Start/stop MPG enhacer..

Just heard a commercial on tv,

They said " 75% of engine wear occurs during start-up" or something to that effect.

How do automobiles get away with gas conservation using the "stop the engine at redlights" get away with it? Lots of stoplights, hence, lots of start/stops.

Sounds kind of like the " greaseless" ball joints due to the fact that the grease contributes to the footprint of the vehicle, as opposed to the footprint that it takes to make a new balljoint.

Probably more of a rant, vent, gripe, than anything .

D.
 
Another way to sell more Prius'?

Really the problem is _cold_ starts where you have gasoline condensing on the cylinder walls. Not as bad anymore as it used to be with carbs. Still, it's just more marketing baloney.
 
That statistic is meaningless because it would all depend on how long you ran after start up. What was always preached to me was that engine wear was 100 times greater during a cold start than the wear after it was warmed up. Actually there is no way anyone can provide a meaningful percentage either way as just too many variables. Kind of like warming up an engine before driving off. No two people agree how to do that.
 
I believe that is 75% of wear occurs on a COLD start up. Once the engine is well oiled and warm very little wear occurs on a warm restart.

On the Toyota Prius automatic start / stop system,
Once the engine starts, it remains running until it reaches operating temp. On a warm auto restart, the engine spins until it has oil pressure before injecting any fuel.
 
Put a cup of 30w in the freezer overnight, look at it, poke at it, turn it over...

Now imagine that being pumped from the oil pan, through a filter, around an oil groove in a main bearing, up an oil galley, through a hydraulic lifter, up a pushrod, finally arriving at a thirsty rocker arm...

Same time very little of that thick goo is managing to get past the rod bearings to sling up to the cylinder walls and cam...

I can see 75% wear happening in that 5 minutes or so to get the oil thin enough to get where it needs to be!

But once it's warmed up, pumped up, and circulating, it could be shut off and restarted with very little delay getting where it's needed.

Unless... There is a turbo involved, but that's a different topic.

Just mt bedtime ramblings! LOL
 
The problem with that "75 percent" number is it's totally unprovable. Nor can it be easily disproved. But you can very easily prove that a car burns gas while it's idling.

Bear in mind that many new vehicles come with a 100,000 mile powertrain warranty. If manufacturers were seriously concerned about engine wear during hot starts, they wouldn't add a feature that constantly stops and starts the engine.
 
That is true. During the 26 years I was a professional mechanic I had a few customers who drove frequent short hops. The engines never had a chance to get to operating temperature and boil off the combustion byproducts in the oil. Take a valve cover off and the engine looked like it was filled with cream cheese.
 
(quoted from post at 19:10:46 03/14/15) That statistic is meaningless because it would all depend on how long you ran after start up. What was always preached to me was that engine wear was 100 times greater during a cold start than the wear after it was warmed up. Actually there is no way anyone can provide a meaningful percentage either way as just too many variables. Kind of like warming up an engine before driving off. No two people agree how to do that.

The larger trucking companies that keep a lot of records can accumulate some very meaningful information on warm vs. cold starts. Some thirty years ago UPS had a truck that went million miles without a major overhaul. It ran line haul in the south east, running about twenty hours a day which meant of course that it had just one cold start per week. So with their huge database they can't of course elimate ALL variables, but they can reduce their significance.
 
I read an article quite a few years ago about the 'footprint' of a Prius as opposed to a Hummer, in terms of 'cost to the environment' from conception, to the scrap, to the recycler.

In the study they found that due to all of the new technology involved in the new vehicles, there was a lot of engineering that had to happen to get the new vehicle on the road. That new technology took engineers that drove vehicles back and forth to work every day to come up with all of the new designs. Then there were batteries which took more engineers to design, thus more vehicles on the road creating pollution, not to mention the human/vehicular involvement to get the minerals necessary to make the batteries. On top of that was all of the chemicals needed to make the plastics, etc involved in the design, and build of the car.

