It's not complex. I don't get what you are saying. I know some specific plastics that are suitable for outdoor use as I have indicated. Picking a single one is like asking which metal is best? If your requirements are complex it's a complex answer. If you just want a plastic table it's not a complex answer. Ask Tonka what plastic they make their outdoor stuff out of. I'm pretty sure they pick a plastic that won't fall apart for many years.
My kayaks are HDPE with UV stabilizers added. I have an HDPE canoe that has been on my dock in the sun for well over a decade.
My '91 Buick was traded in with the original exhaust at 15 years, but it was starting to go. I honestly do not remember the last time I had to replace a muffler or pipe as most are SS now and last a long time.
You take an adjustible with you when you don't know what size you will need. If you get lucky, 50% of the time it will work but 50% of the time you go back for a box or open end.
78 Caddy (yet another POS, but my mom liked them) paint peeled after 8 years in the sun. Go through any large parking lot and look at all the peeling paint of similarly-aged cars. I was told that they used experimental water-based lacquer. Sounded fishy...
Hm. It's actually hard to find cars that old any more in California. The State pays us to junk them if they can't pass the smog test.
Apparently they fixed the problem -- the paint on the 88 Caddy (unlike the throttle [which caused me to get rid of it in 2016 after it tried to kill me way too many times], the brakes, the AC, the plastic, the headliner, the upholstery, the shocks etc. ) just faded a little bit on the horizontal surfaces. "Antelope Firemist" otherwise known as metallic beige.
I got $1K from the state for crushing it -- it had something like 90K miles and the engine was still running fine and not using oil. New tires, complete new brake system, cheap but good radio. The wrecking yard was not supposed to re-use any of the parts, just crush the whole thing. I really want to think that they cheated.
Steel is steel is steel is steel is steel is steel. Pads are the main friction component since E pads suck and since the coefficient of friction for steel is E.
So if you have GG pads, then the pads are the major friction determinant. The steel is there mainly to dissipate heat.
Conductive mass dissipates heat (as does the vane and airflow design, all of which we have to assume are equal when comparing drilled/slotted to solid rotors).
Everyone has read all the marketing bullshit on why drilled/slotted rotors are better than solid, but nobody seems to have any evidence that backs that purely marketing claim up.
I'll believe verified bona-fide facts showing rotor X stops better than rotor Y where the only difference is the drilling/slotting.
88 was a bad year for GMs. The Bosch antilock brake system they were experimenting with was horrible. In warm climates (maybe everywhere) the pump overheated and thermaled out leaving you without brakes. I guarantee if you walk up to any of them and pump the brake pedal about
20 times real fast the light will come on and a couple pumps later you have no brakes. I ended up putting a 4" fan in there, blowing right on the pump. It made it better but it was still not certain that if you were stuck in stop and go traffic a while you were not losing your brakes. The SSE we had also had a problem of the steering locking up when it was cold. If you let the car warm up a minute it was OK. When we traded it, the dealer said they almost took out a row of new cars because the car jockey just jumped in and took off as fast as he could go. I told him he was lucky that the brakes were not hot and walked away laughing
Never buy a car from me! It is done or I would still be driving it.
One plastic does not suit all. The trash can may be made by blow molding while the table made me rotional molded, other parts are injected molded. Each method requires different material characteristics with different additives.
Not just mufflers any more. They were smart enough to evolve into other auto services like brakes, shocks, and the like. As cars get more sophisticated the more you have to rely on the dealer also. My Genesis was dealer service because the local guy could not get the right oil filter for it. The NAPA nest door did not carry it as it is a low volume item.
The $50 figure is about 30 years old. If it was accurate at the time is would be double that today and there was still a lot of engineering and new tooling to pay for. That said, I have no ideal today.
Better material, better tolerances, possibly better design. When is the last time you got a ring job on your car? It was common in the 1950s to do rings and bearings at about 50,000 miles. Lubricants are a factor too, but engines today can easily last 200,000 miles with the same internal parts. Do you think those rings are the same?
