Automotive Ramblings

[ellyssian]

As I was driving into work this morning, I was thinking about gas prices and about some advice I had read recently that is supposed to help you deal with getting the most out of each gallon you have to pay out the nose for.

In particular: drive 55 miles an hour.

Okay, I suppose I can accept that the once-upon-a-time maximum US speed limit might have been considered important for legal reasons, and entered into the design decisions made by engineers of all companies that market vehicles for US consumption.

But the engineers designing these cars can't even handle simple tasks, like getting the access to fill the gas tank on the same side of every car (which would save much in the way of anger, frustration, and excess use of hand signals during the refueling process), or making something so obviously replaceable as a headlight bulb easy to replace (I am able to rebuild the carb on an '82 Citation, take apart and reassemble 60's era Corvettes and 1969 Camaros, but I am unable to change the headlight in a 1991 Taurus), how, given all that, can we expect them to get the engines of every car they produced to run most efficiently at a single, magical, and allegedly relatively safe speed?

Remember, kids, the speed of the vehicle, as measured in miles-per-hour, does not rely on the engine alone, but on everything from the grinding of the gears in the transmission to the turning of the axles to the size of the wheels to all kinds of factors regarding the construction of the tires - which is, of course, to include the amount of air filling the tires, as well as the rubber compounds, widths, heights, depths, tread patterns, and so forth. Without even considering the possibilities that come from after-market enhancements¹, this leads to a whole lot of complications that I don't believe could resolve themselves at a Golden Double Nickel Mean.

But then again, as always, and perhaps most applicably here, your mileage may vary.


¹My favorite example of misapplication being this: a guy who wanted the low profile racing tires on his 1980 Trans Am, tires designed for cart racing, not for full-size semi-sport cars. He was well in advance - by ten years or more - of the current trend towards things low profile, and he would not accept our informing him that it Flat Out Won't Work, so he told us to put the wheels and tires on anyway. So we did, and, when we lowered the lift, the body slowly settled until the surface of the tires was about two to three inches from the surface of the pavement. Talk about spinning your wheels.

Comments

[kk1raven.livejournal.com]

The idea that 55 was the best speed came before the nation-wide 55 mph speed limit. I can remember when the speed limit was lowered to 55. Part of the justification for why the federal gov't was so insistent that states with high speeds buy into the lower limit was that it was the most efficient speed and there was a "gas crisis".

I find that to be bogus. Most of the cars I've had have gotten better gas milage at 65 as far as I can tell. I drive small, relatively efficient cars though. For gas hogs with big engines, maybe 55 really is more efficient. The powers that be really do like to promote one-size-fits-all, no-thought-needed solutions though and this just seems to be more of that way of thinking.

[ellyssian.livejournal.com]

Exactly, and as almost everyone has come to experience at one point or another, one-size-fits-all is either too loose, too tight, or doesn't come in a nice selection of colors.