When it came to the vehicles 'end of life' the cost to recycle was high due to the batteries, as well as all of the plastics, etc that required special handling to recycle.

In the end it gave a cost to the environment of a Prius of something like $1.50.

Then it went through the same logic process for a Hummer. Given it's 'basic' design, the majority of the engineering that went into it didn't go far outside what goes into any other, conventional, modern day, car. The result was not a lot of engineering time spent 'wasted' coming up with anything new besides the shape of the vehicle. The majority of the vehicle is made of metal, which made something like 95% of it completely, and easily recyclable -vs- something like 50% of the Prius.

In the end the 'cost to the environment' of a Hummer was something like 75 cents.

The go down even further, they also threw in a VW bug. Again they went through the same, basic logic process with it. One of it's main plusses was that nearly 99% of it could be recycled because it was nearly all metal. In the end the cost to the environment for the BUG was something like 25 cents.

It's been awhile since I read that article, so the numbers aren't right, but the end result was the same. The very car that the tree huggers said was the most environmentally friendly was actually the worst, and one of the ones they said was the worst was actually the best.

This happens because of the short sighted idea that just because a vehicle gets a higher MPG that it is automatically better than one that gets a few MPG lower. Often when you factor in things such as life expectancy, ease of recycling, the cost of the original engineering, etc, etc, a much different picture develops, because the environmental costs of the vehicle in question goes far beyond the 'operating' cost of the vehicle itself.

I see this problem with heavy equipment, every day. I also see the engine mfgs bragging about getting a better percentage on their fuel usage with the newer engines, but what do they base that 'better' on? I ask because I have watched my customers and see the guys with the older equipment doing just as much, and often times more, work with their 'fuel guzzling' machines as the guys with the latest and greatest machines are doing with theirs. The funny thing is they are rarely using more fuel than the guys with the newer machines are, and often times are using less.

In fact I know of one customer who had an older machine they put out to pasture in favor of a newer machine. The operator said the old machine ran all day on 30-40 gallons of fuel and moved x amount of yardage, while the newer machine was usually taking 130-140 gallons of fuel to the same amount, but more often less. Now I ask, does that sound like the new machines is more environmentally friendly?

On the same note, what I typically see also is that the cost to operate, above and beyond the fuel, is also much greater with the new machines. Where a ball joint on a throttle cost $2 the stepper motor on the new machines throttle cost $1500. Not to mention once the machine gets a few years old and the warranty runs out, the guy with the old machine can call someone like me to work on it. On the other hand the guy with the new machine has to call the dealership, hope they have some available as he's a low priority for them (((he didn't spend several million on the newest machines last year)))) and spend twice as much for the guy to come out and plug in his computer to troubleshoot...... That's not to say I couldn't do the same thing, but when every mfg has a different, proprietary, software, there's no way an individual can spend the tens of thousands of dollars needed to keep up with every brand, and the changes every year, and still turn a profit.

I got a bit off course there, but given the topic, far too many folks never really think beyond the most basic 'cost to operate' ((((ie-cost of fuel))) which is the main thing they see. Beyond that, they just fuss when the part for their new car costs them an arm and a leg to replace (vs repair) and the shop charges them $100 an hour for a $20 an hour technician to 'work' on it, simply because they have to use a computer program that cost them $10,000 for the year.
 
Great post.

You would think they would clue in right away on that big battery being a problem come junk time. Furthermore, any significant crash becomes a hazmat situation.
 
Good description, Wayne. Understanding a problem is quite different from knowing how to solve it, though. Anyway, I think there's an even more fundamental underlying condition here. Old virtues like thrift, self-reliance, skill, ingenuity, problem solving ability, pride in making good old equipment last, etc. are discouraged by our corporate capitalist economy because they don't stoke the furnace of capitalism. You won't junk your old piece of equipment and buy a new one if you can keep it operating efficiently and economically, and if others admire you for doing so. This isn't a conspiracy, it's the natural order of things in the system that has happened to us. For those who think I shouldn't complain because this is the best of all possible worlds, let me ask this: What makes you feel better, buying a new piece of equipment, or being able to repair the perfectly adequate (if not superior) old one yourself and keep using it? If demonstrating your own capability and ingenuity (even if only to yourself) makes you feel better than the pride of ownership of a shiny new thing, then you're part of a dying breed, and the country doesn't really care for your kind any more.

