack, a jack stand with a piece of wood to support the engine, and a creeper to roll the gearbox free.
Didn't need a clutch puller or centering device or anything like that?
I can see why you can't take turns very fast in it, though!
Also, SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS....
Hell if I had taken my Ford to a shop to have the clutch done it would have been 1200, not the 250 I spent to buy a clutch pack and have the flywheel turned.
Do a what to the flywheel now? Isn't that the engine's job?
Also I don't know if there's a difference between FWD and RWD ones, but just looking at the supposed list of equipment needed to change a clutch (never mind the steps to ACCESS the blessed thing) gives me the fear. Quite an investment in pretty arcane and specialised things I might use only 4 or 5 times in my whole life, and therefore be decidedly less than expert in the use of even the fifth time, and can't find decent instruction in the use of ... whilst removing or installing an already fairly mysterious object (I just can't see how it works!) which is critical for both the operation and, to a certain extent, the safety of my travels, that's kinda heavy, probably fragile, certainly expensive, fernickety about being installed correctly, and could well kill me dead in a hail of springs if I get it absurdly wrong.
It's almost as bad as my dislike of pratting around with brakes. Most I'll do is change the fluid, check the pad thickness and squirt a bit of degreasing brake cleaner on. I may still die as a result of someone's incompetence, but if it's that of someone whose services I've paid pretty handsomely for and have a receipt to prove such, then they get the blame, court proceedings, and family gets life insurance payout ... rather than my being sneered at and labelled as just another Darwin Award nominee.
There was a point where I had a look at a diagram of a drum brake and though "ah, that's simple enough, I can change the shoes on that...". Yeah, apparently it needs some kind of vice, enormous locking pliers or other tool? That was fun, finding that out, with no warning. As was driving around with no rear brakes, having tied both of them off to keep the fronts working, til I could get it done right.
("self adjusting" cable having reached its limit, apparently) and the gearbox needed changing anyway (ruined the 2nd gear synchro in a fit of anger...), so I had to have it done.
Hahahahha. I recently adjusted the clutch in my friend's '95 Mustang. He had let it go to the point the self-adjuster took fifteen clicks to get it back to where it's supposed to be.
I'm not sure, but I think this is a thinly-veiled implication that I've been had, and my noobish lack of knowledge concerning cables that don't have a pair of locknuts has been thoroughly exploited for monetary profit! Zounds! Well I knew the place was shady, but I certainly won't be back in that case. Thirty pounds that replacement cable cost, and it took forever to bed in right. That's at least 10~12 beers I could have had in the pub, or maybe 25~30 from the supermarket...
As for synchros...all of mine work just fine! Reverse isn't synchronized though, so sometimes there's still loud crunchy noises coming from my gearbox
I'm of the firm belief that reverse should never be synchronised on safety grounds. Had my share of malajusted linkages and the like, going backwards briefly at traffic lights etc until I realised. Should I end up getting reverse instead of first (or worse, instead of 4th/6th), more carnage could result than a slight delay and an impatient blast of the horn.
That gear is the first synchro I've ever blown, and it had been slightly temperamental before that, occasionally crunching or balking. The problem is I'm treating this rather dainty southwestern european thing as if it's a tough north euro beast or a rough and tumble italian pit fighter, which works fine if that's what you're driving... do it in one of these, though, and it can't take it.
So, having to go fast to make an appointment made (by others) at the last minute, get a call which says it's now at an ever earlier time somewhere different I've never heard of, get cut up soon after, angrily slam it down with some force into 2nd to go for an overtake.... BANG and the lever feels a bit sloppy. Oh dear. Gearbox is also made of cheese, then.
Still drove, noisily, it was just somewhere between dog clutch and crash engagement ever after and had to be held in place. All the other gears were fine. Would have just effected a repair if gearbox internals weren't my third fundamental fear. Instead opted to either start and stick in 2nd, or skip it entirely depending on the journey. No idea what state the dog teeth were in, after all. Collected a second hand unit for not a huge amount from some guy near where I was having my motorcycle training, using a borrowed Nissan the size of a shoe, then had it inexpertly hammered into place by the aforementioned Happy Fun Tiem Garrage, ink. All good ever since, but I've only once since powershifted, when needing to get down into 1st in a hurry to avoid an accident. Otherwise I just ride the slow-ass synchros at their own pace. I reason that there's enough power on tap that even with the pause it's still quicker than anything I've previously owned.
Our minivan is starting to do that. EVERY bushing is clunking. The gearbox is leaking somewhere. The electrics are completely batshit insane. The axles are popping. One of the sliding doors doesn't open properly. The alarm is on a hair trigger, too. You can't just walk up, stick the key in, unlock the door, and go. The moment you start the engine the alarm goes off and it immobilizes itself. It's also averaging 19MPG out of a 3.8L EFI V6...
