Petrol/diesel prices

You're allowed to make your own fuel Zig.

Only certain types from what I gather, but its legal to filter your own veg oil to produce biodiesel. You're allowed 2500 litres per year before you have to pay fuel duty on it.

Petrol is a different matter. If I remember anything from chemistry in my school days, you need to distil stuff and catch and condense the vapours to make petrol. I guess that bit is illegal, and even if it isn't, I can see a few garden sheds blowing up if people have a go and making their own.

All the legal matters aside, another problem with home made fuel is that modern engines are very choosy about what they'll use. I've always thought (and still think) that car manufacturers and oil producers are best buddies. Modern engine design seems to support my theory. Take an old engine. In essence you mix some fuel and air together, trap it in a cylinder, and blow it up. Simple. Now take a new engine. A computer controls a fuel pump that needs the fuel to be very consistent, it goes to injectors that are also controlled by a computer, and the program bases the fuel mix largely on the duration that the injectors open for, so the fuel has to be consistent with what the computer expects. The mix goes into the engine and goes 'pop', then the result exhaust fumes leave, via another sensor that measures what's in there. Again if the fuel isn't exactly what the computer expects then the sensor reports it, and your warning light comes on. Even if the fuel is absolutely fine for the engine, and burns cleanly, unless its consistent with your Shell/Total etc 95 octane unleaded with certain additives etc, then the sensor tells on you, and the engine management computer declares there to be a fault, and on most modern cars you then get punished by the car going into 'limp mode', designed to get you home or to the nearest garage, where the engine is deliberately made to run very badly (either silly rev limits, silly top speed limit, reduced power output or some other constraint). I can only think of one reason why they do this, to force you to always use petrol/diesel from the forecourt pump.

 

Well I can remember when engines were not computer controlled and they seem a lot smoother running these days than they were then.

Also its all about emissions these days, I doubt any of those older engines would come close in that respect.

As to making your own petrol Ziggy?
I'm just glad your not my nextdoor neighbour:D

 

True. My main point though is kind of twofold. Firstly, older engines could be tuned by a reasonably competent DIY mechanic, whereas newer ones can't. Secondly, and more importantly, the computers that control newer engines are just black magic. Once the computer decides something seems wrong with the fuel mix, you just don't have the option to tell it that you know why and its ok. The perfect mix of air and commercially available unleaded petrol is about 15:1. What I'm saying is that the computer has been preprogrammed to aim for this ratio, and all its sensors, fuel pump pressure, injector opening durations etc are all geared to achieving this ratio, thus getting the most efficient burn. Now lets say you make your own fuel where the perfect mix is say 14:1, and at that ratio the engine will run clean and smooth, you just don't have the option to tell the computer that it should aim for a 14:1 mix instead of 15:1.

Its exactly this problem that makes it so hard to introduce biofuel at the fuel pumps. The law in the UK now requires that 2% of fuel is biofuel, and when that came in there was a great fuss about the difficulty of achieving that while maintaining the same burn signature so that cars would be happy.

The thing is, the ECU (Engine Control Unit) program doesn't need to be so inflexible. The range of sensors in a modern engine easily provide enough data to the program for it to work out for itself how to achieve the best mix, best ignition timing, best fuel pump pressure etc. They could do this and still let the driver be oblivious to all the number crunching that's going on, but they don't. They make the computer a sealed unit, avoid any industry standard interfaces, and patent the program so there is no chance that someone could reliably change the program to let the engine run at peak efficiency with anything other than fuel from the forecourt fuel pump.

 

Well I just want some of the tax taken off the stuff at the pumps.

Dont think I want to spend my spare time filtering cooking oil or rigging up stills in order to get to work.
And the main point is, everything we buy is delivered by vehicles that run on oil.

So if it hits £2.00 a litre who knows how much it will cost to survive, let alone live.

 

:D

I use LPG for cooking and plumbing, smelt my own fishing weights and haven't blown my self up yet Pete :D

You are right about the new engines Dave, all designed to make money for the "guilds" (can't have people fixing their own, won't make any money out of that)

I know about the biodiesil, I have friends who regularly make that. What i'm saying is if the same freedom was applied to petrol production then we could be making petrol out of the water that we boiled the vegetables in, think of all the sugars that are just poured down the drain after boiling.

