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How a car works (2012)

howacarworks.com

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Re: How a car works (2012)

#111

Post by AlexMuir »

troels wrote: post #103
AlexMuir wrote: post #19

This is my site! This was a pleasant surprise to find my own site on HN this morning! I wondered why it was getting a few more FB likes than usual today. I'm happy to answer any questions. I finished this redesign last week so any feedback is welcome. The main task was to recreate labels and annotations on the illustrations in SVG format, and to reformat the articles in a way that flows nicely and is responsive, but…

From your "a year on" article: "Getting backlinks There are still hardly any backlinks to the site and I don't really know how to boost this efficiently. I was thinking about licensing the content under Creative Commons as I've noticed a couple of sites just copy and pasting my articles in without even a link back." Did you try contacting the sites and ask them to provide a backlink? Seems like a very reasonable requ…

Yeah, I emailed a couple but heard nothing. It's not something that I've spent much time on to be honest. I know when people email looking for links I just delete their emails, so I'd expect the same treatment myself.

Re: How a car works (2012)

#112

Post by nicboobees »

dalke wrote: post #66
nicboobees wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People will always use "old tech". "Old tech" often just works. Flawlessly. I have a dumper truck I borrow from next door. Crank handle, diesel. It just works. Starts every time. No battery, no crap to go wrong. "new tech" is often designed to last 5 or 10 years maximum. After that is anyones guess as to whether it'll work.

You've a bit of survivor bias. Old tech that is still running is likely to last a while more. But all of the old tech that was designed with planned obsolescence in mind doesn't work any more, so you don't think of it. That is, "old tech" was once "new tech." There's also the old tech that wasn't designed to last long, like adobe mud walls. Some old tech doesn't work flawlessly. Steam power vehicles, like locomotives…

Look at sewing machines though. They used to be made of cast iron and wood. They were built properly, and it shows. They still work 50 or 60 years later. Modern day sewing machines are made of cheap plastic and flimsy metal. They last 5 years.

Yeah there's some survivor bias, but the materials used to make things in the olden days was just better material. On the down side, sewing machines used to cost a months wages or something.

Re: How a car works (2012)

#114

Post by dalke »

nicboobees wrote: post #112
dalke wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've a bit of survivor bias. Old tech that is still running is likely to last a while more. But all of the old tech that was designed with planned obsolescence in mind doesn't work any more, so you don't think of it. That is, "old tech" was once "new tech." There's also the old tech that wasn't designed to last long, like adobe mud walls. Some old tech doesn't work flawlessly. Steam power vehicles, like locomotives…

Look at sewing machines though. They used to be made of cast iron and wood. They were built properly, and it shows. They still work 50 or 60 years later. Modern day sewing machines are made of cheap plastic and flimsy metal. They last 5 years. Yeah there's some survivor bias, but the materials used to make things in the olden days was just better material. On the down side, sewing machines used to cost a months wages…

Some materials in "the olden days" were indeed better. We don't have the old growth timber to make cheap, high-quality wood like we did.

But not all materials are better. Celluloid is the first thermoplastic, and the first material used for movie films, but it's highly flammable and has been replaced by acetate film. Celluloid was also used to replace ivory in billiard balls, which was better than the clay and wood balls used earlier. All of those materials are worse for professional play than modern billiard balls made from composite plastics.

You brought up sewing machine. Sewing machines were made in the hundreds of millions. What you see are the ones that weren't trash and were maintained. Here's a page complaining about people complaining about people selling old sewing machines that mostly useful as "boat anchors" http://runningstitches-mkb.blogspot.se/2012/08/open-letter-t... . Quoting one example, "I'm not impressed when you tell me your 1950 Singer has "only been used twice to sew on patches" (note: I am not making this up!) If this machine has been sitting unused in an attic for half a century, it is most likely frozen or seized up."

Quite clearly a lot of old sewing machines do not "still work 50 or 60 years later."

A Singer 201, which is widely considered the classic sewing machine, cost 6 months wages, not the 1 month you think it was. See http://www.sewalot.com/singer_201k_sewalot.htm . (Also, Singer switched from cast iron to aluminum a bit over 60 years ago, so your timeline is a bit off.) There are a lot of crappy modern sewing machines in the My Mom has a cast iron Singer 201. Which she loves even though it only does straight stitches. She also has several other sewing machines. She still uses her Bernina from the 1980s. So at least some modern (less that 50 years old) machines can and do last longer than 5 years.

Finally, there are plenty of sewing machines on eBay from the 1950s and early, for cheap. What is the reason that they aren't scooped up if they are of significantly higher quality than modern machines?

Re: How a car works (2012)

#115

Post by gregpilling »

gregpilling wrote: post #6
anon4 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given that there's a lot of dated cars, I don't think the advice is unwarranted.