Hmmm OK I'm not doing THAT badly then! But I'm not too sure what kind of annual safety checks you have to satisfy, if any... If this old dear fails its next one (November), it's probably off to the crusher after I strip and ebay any remaining items of value. It'll probably fail heavily on the suspension alone. It'd likely cost more to fix that and the brake issues than it would just to buy something of similar spec in the same condition as I bought this one.
All the relevant mechanical parts are at least still intact (no leaks... that I've seen, anyway, but it does have an undertray), the engine sounds pretty rough at idle nowadays (when it deigns to drop below 1100rpm), the gearbox belongs to a different era, the clutch snatches, the ABS keeps disabling itself (into locky-screechy mode, not "ha now you have no brakes" mode), the suspension creaks like old floorboards and feels a bit wierd when I get acrobatic, I don't even know what's going on with the hatch parcel shelf, turn signal self-cancel is basically dead, and the air recirculator gave up on life before I even bought it... but it still unlocks/locks ok, starts first time (usually) and trots along quite happily, with the windows, sunroof, stereo, aircon, seat adjusters, phone charger etc all working fine.
Except for the undeniable fact that any compass brought into it goes ga-ga, so it's a bit tricky to navigate in strange areas, either by map + compass or GPS that uses a compass to sense your direction of travel. My car is the bermuda triangle.
I can't be sure but I think I'd probably be fairly happy with 19mpg US out of an engine that size, though. Probably got quite a big body on it, too...?
It's a five liter gasoline inline six with a one barrel carb and a cam so mild it wouldn't disturb a nervous fawn. It has 8.5:1 compression, two valves per cylinder with the cam down in the block. On top of that, old man time has taken his toll on that cam. Factory it was worth 150HP @ 4100RPM and 275FT LBs @ 1600RPM.
Wow, they really did build it for a lazy and long-lived existence... 30hp/litre, on the redline. But what could be fairly honestly called a "shitload of torque". The Renault is the first thing I've had which can definably beat it on torques per pint, and that's with 16 valves and multipoint injection. Also enough power at 1600rpm to comfortably do 110mph I'd say. Well. OK. Maybe 90~100 with a truck body on it. Not to be sniffed at. Just doesn't get ever so much more powerful when you rev it, merely increases the road speed
first gear is good for forty, second is good for 65, third is calculated to be good for 150, and fourth, assuming I used real maths and not Top Gear maths, is good for 173!
WHAT O_O
Well OK, I can probably credit 1st and 2nd given it's a 5 litre, but I think you might have slipped a little on 3rd. You mean 105? Still kinda high for 4100... that's like top gear in the longest legged thing I've owned.
Honestly you could swap in a diesel and, sound aside, I wouldn't notice.
Eh, I doubt they'd pull quite so well once you'd upshifted at 1800... their curves are even steeper at the bottom end. S'why you get 18 gears after all...
That's the sort of curve I'd expect either from an oil burner (and a naturally aspirated one, at that), or a gasoline motor from about 1950.
Ford's 300ci inline six started life as a 240ci OHV model in roughly 1956 or so. (snip)
So yes, in essence, it is an engine from the 50's. I can take the cylinder head from a first-year 300 and bolt it right onto the block from a 1997 example. It would fit perfectly.[/quote]
hahahaha.... more learning! I knew ford had a prediliction for keeping their old engine lines going zombie-fashion (they were still using a derivative of the old pushrod Anglia and Popular lump in the base models of the Ka and Fiesta over here until quite recently, still a great number of the clatter-traps running about; I suppose there's some justification in that they can be abused to hell and back and not break down, even though they're noisy, slow and inefficient - it's a good choice for a cheap-as-chips city runabout that gets regularly thrashed but only receives kind of servicing once a year, after the dealer sends out the reminder letter)...... but damn!
Do you have to oil the grease nipples and adjust the valve rockers every 250 miles?
My torque and HP curves look like a pair of nice titties viewed top-down, torque being on the left, HP on the right. Very peaky powerband, and 80% of the torque is available at 900RPM. It has the power curve of a diesel without the exorbitant fuel costs!
And I thought I was doing well with 90% of mine at 1750... Like the description... but, exorbitant?
205-55R14s, FWD with an open diff, it had 168,000 on it when I crashed it.
Those are fatter, lower profile tyres than what I have, with 20% less power, so it may just be that you had a great deal of grip and the drivetrain couldn't deliver enough of a shock to break traction, which is the key factor... so long as you can overcome friction for a crucial fraction of a second, you don't need ever so much power to keep them spinning... When I was doing my little burnouts, it was because the cruddy tyres and slack suspension couldn't deal with all of 45hp being dropped at once from a standing start (if I wound it up to at least 4000, maybe 4500rpm) on a high-reduction box. Which is less than 2500rpm for me nowadays, or "a perfectly good WOT launch rpm if you're handy with the clutch", but fatter, softer, more expensive tyres, a taller gear ratio and better weight balance means it's very difficult to deliver sufficient shock even though the 0-60 time is halved.
bouncing around like that with 250FT LBs on tap is a sure-fire way to shatter the diff.