Some of the best rotors out there are Chinese - but also some of the worst. Consistency is the problem
In some instances (virtually never normal street use) grooved and slotted rotors DO provide better braking. We are talking competition use, where the rotors are glowing red hot half the time, and the pads are off-gassing like crazy - where even 100% dry DOT4 brake fluid boils in the calipers. Under those conditions, rotors can warp - and even fracture (in Rallye use I've seen red hot rotors hit an icy puddle and totally fracture)
Actually, on SOME cases you can. Look at the consistancy of the fins in the rotors, and the even-ness of the thickness of the braking surfaces on both sides of the fins. If there is a difference in thickness around the circumference of the rotor, or inconsistancy in the thickness and/or finish of the fins, you WILL have problems with the rotor. If everything looks like it was forged, not cast (precision casting) chances are VERY good you will have no issues. The rotors will heat and cool consistantly - you won't get hars spots, and you won't get genuine warping.
You don't - that's the hard part - but when you are in the business you get to know which suppliers stand up, and which don't. If you know the suppliers well, they will tell you which ones they have trouble with, and which ones they don't.
Some are made of normal cast iron, some of "nodular cast" (aka Ductile cast) and some of "high carbon steel"
Sometimes you can tell because the color of the metal actually varies across the face of the rotor. Rare, but I've seen brand new rotors with darker "shadows" in the ground surface of the rotor. Hard spots first time you get the rotors warmed up. So hard you can't touch them with a carbide bit in a brake lathe.
The BIGGEST problem with rotors is improper seating and wearin of the pad - with spotty pad material deposit on the rotors due to holding the brake pedal down after a hard stop. This causes a minor thump - but if left sitting in the damp, particularly if the material picks up some salt, it rusta behind that material buildup, and chunks of rotor literally fall out - causing "pitted" rotors.
Some pad materials are worse than others - I found the "iron metallic" pads Toyota came out with were a LOT worse than the "brass metallic" pads - and "carbon metallic" and "ceramic" are generally even better in that regard, althogh some of them don't stop worth a darn untill they are pretty hot - and some wear rotors like a grinding stone.
You don't - that's the hard part - but when you are in the business you get to know which suppliers stand up, and which don't. If you know the suppliers well, they will tell you which ones they have trouble with, and which ones they don't.
And some rotors DO WARP. Not many - but I've had at least a bushel basket full of genuinely warped rotors in my 25 year carreer. Most "warped" rotors are not warped - but some are. Some DRASTICALLY - to the point the caliper moves visibly when the wheel is turned - and if the sliders stick the pedal jumps and the steering wheel twitches.
More often than not though, they are either pitted or have deposit buildup, ot they have "hard spots" due to metalurgical inclusions
Wrong tool. The one I'm talking about has tabs that fit into the notches on the piston face to "thread" it in as you squeese. Can sometimes get away with the $17 "cube" but the kit you KNOW is going to work starts at about $35 for one of questionable quality, and goes up very quickly from there (and IT won't turn back Mazda rear calipers
- they use a different system
I have. many times.
A somple dial indicator tells the tale - and sometimes one side is straight, and the other side is not - parallelism warpage - where some fins collapse and one side of the rotor "caves in" - 1 inch thick on one "side" of the rotor, and .875 or something like that diametrically across the rotor. - and sometimes virtually deead flat on both surfaces - other times with about hald paralel and the other half "sloped"
When you get the rotor on the lathe you can see very quickly if it is warped, pitted, hard-spotted, collapesed, or whatever.
I've even seen quite a few where the friction surface is "wavy" o high over the fins, and sunk between them - sometimes on one whole surface, sometimes on both surfaces, and sometimes only on part of one or both.
That won't necessarilly tell you anything. The only way to KNOW is to use a dial indicator properly.
And that is where YOU are WRONG. Many technicians measure brake rotors virtually every day of their working lives.
