Western Roots All Mixed Up

[jaybreak]

I follow a mostly kooky engineer type (Eric Dollard) who loves out of his car, a 1980 Toyota Carolla. I don't know much about car but he seems to swear by it.

/2cents

EDIT: That's supposed to say "lives" up there but I'm keeping "loves" because it gave me the chuckles.

[Ed Hurst]

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.

[IainH]

GM was working on emissions control engineering back in the early '60s, I believe, the first thing they developed was the pcv valve which took blowby gases from the crankcase and fed it into the air intake and back into the combustion chamber to burn off aforesaid gases. Next was the air pump which basically took outside air and pumped it into the exhaust manifold to dilute SO and NO levels. I know GM cars fairly well and I'm sure it was the same with the other US automakers. There had been studies done in the '50s and 60's on the adverse effects of auto pollution. CARB, the Ca air resources board was established in 1967 but, the State legislature was passing laws that affected vehicles from 1961! (PCV). NY followed and by the mid sixties all cars had PCV. The problem US automakers were facing was; Customers wanted large comfortable cars with big enough engines to move up to almost 3 ton luxobarges. They knew that to do this they needed technology that was not there yet. The first true electronic fuel injection actually came out on the 1957 DeSoto Adventurer, trouble was no one knew how to fix them except the people at Bendix that made the efi. Most were converted to dual quads. What really hurt was the Congressional hearings where the Big Three execs pleaded for more time. They almost got it when Soichiro Honda nodded and said in broken English "yes, yes we can do this". Honda had developed an engine, CVCC, that met emission levels without a catalytic converter. If you've drove a 1976 Buick Limited with a 455 big block choked by the emission controls of the day you'll understand the Big 3s position. It took until the late 90's before GM built an engine as powerful as the 1970 LS6 454 ci. Gosh I am a car geek!

[Ed Hurst]

You are, Iain. I recall seeing the specs for tuning some of those cars. The peak of horsepower was 1973-74. After that it all choked down for a long time.

[jaybreak]

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.

He does seem heart-led, and I get that impression from his cynicism of the establishment and his love for music. Granted, some of his views could be exaggerated or misplaced, but there definitely is something there. He has odd ideas, like the sun being a giant electric transformer. I don't necessarily agree or disagree with him on points like those since I don't have the training to confirm or deny, but neither do I write him off completely because he's not an establishment thinker.

The scientist character in my book was patterned after him, though his active role in the story at large was minimal.