Sounds a bit like my renting a big TDi for a week away (right after suffering a write-off), and finding the only part of the car really engineered to handle the full-boost output were - hopefully - the conrods... Clutch? No. Tyres? No. Suspension, tuned to prevent axle tramp? No. Only solution was to take it slow, despite the huge thrust, as the choices for a fast start were stall (falling off boost), smoke (the clutch) or shudder (wheels bouncing up and down like yo-yos as it struggled for grip). Probably excellent for towing a heavy trailer with the car full of family and luggage, once you got it moving, and was definitely a rocket once you were out of first gear. Just a shame you had to pull away like you were on ice. Similar issues?
Our ramps follow the topography. It's preferred to have a gentle, roughly quarter mile straight ramp with a gentle merge at the end, which helps with our semis getting up to a safe speed.
Sounds perfectly reasonable... all fast roads should be like that really...
Then again if you're inattentive enough to run into the back of a 70 foot long, 12 foot tall, 10 foot wide hunk of iron and fiberglass, you're not really fit to be behind the wheel in the first place...
# but still they cooo-ooome... #
The speed limit is more or less a minimum suggestion for both lanes. I run 75MPH myself, and even then I'm passed as much as I make a pass.
That road doesn't run through Little Italy or something does it?
Said "suggestion" only really applies to the outermost passing lane here, wherein it is admittedly pretty damn frustrating to be sat behind someone at 69 with the limit at 70... You want to crawl, my man, pull the hell to the side and do it in your alloted space.
(imagesnip)
That's the tight ramp I was referring to. Specifically, the one heading east(The right of the picture). That last little kink before it joins the freeway is a 30MPH curve in my truck.
That looks a bit crazy... were they drunk for the entire time they were building that? I swear I could get smoother curves with a couple of stout wooden stakes and a long piece of string to tie them together. Also hella tight for an entrance/exit to such a road, do big trucks often overturn round there?
Only thing even remotely like it I've been round is exiting a 70-everyone-seems-to-think-is-a-60 onto a slower road, as part of a somewhat experimental 1960 new town layout I had reason to visit last weekend (where the throttle went wrong... still quite neck-stretching even whilst feathering it), and a full 4-way cloverleaf the other side of the same town... where a 30mph road intersects with a 50. It's pretty good for seeing how big your biking nuts have got, in terms of lean angle. There are some 270 degree interchanges elsewhere, but they're all far wider radius and can be taken at 60+ in some cases.
We've got those here in America, too. We call them "Clusterfucks" for good reason. I've never had any problems navigating them that weren't related to other people failing at navigating them and backing everyone else up, but I can easily see how they could confuse the unwary and green drivers out there.
It's all plainly signed, and it's even pretty obvious that ITS A MERGE YOU DOLT, NOT A YIELD, YOU UNDERSTAND THAT ITS EASIER TO INTERCHANGE WITH 25MPH TRAFFIC AT 25MPH NOT ZERO, YES?... ahem... but they still don't understand. Even in a perfect world it becomes a nightmare of low-speed weaving at busy times, but it's not hard to tell where you should go. Like all the most complicated interchanges, it looks like a right mess from the air, but makes perfect sense when you drive through it.
I'll definitely use that name for them in future though.
It's also usually a re-treaded tire that blows, which the DOT mandates can NOT be fitted to the front axle for..obvious reasons.
Think we just banned retreads outright quite a long time ago for those very reasons. Occasionally a truck will be found on the shoulder with a ragged-looking tyre and some shards on the roadway, but it's rarely armageddon.
I think the official explanation for the speed limiter is similar, but I'm disinclined to believe it more than it being a lot harder to fiddle your time card to show you did 8 hours at 60.1mph instead of a couple at 70+ and then another 10 on pep pills slogging through 40mph traffic. That and putting a cap on fuel consumption (...so prices can be jacked up with less bankrupcy)... oh and justifying lower speed limits all over the place for everyone
Call me what you want but I'm not terribly interested in a bike.
