Date: Tue, 11 Mar 2008 16:06:02 -0700
Reply-To: Scott Daniel - Shazam <scottdaniel@TURBOVANS.COM>
Sender: Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From: Scott Daniel - Shazam <scottdaniel@TURBOVANS.COM>
Subject: was spark wires , now about the future of diesel and fuel prices
In-Reply-To: <4d1b79350803111456i7768aa02l3ddd9545ff650e46@mail.gmail.com>
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( I'm responding to Jim Felder's note to me below, and thought it would be
of interest to many, so I made it public )
Hi Jim,
I wish the law of supply and demand really applied, but it doesn't always -
it's more political.
Take the price of gas and diesel in California.
It's the most populous state at 30 million, they have more cars than any
state I'm pretty sure, and I'd wager they move more motor fuel than any
state, yet they have very high fuel prices.
Just over a 10 mile distance, from Oregon to California, can mean 40 cents
more a gallon sometimes.
So I don't have a lot of hope for the normal rules of supply and demand
applying especially in the future.
Regarding overall cost of operation long term between gas and diesel - Since
I see so many problems with diesel engines in vanagons and tdi problems, I'm
wanting to factor in cost of repairs for the long term- say 100K to 150K
miles.
Cost of maintanence is probably roughly equal long term, but I think these
vw diesels are not a 'long term, overly well-built super reliable' piece of
equipment, like say an older Mercedes diesel is.
Just today a woman in California is thinking about bailing on a 98 and a 99
tdi's cars of hers, mainly over repair issues.
I know diesel is easier to refine that gasoline, or surely once was.
Well Saudi crude - ....it's not like that is a wide open channel as far as
I'm concerned - hardly ! perhaps once it was, but not any more.
Saudi Arabia knows they have the world by the nuts due to the amount of
crude that they may or may not have. I believe they keep the estimated
amount still in their ground secret,
And....Europe is right there thirsty as hell for crude, and so is China.
Saudi Arabia doesn't need us much at all.
Maybe for weapons from the US, but that's it really. And we have military
bases too there too, but our warmonger government has plenty of aircraft
carriers also.
It might come down to home brew all right.
There is a global oil and financial crisis brewing. And the US does not
have that much leverage really.
Plus we are hated by much of the world too.
Iran is the other big source of that juice.
And Russia, and Venezuela, and Venezuela doesn't need the US either.
I read that 'big oil' that we know, Shell, BP, Exxon and one other, control
6 % of the oil in the world.
Most of it the other oil they can't get to for political reasons.
And since we use about 40 % of the energy consumed in the world...or some
number like that - we are the highest consumer of resources per capita,
significantly so...
And, the regular US product-making machine is trapped in a corner needing
gobs of oil we don't have. .
And a Humvee in Iraq gets about 10 mpg,
And the new up to 30,000 lbs MRAP anti-mine vehicles probably get 6 mpg if
that, and they've ordered 17,000 of them.
It's called Mass Dysfunctionality.
And it's all so UNNECCESARY too. !
It's gonna be interesting...
AND....very clearly, the old law of supply and demand won't apply too much
anymore, because the demand for oil is increasing dramatically all the time,
(millions of new cars in china and India for example. People that never
owned cars before ) while the amount in the ground has to be finite.
I think it might be Iran - gas there might be as low as 7 cents a gallon.
And they're sure not going to export to the US unless there's some big
incentive. Our governments don't even talk to each other - a Bush policy.
How very dysfunctional. That boy has already, and could still cause the
death of countless human beings.
But, more and more it's a matter of getting it at all.
And given the whole mideast war and terrorist thing, global warming, rising
sea levels perhaps, and the craziness and size of china....
We'll be lucky if we can keep anything that's at all similar to what we've
know up until now in our foreseeable future.
It really does appear that a tipping point is being reached, and the old
ways of lots and lots of cheap gas or diesel fuel....
Given world conditions....particularly around politics and war/terrorism and
ideology, and over population and rampant consumerism....we're witnessing
an end of an era...this last hundred years of wide open car and fuel
enjoyment could be slowly coming to an end as we've known it during our
lives so far.
It will be interesting all right. Not a doomsayer, but ... you
know....you watch ....in retrospect, if things do go south generally,
looking back, all the warning signs were there all along. And not even
a hundredth of what could be done is being done, though it's shifting daily.
Already SUV sales are down , hybrid sales are up, and mass transit ridership
is up.
And if they whole monstrous mega-machine doesn't collapse completely - I
consider that a big fat WIN, cause all the elements that need to be in place
for that to happen, are in place. I don't think it actually will quite, but
the potential is definitely there. And I'm not a pessimist either, but
Muman Mass Dysfunctionality is so blatantly apparent - all that war and
killing, and bombings, etc. give me a break. And the amount at which we
consume fuel on a minute by minute basis - there are approximately 1,000 jet
air liners in the air at any given moment. Humans could do SO much better.
And we are so lucky for where we live too.
Scott
turbovans
-----Original Message-----
From: Jim Felder [mailto:jim.felder@gmail.com]
Sent: Tuesday, March 11, 2008 2:56 PM
To: Scott Daniel - Shazam
Subject: Re: Spark plug wires
Scott,
If you look at the math I submitted with my post, you'll see that my diesel
WESTY (a big mileage disadvantage) gets about 6 cents a mile lower fuel cost
than my 90, even with the fuel costing fifty cents a gallon more.
The diesel advantage is disappearing, of course. It may not disappear, or it
may disappear. If the demand for diesel picks up, then refineries will
distill more of it, and the supply will open up and the cost will go down.
There's no reason for it to be more expensive. It's cheaper to make than
gas, and any old saudi crude will do. You can turn some pretty bad crude
into good diesel much cheaper than you can make good gasoline from it.
It ain't over til it's over, and when it is over, I'll be running on home
brew!
Jim
On Tue, Mar 11, 2008 at 4:19 PM, Scott Daniel - Shazam
<scottdaniel@turbovans.com> wrote:
.........as long as no one has put the distributor in indexed incorrectly.
There's a faint mark on the upper edge of the distributor body, where the
cap sits, that indicates # 1 cylinder position.
It's possible to put the distributor in incorrectly so # 1 is somewhere
else. Not too likely on a waterboxer as there is seldom a reason to take the
distributor out.
Also a handy little trick to keep in mind is, going backwards ( distributor
turns clockwise , so going backwards is counterclockwise ) the 'reverse
firing order' is 1 - 2 - 3 - 4
Makes it a snap to eyeball it quickly.
Scott
www.turbovans.com
-----Original Message-----
From: Vanagon Mailing List [mailto:vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com] On Behalf Of
Mike Collum
Sent: Tuesday, March 11, 2008 1:56 PM
To: vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM
Subject: Re: Spark plug wires
When you're standing aft of the engine looking at the distributor ...
the upper left wire goes to the upper left spark plug (#3). The lower
left wire goes to the lower left spark plug (#4). The upper right wire
goes to the lower right plug (#2) and the lower right wire goes to the
upper right plug (#1). Yes ... the wires cross only on the right side.
Mike
BJ Feddish wrote:
> OK, I think I did a shell game with my spark plug wires to the
distributer.
> Can someone tell me where each wire goes? Not the firing order but where
> each one goes in relation to the cap. I may have mine all shifted in one
> direction.
>
> Thanks,
> Bryan
>
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