Date:         Wed, 4 Mar 1998 10:58:50 -0800
Reply-To:     Ian Cameron <ianc@UVIC.CA>
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <Vanagon@vanagon.com>
From:         Ian Cameron <ianc@UVIC.CA>
Subject:      Re: re; smog sympathies
Comments: To: sdoug@concentric.net
Comments: cc: Vanagon@VANAGON.COM
In-Reply-To:  <34FB6C6F.5B1B@concentric.net>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

At 09:35 PM 3/2/98 -0500, Scot Douglas wrote:
>
>You are incredibly wrong.  Blatantly wrong.  The air pump was used in
>the days of carbureted engines that always ran just to the rich side of
>stoichiometry.  They were calibrated rich to keep good driveability to
>keep the customer happy.

You are right.  Incredibly right.  I even knew that at one time (in the
dark ages.)  So through poor design they had an engine that didn't run
well, so they kludged to it get it to run, and then kludged the kludge to
keep from polluting. And even at that a lot of stuff still got spat into
the air.
>
>You're really off track with this one.  Ever hear of power to weight
>ratio?  And you may have other motorcycle enthusiasts asking on your 90
>mpg claim; mopeds might get that, not a motorcycle.

Well, my Yamaha SR 500 (single cylinder, no electric start, about 350
pounds all up) gets 27 km per litre all round, which I figure to about 85
mpg.  In 5th gear on the highway it get closer to 95 with one up, about 80
with two.  I'm not suggesting that pollution controls make the difference:
my point is that if what you want is transportation, any car is not kind to
the earth.  Anyone who drives something getting 20 mpg doesn't REALLY care
about the future of the planet, and is in no position to toss rocks.  And
anyone whose government will bomb women and children so we can afford to
drive 20 mpg vehicles even less so.  (And of course I fit into that
category too, but then I'm not in the pulpit.)