Replies

I had an 84 seville with the 8 6 4, engine. The only engine that GM made that was even worse was when they tried to convert the 350’s to diesel.

Funny thing diesels .... I still have a MB 240D with 450k miles. Never a problem with that. Go figure.

Someone on this thread compared the engine to an aircompressor ... that is totally correct. Most of the time if you get intake flow balanced with outflow you hit peak efficiency. But, that is hard. In the 60’s as a hotrodder we always looked to the exhaust .... funny, as an engineer/physicist we would have been wise to take and equal look at restrictive intakes.

A lot of flow technology is going on .. some of it is getting very good. There is always tradeoffs though.

Hey .... I invented a perpetual motion machine ... but ... I can't figure out how to start it.

I think the difference between the two systems (the old Caddy system and the current GM system) was how the valves were disabled when cutting back to a 6 or 4. I don't remember how the old system worked, and I don't know how the new system does it, but I suspect the new system must use an electronic lifter or something on the rocker arms that's actuated electronically.

This just isn't the way of the future. We are getting as good as we can with gasoline engines. Diesel, hybrid, plug in, etc. are all better ideas than this. You want a 25% improvement in gas mileage, switch to a diesel. You want sustainable, run it off soybean oil or waste cooking oil.

I've got a full size sedan with a big engine that's ok for my rare long car trip (like on vacation). I'll keep that, or maybe get a smaller conventional car for that purpose, but how many households have a second car (my wife and I have been carpooling to work for the past six or seven years, but that's not going to last much longer). We'll need a second car.

I want a nuclear powered car. Hold on...my commute is about five miles. I run an errand on the way home, maybe got to dinner, say 15 miles per day. Give me a plug in electric car that's good for 40 or 50 miles on a nights charge, and charge it off a nuke heavy electric grid. That's no problem from an engineering standpoint. Maybe something that will give me 80 miles on an eight hour charge? If they can't do that they will be able to soon. It would be a second car, not my household's only car. I have the dinosaur powered car for trips, and my wife can drive it to work. If every two car household did that, and we build nuclear power plants, we could greatly decrease our oil needs.