Jim Dunmyer wrote in a message to Roy J. Tellason:
 > Sounds a bit inefficient.
 JD> That's my point. An old hit 'n miss engine is VERY inefficient, 
 JD> from many aspects. Lotsa iron/horsepower, high fuel 
 JD> consumption, very high maintenance/hour of operation, etc. But, 
 JD> everything's out in the open, they're easy to understand. :-) 
Yup...
 JD> Take a look at www.oldengine.org for a bunch of pictures of 
 JD> this stuff.
No can do,  I have no web access at the present time.
 > ways.  We have one vehicle here with a busted sensor.  I have no 
 > idea what this sensor is,  or even what it's mounted into -- from 
 > appearances it looks like it's in a power steering line!
 JD> Pity the poor mechanic who was used to working with steam 
 JD> engines around the turn of the century. Having to learn about 
 JD> this new-fangled internal combustion stuff! And about the time 
 JD> he thinks he understands what's going on, someone replaces the 
 JD> easy-to-understand hot-tube ignition with a low-tension magneto 
 JD> that somehow generates SPARKS. And a couple of years later, 
 JD> someone else comes up with jump-spark ignition! How does a 
 JD> fella keep up with this stuff???!!!
Damfino.  I have enough to do with trying to keep up with computers,  and 
then they start doing all this stuff with vehicles,  too!  Any suggestions?  
:-)
 > Maybe I wouldn't feel this way about it if the literature (of 
 > the sort available to consumers) would have kept up with this a 
 > little better.  Sure, there's info out there,  but it's the 
 > sort of thing where you need to be a garage to afford it and 
 > have to buy many shelves full of this stuff at a cost of some 
 > thousands of dollars,  quite the thing if you're running a shop 
 > but not at all beneficial to the average (or even 
 > above-average!) consumer...
 JD> Absolutely not true, Roy. I've seen many articles in Popular 
 JD> Mechanics over the years, detailing how those sensors work, how 
 JD> to troubleshoot them with relatively low-tech equipment (a test 
 JD> light and DVM in many cases), and so on. You can buy a shop 
 JD> manual for an individual car for around $50.00, and they have 
 JD> quite a lot of detail on the engine-control systems.
Oh yeah?  Are you talking about stuff from the dealer?
 JD> Also, you'll notice that engine bays are getting a bit SIMPLER 
 JD> these days. 
I hadn't noticed,  but then,  I'm not under the hood of nearly as many cars 
as I used to be when I was running that battery store.  When would you say 
that simplification started showing up?
It's funny what you think of as "current",  in different contexts.  My 
current vehicle is 20 years old,  and it's the newest thing I've ever owned.  
The other one (with the sensor) referred to up there is ten years newer but 
still has none of the built-in diagnostics of a lot of the newer stuff,  you 
have to go in there and measure voltages on a couple of "test" molex 
connectors.  I haven't got any documentation on that stuff in the Haynes 
manual we bought for it,  either.
 JD> That's because they finally have computers that actually 
 JD> control about everything on the engine, so there's a lot less 
 JD> plumbing and hoses strewn about. 
That part sounds *real* good to me!
 JD> And it all WORKS; I can hop in my wife's Olds when it's zero 
 JD> degrees F, hit the switch and away it goes. No pumping of the 
 JD> pedal, holding my tounge under my left eyetooth and HOPING. 
 JD> Plus, the car has about 60,000 miles on it and I've not touched 
 JD> it other than to change oil. I remember my '64 Buick Special; 
 JD> replace plugs every 10 or 20 thousand miles, adjust the timing 
 JD> every 10K, fool with this, play with that. And it didn't get 
 JD> nearly as good mileage as the Olds, let alone perform like the 
 JD> Olds.
You don't mention what year that olds is,  though.  One problem I'm looking 
at is that I can't *afford* the newer stuff...
I wonder how hard it would be to retrofit some of this stuff to an older 
vehicle?  You could boost performance _and_ get better emissions if that were 
feasible...
email: roy.j.tellason%tanstaaf@frackit.com 
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