That's fair enough. I can't say it'd be for everyone. I only really got into it out of necessity, but it's also a bit of fun in betwen. Given my ride, I'm not about to fling myself into a line of schoolchildren at 120mph by messing up the clutch control, so the biggest danger to look out for is other drivers being inattentive, and oil or other slipperyness; or in other words, be paranoid, and you'll probably be OK. The two minor tumbles I have had were both caused by a combination of idiots and loss of traction on rather obviously poor surfaces, so I'm a lot more careful about both these days. Most major damage was a bent handlebar and light bracket, easily bent back into true. The biggest part of a fall, unless you have the extreme bad luck to be crushed between two heavy vehicles (car may become your tomb), sent flying into the air, or over a ravine, is the distance from the seat to the ground - specifically the 3-4 ft your head may fall. The ground speed isn't so bad, so long as you have decent gear on. Jeans, T shirt and sneakers with bare hands bad, padded leather pants + boots and joint-armoured jacket with knuckle and scaphoid protecting gloves good. It doesn't do your image any good, but hey, I'm commuting, my bike's a lawnmower beaten into a comedy shape, and my car's a bottle green tennis shoe with a huge dent in the side. Image is nothing.
If I did get one it'd be a big cruiser. Like, Honda Goldwing type. Perhaps an actual Goldwing, or maybe a comparable BMW.
Hmmm, well, I can sort of see where you're coming from, but those things are so heavy I wouldn't be surprised to find some with power steering, and they require a pretty particular method to get them off the ground if they fall. You're probably as well to just get the convertible, because filtering's going to be out of the question anyway... but so is air conditioning. Plus they're thirsty and hideously expensive to buy.
I did get my full license rather than a restricted one because I'd quite like to rent a Harley on vacation, but it'd only be for a couple of days to have a bit of fun on. Maybe take my life in my hands with some simple leather gloves, Levis, doc martens and a Kraut helmet...
You've got time, though. Your prices are still only half ours. So what you get in the truck is about equivalent to my car in real terms...
Last time I filled up it was 3.25/gallon for 87. Diesel? 4.75/gallon.[/quote]
Exchange rate: $1 to £0.61 = £1.98~£2.90 / USG
USG = approx 3.78L (I can never remember exactly) = £0.524~£0.767 per litre.
Or similar, if relatively reversed, to the prices when I first passed my test about this time 12 years ago.
Today, the best price I'm likely to pass on the way home is £1.34/L for 95-octane (measured using a different method, though 9_9 ... apparently it's somewhere like 91 under your system) and £1.40ish per litre for diesel.
So gasoline is decidedly less than half our price, diesel a little over. Say 40 and 55%.
I'm surprised at the difference between your prices though, until a previous administration specifically put an additional tax (for why? who knows) on diesel, it was noticably cheaper per litre, same as in most european countries. It's what drove the uptake back when diesel engines actually were pretty terrible. Nowadays ... well ... I'd have one without too much fuss, but I'm still not a huge fan. IMHO they'd be best employed with a CVT or as the prime mover in a series hybrid, but I've only seen the former in one, maybe two niche models, and the latter, well, never. At least not yet. Outside of trains... You can get tons of power and torque out of not much space, in an engine that will run for several hundred thousand miles and consume a laughably small amount of fuel when cruising gently, but the powerband is so narrow and unforgiving, particularly at the bottom of the range, that it's really not suited to even a limited-ratio automatic (unless the stall speed was set real high), let alone six or less manually shifted gears and a pedal clutch.
Now, make it 45% more expensive, in a land where gasoline is still fairly cheap (but everyone thinks it's cripplingly dear), and even the fastest, most efficient oil burner is going to struggle to make any kind of impact. I wonder why your prices are set that way? It seems a bit crazy, especially if you buy into the "must reduce CO2" thing (of our eco diesel cars, there are now more than you can count posting figures under 100g per km... of the petrol ones, only 2, maybe 3 by now). And it can't be good for the truckers, either! Our guys are squeezed til they squeak even at 55mph... if they do 100, yours will be paying at least as much per mile, over longer mileages.
I was thinking of getting the (Caterham) kit version and building it myself. There's a bloke in Colorado importing turn-key models, converting them to LHD, and selling them, but the premium he's charging makes importing a turn-key myself considerably cheaper.
Ah, I had a brainfart and forgot they were kit cars! That explains the pricing. Yes. Easily... If you're buying the Mazda fairly new, anyway.
As for the engine ... you could always go the way of many Youtubers and drop a Suzi Hayabusa engine in it. I imagine quite a lot of them get wrecked every year so there should be a ready supply of engines about, and they're compact, powerful, easy to cool, and built for easy mounting and continual abuse. The sound may or may not be to your liking....
The Elise would fit the performance, economy and such points I'm looking for, but insurance is a pain in the ass and those things might as well be made of solid gold for how much they cost over here. Even the bargain bin cheapy model is 45 grand or so, and for that I can get a 2011 500HP Mustang GT 5.0L, insurance, and a year's supply of fuel.
WTF! Heh ... see how much it may be to import one, I've just had a look on eBay whilst hunting other stuff and I can find them starting from about £7000... including one for £7750 whose seller is practically on the same landline phone exchange.
Can't cost $30k in fees on top of the $15k for the car itself... can it?
