Ageist!
Leaving litter & polluting fumes have nothing to do with each other. I don't leave litter and I don't worry about alledged pollution.
But if you wish to save the planet you should drive a older car - look at the environmental cost of building news ones all the time.
All this is so easy to solve. Tax new stuff and tax fuel even more
Then all you have to do is to analyse the cost benefit of buying an expensive new unit, less the scrap value of its now expensive materials, versus the cost of all the extra fuel you are burning.
"can" and "do" are two different things.
If a boiler is being swapped out it might get taken to the tip but more likely it goes in a skip if it's part of a kitchen refit for example. Then who knows.
To make a difference to that, needs an incentive for the disposer, ease of disposal and preferably money in it.
I would be very surprised if anybody is going to the trouble of taking PCBs out and otherwise stripping them down.
>
Indeed the Prima is probably about mid range. Say a SEDBUK - D. So the saving would probably not be that great.
The controls are just as important as the boiler and much cheaper to upgrade. So if you don't have full and independant heating and hot water controls you start there. The TRVs on most radiators.
Too damn right! It's the same generation that believe that drink driving is a right and not a danger to others.
Litter does and is polluting the environment.
So you think we'd all be better off driving around in cars the same age as my old boiler do you? Leaded fuel, 3 star, no catalytic converter.
Blimey, the 'kids' around our local town fly around in Nova's, quite often departing into the scenery - I guess many are smoking funny stuff. Most older folk tend to drive carefully after a jar or two. Look at insurance premiums, old versus young - they don't reflect your concerns.
Separate pollution from greenhouse gases. Older cars tended to be smaller and much lighter than their modern equivalent. Leaded fuels of old allowed a higher compression ratio engine that tended to improve its efficiency and thus improve MPG. A Mk1 or 2 Ford Escort would emit less greenhouse gas than a Focus for example.
Modern vehicles are not 'green' compared to the older models. Carbon monoxide and oxides of nitrogen have been reduced c/o the 3 way cat, and lead has been removed from the fuel, but the average vehicle today (without even bringing Chelsea tractors into the argument) uses more fuel and therefore emits more greenhouse gas than the older models.
Yes, a sweeping generalisation, but let's think outside of the standard 'Daily Mail' box!
Julian.
They should be recycled one way or the other. I and some other installers take them to the scrappy (along with copper and brass for which we get cash, and it's free to dispose of the boiler). If it's taken to the council tip^H^H^Hamenity site[1] it should be sorted with other metals - radiators etc - for recycling. If it's left out on the street it may just be disposed of for you!
[1] or whatever pointy-haired name it's got for yours
Any motor with fuel injection is likely to beat a carburetted engined motor hands down for efficiency. When I replaced our 1600 carbed cavalier for the 2l 130bhp injected model it rocked the socks off the old one AND returned better fuel economy.
As will a higher efficiency one not properly serviced/maintained.
That's simply rubbish. If you look at contemporary road tests of carburettor fed cars where they did MPG figures and compare modern ones of the same seating capacity and performance etc the modern one is very much better. Even although it will usually be heavier.
Nope, I'm afraid it's you who is talking the rubbish! Take an old fuel injected engine, (pre 3 way cat) it was tuned to run a lean and economical mixture during part power conditions, ie most of the time. Introduce the 3 way cat to a 'modern' vehicle and there is now the necessity to run a stoicheometric (chemically correct) mixture during part power conditions. This makes for less efficient use of fuel (increase greenhouse gas) than the old technology.
FFS the old 1.8 Marina would easily do over 40mpg and that was on a single SU carb. Can you provide an example of another medium sized 1.8L family saloon today that offers any sort of clear advantage reflecting 30 years of technological advancement? Consider too, non automotive technological advancement over the last 30+ years and compare wrt motor vehicle _fuel efficiency_.
Julian.
Which old fuel injected engine had accurate control of both fuel and ignition - and valve timing too as with many modern engines?
A Marina 1800 *might* have managed 40 mpg at a constant slow cruise. But would be more likely half that when crossing say London in moderate traffic. And a great deal worse in heavy traffic. The figures speak for themselves. At idle it will produce about 5% CO. A decent non cat injected engine maybe 0.75%.
I can give you a pretty fair comparison. I have two cars of very similar size weight and performance. Both autos. The 22 year old one has EFI but conventional ignition (no cat). The newer one the usual for today including variable valve timing. A 120 mile round trip from here to a friends which includes town and motorway gives 28 mpg when driven briskly. Same journey and driving on the other 37. They both have accurate OBCs which give average fuel consumption.
Oh, so everyone above a certain (unspecified) age throws litter whilst diving when drunk?
And people above a certain (unspecified) age don't drop litter in general. If you want a scapegoat look at the McDonalds eating, lager drinking, baseball cap wearing younger generation.
Probably yes. You fail to look at the cost of building new cars. Huge amounts of energy, raw materials, transport etc.
