Bill Babcock wrote:
>
> Shows you what whacks the swedes are--as if it really could be determined
> what the most benign substance was. When your A arm falls off because
> someone used a split lock instead of locktite and proper torque the
> equation might shift a bit. Then there's the cadmium on the the lockwasher
> poisoning some guy working in a plating plant. No one really knows how to
> add up those costs. Is it better to keep your '57 chevy or to buy a new
> car with better pollution controls? Big calculation with a lot of
> variables, and no one really does them. Full circle to the Hydrogen
> powered car.
This opens up an interesting question with regard to vintage racing.
Some of the rules of governing bodies of various associations have been
quite anal about originality and acceptable years of make, and both of
those, while appealing to some people, are net losses with regard to
perpetuation of the sport. It makes a lot more sense to make those
changes which make the sport last, and one of the biggest things that
sanctioning bodies can do to deflect future complaints from the public
about racing emissions and fuel waste is to adopt rules allowing updated
fuels and fuel systems--allowing digital fuel injection would
undoubtedly improve both fuel consumption and emissions without
sacrificing power. Allowing ethanol or methanol (biofuels) would be a
good selling point for the sport. Yeah, I know, heresy to some, but, as
Dylan wrote, the times they are a'changin'. Paradigm shift happens....
But, if I had to answer the question about the `57 Chevy or a new car,
the energy and environmental balance is well-adjusted by upgrading the
`57 Chevy to better specs.
About 25% of the wholesale cost of new-car production is for
energy--that's a lot at the wholesale rates manufacturers pay for
energy, and there's plenty of pollution associated with production of
those parts which has to be controlled. That cost doesn't include the
energy loss in destroying the remains of the car when its useful life is
over, nor of the current inability to recycle much of the vehicle
because of environmental concerns (a small example--in the bad ol' days,
junkyards simply burned off the insulation from wiring and sold the
copper--now, no can do--advanced insulation creates bad emissions when
burned, and the cost of manually stripping wire is prohibitive). Old
glass could be remelted easily. Now, newer safety glass is a mess to
recycle because of the vinyl lamination. The extreme variation in types
of plastics in cars now makes for a nightmare when sorting for
recycling.
But, I'm going to be doing some of that updating on a roundtail GT6
which has been awaiting assembly for far too long. I don't care about
prizes, so it's getting digital fuel injection (if I get off my butt and
finish machine work on the head and manifolds before the company sells
our R&D milling machine out from under me), and I'm still debating about
catalytic converters on it. <gasp!> One day, I have no doubt that
someone is going to say, "ooohhh, why are driving that smelly old car?"
And, I'd really like to then be able to say, in the immortal words of
Ken Kesey, "wait a minute, bub." <smile>
Cheers.
--
Michael D. Porter
Roswell, NM (yes, _that_ Roswell)
[mailto:mporter@zianet.com]
Don't let people drive you crazy when you know it's within walking
distance.
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