GM stopped putting carburetors in vehicles in 1985 for the US market, which is 30 years ago. When can we let go of old tech?

For all those who have not liked my post: I rebuilt my first carb about 40 years ago, sitting on my fathers lap (age 5). He was a mechanic, I was a mechanic until I was 20. After that I spent the next 10 years selling tools and diagnostic equipment, as well as fixing a lot of cars - especially problem cars.

I have worked on thousands of carburetors. I can re-jet the 2 carbs in my race bike in about 5 minutes (main jets only). Carburetors are indeed in use on millions of engines. I understand Bernoulli's principle, and I also understand that a carburetor is lousy at part throttle metering. What does that mean to you?

Part throttle is anything that is not full throttle. Some people have a hard time believing that a fuel injected engine offers no full throttle advantage in total horsepower - it is the barely open part that matters. Fuel injection is massively more efficient and clean than carbs at part throttle. The part throttle issues cause all the emissions problems, cause all the pollution, cause all the smell when following behind a carb'd car.

The electronic carbs of the 80's were a real nightmare. Take a mechanical device, put some dozen vacuum lines on it, each controlled by a solenoid, give it a dumb computer that you can't talk to, and no tech information anywhere. Not even at the dealer. Caveman tech, dressed up with bunch of patches and cruft. It was done to save a buck, not because the better way wasn't known. And the systems are horrible and should be sent to the crusher. It is fuel metering in the worst way; adding miles and wear just makes all the problems even worse,

The EEC-IV systems used by Ford from 87-95 only had a 60 pin connector on them, the same number of pins that a Beagle Bone Black has. I have be thinking about how to use that as a basis to replace existing systems with an open source system that would be better and cheaper.

But carburetors need to die. They are not great new, and get worse with age.

Re: How a car works (2012)

#116

Post by Svip »

johngalt wrote: post #89
Svip wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Modern cars are very locked-in with computer systems. So fixing many aspects of modern cars is no longer possible for most car owners like it used to be. This seems like a neat site for people with older cars. Although, if you are owning a vintage car, then surely one should know a bit about maintaining that car without having to resort to such a site, but personally, it's nice to know it is there. I mean, its articl…

I'm not sure how true this is anymore. An OBD scanner makes the computer work for you. Modifications are certainly more difficult, but repair is easier IMHO. It is vastly easier to go replace the one bad fuel injector on a 2005 than rebuild a carb on a 1983.

Of course it's easier to replace than rebuild. I doubt I would be keen on rebuilding a fuel injector, even an old one. But replacing a carburettor on a 1983 is trivial.

Re: How a car works (2012)

#117

Post by raquo »

AlexMuir wrote: post #19

This is my site! This was a pleasant surprise to find my own site on HN this morning! I wondered why it was getting a few more FB likes than usual today. I'm happy to answer any questions. I finished this redesign last week so any feedback is welcome. The main task was to recreate labels and annotations on the illustrations in SVG format, and to reformat the articles in a way that flows nicely and is responsive, but…

The content is awesome, thanks for that!

As for responsive design, my laptop screen & browser width is 1440px, which makes the font size 24px. This is way too big and is uncomfortable to read. I would say 20px should be absolute maximum because it's so much bigger already than any other text on screen. Line width is also too wide imho, could be 800px easily.

Re: How a car works (2012)

#118

Post by justjimmy »

AlexMuir wrote: post #91
justjimmy wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's some nice Adsense income! My site gets about 13k visitors daily and I can't even average $5 from Adsense :(

That seems extremely low - what's the site?

www.hearthstoneplayers.com

Right now I've replaced the banner spot with an Amazon link with a more relevant ad message.

Re: How a car works (2012)

#119

Post by giancarlostoro »

yason wrote: post #108
alexcabrera wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The single best thing you can do is buy the Bentley Repair Manual ( http://www.bentleypublishers.com/ ) for your car. They're expensive, but will show you how to take your model apart and put it back together again. If you want to learn how a car works, the best thing you can do is take one apart and then try to get it running again. When you're working on a car, dead tree repair guides + a beater laptop are your bes…

I can recommend the Bentley manuals. With general knowledge of how an internal combustion engine works I basically learned how an actual car really works by reading through one back in the 90's. The Haynes manuals are merely worth a quick reference book if you really need to know something model-specific and you don't have access to the maker's original service manual, but not much more.

Except I can't find my 1999 Ford Explorer Sport in those, are there alternatives?

Re: How a car works (2012)

#120

Post by jshelly »

RankingMember wrote: post #76
jshelly wrote: post #53

I was disappointed to see that there is no guide on replacing brake pads for disc brakes. It seems like everyone in the world knows how to do this but me.

Youtube plus "brake pads" and there'll be some guy explaining exactly how to do it on your make and model.

Thanks for the tip
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