Not usually under normal conditions, but panic stops on the highway CAN get them hot enough to warp -and to collapse between fins - and to glow visibly in the semi-shade of the fender-wells - and to totally BAKE the linings. You CAN make a disc brake "fade" on the road (non competition use) A sticky caloper slider or seized or semi-seized caliper can get the rotor hot enough WITHOUT panic braking to damage both the pad and the rotor.( and to severely comptomize brake effectiveness to the point of causing a pronounced pull to the side of the NON-OVERHEATED brake - -
Take a few zeros off there.a GENUINELY warped rotor is not a "total unicorn" I've seen numerous cases - and in fact there was a time where we were routinely changing rotors on certain Toyota vehicles (in a given production/ serial number range) due to actual rotor warpage.
Dealerships were then REQUIRED to buy an "on-the-car lathe" to true up rotors. If they could not be trued up within a given spec (still thicker than discard) they were to be replaced - a miserable job on those early Tercels where the rotors/hubs and bearings were pressed together inside the knuckles.
We replaced enough of them that I got pretty darn good at it!!!
Replacement with "good" rotors - in the Toyota case it WAS a metalurgy issue. The best rotors are made from castings that are "aged" before machining, allowing the casting stresses to resolve. The toyota problem was partly using "grean" castings.
The deposits problem can be a double edged sword - wrong pad materials, as well as poor bedding procedures can cause the problem to be "worse than acceptable"
What I learned I learned by doing it for 25byears, on almost a daily basis.
A wize man learns from the mistakes of others - a fool never learns because he "never makes mistakes"
I've told you how I measure to prove warpage, and how it happens, If a rotor is visbly glowinf (in the dark) it is awfull close to
1000F. Bright cherry is 1375F or very close. Depending on the steel, annealing temperatures run from about 500 to
1400F. If there are stresses cast into the rotor, that's all it takes to "let them out" - warping the rotor.
Check "heat treating of nodular iron castings" for more than you will ever want to know about what can go wrong with ferritic castings. (Nodular iron in particular)
You know SQUAT. When you've serviced brakes on an almost daily basis for 25 years - when you've machined hundreds, even thousands of brake rotors and drums, and MEASURED hundreds of rotors, then I'll admit you might actually KNOW something about it.
Yes - you are right to the extent that MOST "warped rotors" are not. But you are absolutely WRONG when you say they never warp in street/highway use and anyone who says they have had a warped rotor is lying and hasn't measured the rotor to prove it. And your method of neasuring warpage is NOT the correct or industry approved way of measuring rotors for warpage (and would NEVER find warpage in the "hat" area of the rotor - which is caused by gross mistorquing of certain wheels on certain vehicles) (admittedly rare - but not a "total unicorn" either)
Much of car logic IS TTL level (+/- 5 volts) and the rest is floating input to either +12 volts or ground
Absolutely no need to waste money on a "Fluke" branded meter. LOTS of lower cost stuff out there that is more than accurate enough for automotive electronics use.
Different brake tools for some disc brakes - torque to angle or angle to torque adapters for "torque to tield" bolts. Special wrenches/sockets for certain sensors - but not a lot of essoteric and complex stuff.
But would NOT be acceptable for an engins still under warranty. Here we go from -25 to +95 F on any average given year
The bottoms of most chevys (and some ford taurus sunframes) Taurus doglegs, Mazda (any model) rear wheelwells and doglegs and hatch/trunk lids, and the box sides of Dodge (and some GM) trucks are aften seem pretty badly rusted up here. - often within 5 or 6 years - sometimes even less.
Not sure if you call $14.99 each cheap - sometimes available on sale for just under $10 (Autolite double platinum) or Motorcraft SP515 plugs at $20.75 Canadian (for Ford Triton 5.4)
You think I don't know that???
The cold starts USED to be the big issue with carbureted engines - due to cyl wash, fuel dilution, and poor barrier lubrication - not so much today.
Everthing else being the same - which is seldome the case, an engine run at over 90% output for half it's life will not last as long as an engine run at less than 30% output for over 75% of it's life.