Stan
 
On cold engine starts ups, the oil has cooled and drained off the upper parts of the engine. On hot engine start ups where the engine is turned off for less than ten minutes there probably is still is thick coating of warm oil on most moving parts.

I'm not sure it's always legal to shut off an engine at stoplights. Some states consider that parking on a roadway.
 
Oh boy, I could go on a long time about this.The Hummer VS Prius comparo has been shown to be total BS, and they recanted the story.. The Hummer is not less costly to build or run over the 15-20 year life of the machine. Also the Prius was 99% recyclable, the Hummer was considerably less.
This same story claimed the Hummer was going to run trouble free for 300,000 miles, seemingly without even an oil change, while the Prius would turn to toxic rust and dust before it hit 80,000 miles.
The reality is that the Hummer would not last any longer than the chevy Tahoe chassis it is built on and fuel economy is terrible all the time(under 12MPG). There are plenty of Prius taxi that have run in excess of 400,000 on the original traction battery(which cost $1700 to replace) with many Prius taxi running well in excess of 600,000 miles before they are scrapped. I have driven an absolutely trouble free Prius for 6 years now and have yet to make less than 50 MPG average. On today's Sunday road trip of more than 300 miles, we averaged a bit more than 54 MPG.

Toyota spent money to give the world a cheap reliable 50+ MPG hybrid car

GM spent money to fund a lying SOS study that would justify building the same crap they have built for 60 years.
I guess that's why GM went bankrupt while Toyota became the largest and most profitable car company in the world.
 
Oh but they have, Almost none of the Prius traction batteries fail at less than 200,000 miles, with some Prius taxi in Vancouver have gone in excess of 400,000 miles on the original traction battery
When you need to replace that battery, or scrap the car, the battery is 99% recyclable, with all the nickle being recovered and reused. No problem at all with those Hybrid batteries.
There are a half dozen or so re builders, that are recycling the Prius traction batterys and putting them back in service with all new cells for about 1/2 of what Toyota wants for a complete new one.($1700) The old nickle based cells are 100% recycled.
 
Do you suppose his Cadillac is like the Carpenter that used the same hand saw to do a million jobs, and in that time it had only 20 new blades and 15 new handles ? :)
 
(quoted from post at 20:52:41 03/15/15) Do you suppose his Cadillac is like the Carpenter that used the same hand saw to do a million jobs, and in that time it had only 20 new blades and 15 new handles ? :)

I would say no and so would you, if you had read the articles....
 
One thing I can't stand. "Go buy a new xXxX car it gets half again the gas mileage". Yabbut I can buy a lot of gas for what the payment will be on it.
"It's only yyy dollars a month payment". Yabbut it's going to add another $150 to my insurance bill which will effectively make the payment yyy plus 150.
Dealers don't like to hear that.
 
I did read the articles, and the fact that they said nothing about the amount of repairs to that 50's Cad, would leave me to believe that the engine and transmission has been rebuilt or replaced at least 5 times, maybe 10 times.
I am in my late 60's and have driven many miles in 50's cars and pickups. I never saw any that would run much over 100,000 miles between rebuilds or replacement. It was only when we got into the late 70's to 80,s that we could start to expect near 200,000 miles without opening the engine.

