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Date:         Tue, 23 Apr 1996 11:19:23 -0700
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@vanagon.com>
From:         wabbott@mtest.teradyne.com (William Abbott)
Subject:      Unbalanced V6, gas prices

Steve, You might have something there- isn't the traditional Detroit unbalanced engine helped by a harmonic balancer which is an excentricly wieghted pulley with a bonded rubber hub coupling? Most of my experience is Rabbit/Golf/Type II/IV so maybe one of our Mustang owners can help??

Regarding gasoline prices, wholesale prices in California have apparently gone from around $0.50/gallon to $1.00/gallon since February. Rotten Robbie says they are selling below cost at the moment to preserve their market share (How much did they used to make so that they can cover now??).

PUC and various consumer groups are saying they'll investigate.

One interesting possibliity I've heard is that oil companies had cut on-hand inventories to the bone anticipating that Iraq would finally sell up to $US 2,000,000,000.00 worth of oil. Iraq still hasn't gone through with this, as Sadam, etc, feel their soverignty is infringed by the T's & C's. When the refineries went to refill the jug, they got hit with higher-than-market prices by those what had and had been spurned only weeks before.

So, politics and economics majors, it goes from each of us according to our ability, to those in need, namely those brave and resourceful individuals who bought tankers full of oil when nobody else seemed to want them. Hard work and initiative rewarded!

Perspective: A recent story in Aviation Week and Space Technology discussed the Space Shuttle, which has cost $95 Billion in current dollars and, after 75 missions, is unlikely to meet any of the original goals set for it. Expendable boosters would have saved money and gotten things in orbit years earlier. That same 95 Billion would purchase 3,166,667 Eurovans at $30K each, or 158,333 every year of the 20 years the Shuttle program has been spending serious money. Since T2s and T3s were cheaper than Eurovans, probably more could have been bought... amazing, isn't it?

Bill


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