If I have a Ford Ranger with a 2.5 4 cyl and one with a 4.0 V6 - and I run them both at rated capacity on the highway under the same conditions, the bigger motor will last longer / wear less than the smaller engine - whether the gearing is different or not.
Same thing with a Sierra 1500 - 4.3 V6, 4.8 V8 or 5.7 V8. If you work the truck - towing a trailer or whatever, the 5.7 is going to outlast the 4.8 or the 4.3 if none of GM's normal gremlins manage to totally kill the engine before it "wears out" The basic design of those 3 engines is almost identical - just 2 cyls missing on the 4.3 and smaller displacement on the 4.8 The 6.0 or 6.2, whatever, is a different kettle of fish, with a hair-spring detonator.
Things like load. Sure - if like MOST pickups on the road today they are never loaded or worked - no difference.
If a car is just tooled around town with 1 or 2 people in it - no difference. Neither one is ever being worked hard enough to hurt itself.
Take that TOTALLY out of the equation - I said "all other things being equal". 2 trucks. same usage. same loads -(close to limit) same roads, same drivers, same speeds and traffic. The larger engine (if no fatal design differences) will generally, in principal and in practice, outlast the smaller engine. Particularly where two engines of not TOO big a displacement difference - one being a 4 and another a
6, or an 8 - the lower number of cyls will habe larger displacement per cyl - usually a longer stroke - and if geared to allow the smaller engine to putout the same horsepower (needs to run fster) the piston speed on the lower cyl engine will often be higher than the higher number of cyl engine due to difference in stroke length - which is a large determinator of engine life. The v6 or v8 of the same displacement - or even larger - will also have a shorter crank and a more rigid crankcase/block (in most cases) affecting bearing and crank life. I know there is a lot of design variability - but over the years it has become quite evident that the larger engine GENERALLY outlasts the smaller engine when the capacity limit of the smaller engine is approached, and the more cyls, even for the same displacement, the better the life . Yes, I'll likely end up owning another 4 cyl vehicle - with today's trends it's inevitable - and todays 4 cyls are much better than the 4 cyl of 20 years ago - but given the choice of a 2.5 liter V6 and a 2.5 liter 4 cyl, accessibility and serviceability aside, I'll take the 6.
The amount of repairs I've needed to do an ANY of my vehicles in the last 20 yeats is SO small "getting at" the engine is not much of a concern to me. I've owned 2 V6 Aerostars (about as miserable as they come) - a V6 Duratec Mystique (they don't get much uglier to work on) and now a 3 liter Duratec Taurus - again a WHOLE lot more complex and harder to "get to" than a vulcan - and it's only been an extra hour? of frustration over 12 years with the duratecs over what it would have been with a 4 cyl Mystique or a Vulcan Taurus - assuming the 4 cyl and the Vulcan gave no more trouble than the Duratecs - and other than taking half an hour longer to change the plugs on the 3.0 Aerostars than on a typical 4 cyl pickup truck, the horrendous packaging of the aerostar was basically a non-issue for 240,000km on the 90, and 160000+ on the '89.
And I do virtually ALL of my own service and repairs. If I ever have to change the catalytic converter on the back bank of the taurus, that will be a different stoty - but it's 16 years old now. If and when that happens I'll buy a different car - - -
Wouldn't get through inspection here - Not legitimately anyway.
I've patched gas tanks by soldering, brazing, and using "liquid metal" I've brazed punctured oil pans - both on and off the car (really extreme measures when on the car - involved use of hot water and a big CO2 fire extinguisher, but 8-12 hours to pull the engine was NOT in the cards!!!
And you didn't sat what the "remaining life" of the car was. A cake of soap has gotten many a car home - or through a cursoty inspectin to trade it off - - -
Even wiping down with armor-all will extend the life significantly as it contains U-V inhibitors and restores the plasticisers somewhat.
Bercause EVERONE needs UV protection - one reason people wear sun-glasses. My Crizal lenses block almost 100% of UV - by the end of the summer I look like a racoon when I take my glasses off - no tan behind the glasses. The UV protection is for the eyes - not the plastic (generally)
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