I just heard someone say that memories of the good old days usually involves a bad memory :)
 
(quoted from post at 21:56:13 03/15/15) I did read the articles, and the fact that they said nothing about the amount of repairs to that 50's Cad, would leave me to believe that the engine and transmission has been rebuilt or replaced at least 5 times, maybe 10 times.
I am in my late 60's and have driven many miles in 50's cars and pickups. I never saw any that would run much over 100,000 miles between rebuilds or replacement. It was only when we got into the late 70's to 80,s that we could start to expect near 200,000 miles without opening the engine.

I just heard someone say that memories of the good old days usually involves a bad memory :)

You didnt read the articles.... if you did, you would have read that in the first article, as of the time of printing, 8 years prior the engine and trans were overhauled, it was repainted and the only other repair was the replacment of a front hubcap.

In the second article, a year later, they said the engine was overhauled and it was repainted 9 years ago. They also said it need the front hub replaced and carpeting replaced.

Why say you read them when you didnt?
 
Yes I saw that. What else did they not tell us about ? Do you seriously believe that's all a 50's Cadillac has had done to make it run over a million miles ????
I wonder if the old dude lies about other things too ???
 
The so-called "dust to dust" study comparing the Prius and the Hummer H2 has been widely debunked. Anyone who has ever driven a Hummer knows they are ridiculously expensive to operate. In addition to terrible fuel economy, everything on the vehicle (e.g. tires) is oversized and expensive. I'm no fan of the Prius, but it does get excellent fuel economy and is generally fairly economical to operate. And it is ridiculous to tack on the development costs of a first-generation vehicle to its environmental footprint. Although the first generation took a lot of work for Toyota to develop, subsequent generations will get progressively cheaper to develop.

At any rate, the marketplace has spoken. The Prius continues to sell well and Hummer has gone the way of the dodo. I'll add that GM closed down Hummer at a time of relatively cheap gas prices.

As for the productivity of old versus new heavy equipment, once again it is the marketplace that determines what manufacturers build. Any heavy equipment manufacturer could pull the 400 horsepower engine out of one of its current machines and replace it with a 200 hp motor, effectively building something equivalent to a thirty-year-old machine. The fuel consumption would be cut in half, and perhaps productivity wouldn't be much worse. Why don't they? Because NOBODY WOULD BUY IT! Given the choice between the 200 horse machine and the 400 horse machine for a few thousand more, buyers will take the more powerful machine every time.
 
Just because you have one statistical outlier doesn't mean it's typical for a fifties vintage Cadillac to rack up a million miles. How many '56 Caddies didn't make it past 50K?

Also some of the details lead me to doubt the veracity of story. In fact, it sounds like the owner is a bit delusional. 95K on a set of bias-ply tires! One engine overhaul in its life? 19 mpg? Those claims are all flat-out ridiculous.
 
No matter what it is, there will be some "snake oil" salesman come along and make ridiculous claims about how his way is netter.
Then there are the totally ridiculous ones like running an engine or automobile on plain clear water. Right. Water as a fuel. Near as I can tell, water does not make a good fuel. Doesn't burn. Then you find out that the water isn't the fuel. Something else turns the water into steam and THAT runs the engine.

Over the years, there have been hundreds of gadgets that were supposed to give you better fuel mileage. None of them worked. Certainly not as advertised. But, somebody made a lot of money selling useless gadgets like that.
 
Well that's good then.

You almost never see them around here so I never get to talk to Prius owners. I remember when they were new there was a lot of uncertainty about how long the batteries would last in real world conditions. Looks like that question has been answered.
 
(quoted from post at 01:19:45 03/16/15)
I wonder if the old dude lies about other things too ???

(quoted from post at 21:56:13 03/15/15) I did read the articles, and the fact that they said nothing about the amount of repairs to that 50's Cad, would leave me to believe...

From the articles:
Engine overhaul, trans overhaul, replaced hub and/or hubcap, new paint, new carpet.

(quoted from post at 01:19:45 03/16/15) Yes I saw that.

(quoted from post at 21:56:13 03/15/15)the fact that they said nothing about the amount of repairs to that 50's Cad...

I guess old men lie, thanks for proving that for me...
 

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