Apart from which, being slightly older & more mature gives one the experience to realise that most of the current tree hugging, save the planet, global warming, carbon footprint cobblers is complete ballcocks.
I trust your wholewheat dungarees aren't chaffing?
Actually it managed it pretty much all the time - I had one.
But the thing that need picking up on here is your reference to CO. Your figures could be correct, but your argument shows that you can't seperate pollutants (CO, oxides of nitrogen and unburned HC) from green house gas emission, ie CO2. Your 5% CO in the modern engine goes through the catalyst where the gas reacts with free oxygen and is converted into 4.25% CO2 and
0.75% CO!
Here's one. My old (scraped now) 1986 (21 year old) Peugeot 205 Diesel returned 60mpg average. No cat, no turbo, indirect injection, conventional rotary distributor pump etc etc. Where have we come wrt Diesel vehicle fuel efficiency in 20 years? Small hatchback vehicles are little if no better than before. Also I understand that the latest V6 Diesel Discoveries drink more juice than the old 200 and 300Tdi's.
BTW I'm not preaching treehuggery to you, I think it's mainly bollocks. I've a Jensen in the garage with the Chrysler 440 cid engine and that does 8mpg,
10 if you nurse the throttle.Julian.
Yup. Fuel injection made more efficient engines. Catalytic converters took them back down again.
Trouble is fuel consumption depends so much on actual use. If you were getting 40 mpg from a Marina 1800 year round you must only have been doing long gentle journeys with little traffic. The official urban consumption for that vehicle was 28.4 mpg - and the method used for calculating that is long since discredited, the present day one would give a much lower figure. And even that isn't representative of heavy traffic urban driving. A concrete example - about '80, a workmate was going on about his very economical Mini 1000. In comparison to my Rover V8. I asked him exactly what it did mpg wise on his urban commute - Bermondsey to Teddington. He knew it did near 50 mpg on a recent holiday trip but had no idea of the actual town consumption. So he checked it full tank to full tank over a week. 27 mpg.
CO output without a cat gives a pretty fair indication of efficiency. A good modern way to set the mixture on an older engine is by measuring the CO output. About 2.5% is correct for full power. Higher at idle where a carburettor is even more inefficient and the mixture distribution between cylinders poor. An engine will always run more reliably with the mixture slightly rich rather than weak. Of course at cruise you can weaken it off to the near ideal as it can't stall. But in stop start conditions will be dreadful efficiency wise compared to modern computer controlled designs. The myth about catalysts effecting efficiency drastically was only really true of the early days when they were tacked onto crude mixture control.
Diesels are a very different proposition. Early direct injection types achieved stunning efficiency. Unfortunately also stunning crudeness. So the quest with modern types was to make them more refined and more powerful for a given size. And that they've undoubtably achieved, although while narrowing the difference in refinement and performance, they've also narrowed the gap in fuel consumption.
You've given a perfect example of an engine from the days where fuel consumption simply didn't matter in the US. If you replaced the engine and gearbox (assuming an auto) with an equivalent output modern V8 complete with cat., you'd more than double those mpg figures. And expect to better
30mpg at a constant 70 mph.
I'm not sure that one would get better than 30mpg since the 440 was supposed to be 325bhp as installed in the Jensen. However one could replace the 7.2L 440 with a 4.6L Ford V8 to get exactly the same power for lower weight, and I'd expect that to get about 27 mpg in the Interceptor.
I can't believe my Renault Kangoo van. 1400cc diesel. It appears to run on the fumes from a can of WD40 in the back.
I put in approx £25 every two weeks - all urban driving in traffic, no great mileage but carrys a fair weight.
Its surprisingly quick as well. First diesel I had was the 2:3 Ford Sierra - a right pig. I reckon the Kangoo is quicker.
Yep, loads more power, more refinement, less servicing etc etc, much better in many respects than older cars. But nothing (or very little, and in some cases worse) wrt fuel consumption. Hence a modern vehicle is not necessarily 'greener' than the old model. Don't be taken in by bullshit marketing hype by the manufacturers - they'll use any tool at their disposal to flog more vehicles. 'Green' is the latest fad.
Julian.
I'm afraid you've not really addressed the problem like for like. You mention the Marina which must have been the worst vehicle BL ever made. Any savings in petrol consumption due to the simplicity of its construction were more than offset by the repair costs due to shoddy design and manufacture. And to maintain that best mpg figure required constant attention - modern cars require no such adjustments as the computer does it for you.
It's all too easy to poo-poo the 'greens' but without the insistence of some on emissions and fuel consumption standards the car makers wouldn't have bothered with much of the technology we now take for granted. Tell them they must achieve a certain standard by such and such a date and they bleat it is impossible - but always manage it. Commercial pressures alone wouldn't have achieved this.
I'm a lover of old cars too - but not blind to their failings. You simply can't mention a Marina and say a Focus in the same breath.
HomeOwnersHub website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.