03-29-2018, 12:03 PM
Hmmm. I took a quick look at Dollard's Internet footprint out of curiosity. There was a time I would have devoured that stuff, but it's not where I am these days. Still, it sounds like he's doing with physics what I am doing with religion, and there are some strong parallels. In fact, his theories overlap things I've said about reality. His story is pertinent to my original post; sometimes it's worth facing the consequences of countering the mainstream.
I've worked on cars off and on since childhood; my dad was part mechanic and once had partnership in a gas station in Alaska. In my memory, the federal pollution controls ruined the automobile industry. The problems it sought to correct were already being addressed by automotive engineers who would have come up with far better answers. There was money behind the politics of regulation. Like everything else, vested interests have caged the results to prevent exploring better answers. In my experience, 1980 was about the time American autos were turned into mostly junk. Well engineered imports like Toyota were still mostly exempt from the worst interference for a short time after that. If you check the photos of that engine replacement he did sometime last year, you can see how it remains very simple and very easy to work with. Proper care insures something like that would last a lifetime, barring government regulation that tends to take such things out of our hands.
An auto we love to keep has two primary ingredients: (1) Your personal knuckle-scraping investment of care and (2) a vehicle that is worth such care because it can be fixed and responds to the care. I'm about that point on my 18-year-old Volvo. I don't drive that much, but it's something I intend to keep using as long as conditions permit. I've adapted to it's provisions. I suppose if I had gotten a Toyota at the right time, I would have treated it the same as Eric does his. People around here who still have the older ones are reluctant to let them go. Yet I know I'm not suffering the kind of materialistic grasping that once plagued my life; I treat the Volvo as a person who is free to go when the time comes. Meanwhile, I value the faithful companionship.
I've worked on cars off and on since childhood; my dad was part mechanic and once had partnership in a gas station in Alaska. In my memory, the federal pollution controls ruined the automobile industry. The problems it sought to correct were already being addressed by automotive engineers who would have come up with far better answers. There was money behind the politics of regulation. Like everything else, vested interests have caged the results to prevent exploring better answers. In my experience, 1980 was about the time American autos were turned into mostly junk. Well engineered imports like Toyota were still mostly exempt from the worst interference for a short time after that. If you check the photos of that engine replacement he did sometime last year, you can see how it remains very simple and very easy to work with. Proper care insures something like that would last a lifetime, barring government regulation that tends to take such things out of our hands.
An auto we love to keep has two primary ingredients: (1) Your personal knuckle-scraping investment of care and (2) a vehicle that is worth such care because it can be fixed and responds to the care. I'm about that point on my 18-year-old Volvo. I don't drive that much, but it's something I intend to keep using as long as conditions permit. I've adapted to it's provisions. I suppose if I had gotten a Toyota at the right time, I would have treated it the same as Eric does his. People around here who still have the older ones are reluctant to let them go. Yet I know I'm not suffering the kind of materialistic grasping that once plagued my life; I treat the Volvo as a person who is free to go when the time comes. Meanwhile, I value the faithful companionship.