The story about the old Hillman is a reminder that "things aren't built lik=
e
they used to be"

In the very early 80's, a colleague of mine had an old 850cc mini that had
an oil warning light on almost permanently and a water loss problem he
pinpointed to the head gasket.  One day he decided to do something about it=
..
Oil change, filter change and cylinder head off.=20

Not being highly paid at the time, all the work was done outside his house,=
=20
He decided that the cylinder head needed "some work", and took to it with a
bastard metal file.  He took off a "smidgen" with the file then used some
liquid gasket and (seriously) the cardboard from a Kellogg's cornflakes
packet to make a new cylinder head gasket.=20

It worked with no leaks, good performance and no more water loss.

I challenge you to do the same with a modern vehicle :D

-Jim



-----Original Message-----
From: piclist-bounces@mit.edu [mailto:piclist-bounces@mit.edu] On Behalf Of
RussellMc
Sent: 24 August 2010 11:33
To: Microcontroller discussion list - Public.
Subject: Re: [OT] Is speeding logical

> What I was thinking if that is
> possible to write a firmware to save fuel based on intelligent
acceleration?

I seem to recall that Porsche looked at most economical methods and
decided that rapid acceleration to target speed was better than a slow
increase.

 Your slowing up hills and accelerating down is  a variant of the time
honoured  "Rolls canardly" method. (Rolls down one side and can 'ardly
get up the other).

Long ago I had an accident that punctured a vehicles radiator. The car
was probably dead anyway and I decided to try and get it home as was.
Most of the trip was on a motorway - including crossing out steeply
humped harbour bridge. I accelerated to slightly above legal speed
limit (we have a 10 kph allowed tolerance) as rapidly as possible and
then shut off the engine and coasted until speed dropped to too low
fro comfort on a motorway. It was interesting to see how little the
engine seemed to need to be used. I got the vehicle home - a distance
of about 20 km - without any evident engine distress. - although the
lack of engine water would lead to the temperature gauge not reading.
Not a method I'd recommend except in dire emergencies, but it seemed
to work. It would be interesting to know what amount of heating
occurred.

Long long long ago I was driving an old (1951?) side valve Hillman
home from work when it started behaving badly. I pulled over and there
was a strange crackling and popping sound from the engine. Bonnet
(hood) up and - oh dear - smoke pouring from the engine. I then
realised that the sound was oil boiling ! :-).
The cooling system had lost all water during the day and there was no
indication of this until the engine started to "tighten up"  [tm].
After cooling system repairs the car continued to give good service.


            Russell
--=20
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