You guys are so lucky you do not have the heat and the humidity like ATL...it's aweful!!!!!!! HOT and HUMID!!!!!!!!! AC stays on like forever!

 

lol it was a breezy 62 degree weather with patches of clouds today. ahh (in a relaxing sigh tone, not the yell), i love SF weather...when its not foggy. the fog is horrible.

 

Ah, actually, it is nice in northern California this week. I'm up in San Jose, while my RX is staying nice and cool, parked at the Orange County airport (protected from the sun and crap with a Budge car cover).


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hot and humid today in so cal. humidity sucks

 

The AC is on pretty much 24/7 here in Hawaii. Even during the winter rainy months we use the AC because it is a great dehumidifier.

 

That's how to pamper your RX!

 

Just this morning I filled up the RX. Wife drove it to just about empty yesterday and didn't tell me

Display was showing average 10.6L/100 KM, which translates to 22.1 MPG. That was on the way into the station. Car had premium in the tank and had been running on that for about 3 tank fulls previous. I filled up with regular (65.5 L or about 17.5 G). After acceleration to cruising speed and the display settled down, I was consuming as low as 8.4L/100 KM or getting 28 MPG!

The previous reading was at an average speed just a bit higher (about 90KM/Hr or 55 M/Hr) and post fillup was about 85 Km/hr or about 51 M/Hr. Distance travelled from engine start to shut down is about the same prior to and post fillup as the station I used is about 1/2 way to work. Distance travelled total is about 45KM or 28 miles.

This is a significant improvement in mileage when using regular VS premium! Granted the previous tank full of premium was from a station called Pioneer, which adds up to 10% Ethanol to it's fuels. The regular was Shell.

 

E10 (gasoline with 10% ethanol) sucks. It has measurably less energy per gallon, which means that you have to use more to go the same distance. My mileage goes up by a couple miles per gallon when I'm using real gasoline.

It makes enough difference that I plan my trips so I don't have to buy gas in Minnesota or Illinois, both of which mandate E10.

 

I happily agree.

It also drives up the prices of corn here in Mexico (corn was born here), which is the staple food. In addition, I don't like what this stuff does to engines either, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethanol_fuel#Problems

 

Wow, that ethanol does not live up to the benefits! Knee jerk reaction causes a lot of headaches in the long run. We have no solid plan on alternative fuels....sources of energy....just my impression, I am pretty sure we have a bunch of technocrats in DC mulling over on all this sheet!

 

[Off Topic Rant]

Lobbyists and politicians... a match made in hell and it will lead us all to hell if we can put some controls on it. Much of our government is bought and paid for.

The Ag lobbyists are happy as hell over our governments push for e85. I recently read that if every auto in the US was required to use e10/e85 there would not be any way possible to grow enough bio material to produce the quantity of ethanol needed. So what they plan to do is buy ethanol from other countries. Kind of like putting us in the same boat we are in today with oil. Talk about stupid politicians.

We all travel too much I guess. You'd think that with all the technology, computers and high speed infrastructure around that we could figure out how to have more work-at-home jobs. I doubt we can find enough energy sources to keep this current trend up for many more generations.

Ever see this UCLA site that shows the number of aircraft in the air during a given day over the US.
http://users.design.ucla.edu/~akobli...faa/color.html

Each full sized commercial airliner, on average, burns 3378 US gallons of jet fuel per hour, and produces nearly 24 pounds of carbon dioxide per gallon of fuel burned. (3378 gallons/per hour * 24 pounds of CO2 = 81,072 pounds of CO2 per hour per plane.) Looking at the animation from UCLA, you get an idea where much of the carbon emissions everyone is worried about is coming from. A typical flight from Chicago to LA would burn around 15,200 gallons of jet fuel and pump some 364,824 pounds of CO2 into the atmosphere during the 4.5 hours of the flight. I doubt that this lifestyle is sustainable.

I's love to see an animation showing the land transportation similar to the one above.

[On Topic]

Sorry for the rant.

 

In my home state of Florida they want to use orange peels.

A politician in Mexico also raised a stink for suggesting ethanol to help Mexico City and its environmental woes only to be really hit hard politically when it was realized this would raise the price of corn here, which as I mentioned everyone depends on.

Still funny and ironic to see FlexFuel sticks on the back of Chrysler products when we have nationalized gas here.

 

It is all about to gets to lobby the hardest! All about the money funding the lobby game. It is a shame. Who else is the greater lobby? Healthcare!!!!! Drugs....all about the drugs. Legal drugs that actually kill people (because most of them are not affordable). Work hard, earn money so you can buy drugs that you need. Everyone of us will need drugs, sooner or later. We are a captured market.

 

Appreciate the comments, but I'm not sure the difference is solely the E10 VS "normal" fuel. The previous 2 of 3 tankfulls were from Shell (same station) as well, and were premium. The last premium (E10) was from the Pioneer.

Mileage readout for the entire time period was around 10.4-10.6 L/100KM also, so I'm not convinced the major change was due soley to E10.

 

Higher octane ratings correlate to higher activation energies. Activation energy is the amount of energy necessary to start a chemical reaction. Since higher octane fuels have higher activation energies, it is less likely that a given compression will cause knocking. (Note that it is the absolute pressure (compression) in the combustion chamber which is important - not the compression ratio. The compression ratio only governs the maximum compression that can be achieved).

Octane rating has no direct impact on the deflagration (burn) of the air/fuel mixture in the combustion chamber. Other properties of gasoline and engine design account for the manner at which deflagration takes place. In other words, the flame speed of a normally ignited mixture is not directly connected to octane rating. Deflagration is the type of combustion that constitues the normal burn. Detonation is a different type of combustion and this is to be avoided in spark ignited gasoline engines. Octane rating is a measure of detonation resistance, not deflagration characteristics.

It might seem odd that fuels with higher octane ratings explode less easily, yet are popularly thought of as more powerful. The misunderstanding is caused by confusing the ability of the fuel to resist compression detonation as opposed to the ability of the fuel to burn (combustion). However, premium grades of petrol often contain more energy per litre [citation needed] due to the composition of the fuel as well as increased octane