We have been using those sugars to make homemade wines for millenia, why not go the step further & let us ferment & then distil them into petrol.

Yes, I know you would have to get the octane thinger spot on. But the Americans are already doing this, so we should be able to get the hang of it.

 

That's sort of my point though Zig, we shouldn't have to get it spot on. The sensor in the exhaust tells us if there's any oxygen left after the burn, so the ECU could (and does to a small degree) adjust the mix based on that. We also have a sensor on the cylinder head that tells us if the fuel is setting itself off prematurely or burning too fast (the knock sensor), so again it could adjust based on that.

In theory, the criteria for fuel should be that it burns sufficiently fast, is stable enough to not blow up in the tank or the fuel lines, and runny enough to not block the injectors and so that it vaporises when squirted under pressure. By that criteria Vodka should do the trick. Then the engine management computer just tries it, adapts based on the results from the various sensors, and just gets on with the job. If it worked like that then there'd be no need for precision, we just make something that burns well without much residue, chuck in the tank, and away we go.

Incidentally, my dad was telling me about a Russian army surplus motorbike he had just before I was born. Apparently being built for the challenging conditions of military use, its engine had been specially designed to run on virtually anything as long as it was flammable and liquid. If it could be done back then then I'm sure it can be done nowadays.

 

Like i've said before. Canals.

Re-enstate the canal network & distribute regular goods by water. We know we are going to have to when the oil runs out so why not start doing it now.

[hr]
Oops cross posted there.:DOH:

I see your point Dave

The more complex you make it the easier it is to blow it up. (Star trek V ?)

 

That makes perfect sense Ziggy, and I seem to recall it was considered a few years ago. They (I can't recall who 'they' were though) proposed that non-perishable goods be moved on the canals, while perishables still go by road.

If you consider that a couple of Shire or Clydesdale horses could tow a barge full of coal, then it must be a very fuel efficient means of transport. It would also reduce congestion on the roads, and potentially cut costs to haulage firms.

One major problem though is that the canal network isn't that good in some parts of the country. For example where I live I can't think where the nearest canal is. I think it's about 70 or 80 miles away in Selby or Leeds. However in that case you just stick the stuff on a train or lorry for the last bit of the journey.

 

Its a good Saturday night when we are all agreeing about stuff

If I were down the pub, I would think we had put the world to right at this stage.

When Gardeners Corner stands in the next election, I think we will easily topple the rest of the political dinosaurs:D[hr]
Plenty of people on the dole right now that would only be too happy to dig a new canal. Carpenters who would love to make an almighty pair of lock gates, brickies who would happily build the canal lining and all the associated bridges.

In fact, I would be happy to build a canal straight to your house Dave

 

I agree. Steam engines of old were nasty inefficient things which I guess is why we moved to alternatives, but it doesn't have to be that way in this day and age.

It occurs to me that one of the biggest problems with steam engines is the amount of energy needed to take water from say 5 degrees C to boiling point, and the amount of water they have to carry with them.

With a bit of modern engineering you can get rid of both those problems. Water is boiled to steam to do the work, then instead of venting that steam, you channel it through a condenser, effectively something like a car radiator but bigger, so it cools to just below boiling, then goes back into the boiler. That way instead of having to get the water from say 5'C to 100'C, you only have to get it from 95'C to 100'C. Much less energy is used, plus you need to carry much less water because you're not venting it. Needing much less energy you'd need to carry much less fuel too, further reducing weight and increasing efficiency. The reduced energy demand combined with a bit of modern furnace design means you could use a wider range of fuel types, so you could, in effect run the engine on appropriately selected rubbish, so you reduce the amount of stuff going to landfill too.

 

Have any of you chaps seen this?It was talked about on another forum so Googled and found this.It is in the Mail so must be true...

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1361306/Tanker-drivers-plot-strikes-add-motorists-misery.html