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"Host" of Barthmobile.com 1/19 |
With this news the fringes will say that... -This is an election year ploy and big oil wants to keep Bush/Republicans in office. -See, now we'll find Osama Bin Laden!!! -What will happen to the cost savings of alternative energy??? We need higher gas prices! Reality check: We need to look within our borders. We can put a man on the moon and split the atom but we're still dealing with 100 year old internal combustion engine designs. Look around people... If this does happen and we get comfortable then we will only be setting ourselves up for more trouble down the road. No matter who is in Congress. As stated earlier this year. It's CYCLICAL and RELATIVE in nature. From crude cost to instability to the American NIMBY attitude. Everything about this problem is fortitude!!! Bill N.Y. | ||
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 03/22 |
Interesting! I have been watching gas price here in sunny CA going down for the past month and they are lower then the beginning of summer. BUT Diesel is actually going higher???!!! We currently are at $2.90/gal for regular (87) and diesel is at $3.29. The reason? Most of the BS on diesel fuels center around "reformulation" to low sulpher. Low sulpher diesel is required here September 1st but these prices haven's dropped for the past 2 months and have gone higher, I can be assured that the new formulation isn't in the tanks yet but we are paying for it up front! I do agree, we have to start working with energy sources that are renewable and quite possibly nuclear. All this nonsense about hybrid cars, hydrogen fuel, and methanol is just that, nonsense!!! All of the above takes more fosil fuel to make or produce and provides less efficiency when used! That is my soapbox and I'm staying on it!! Don't get me wrong, I love the sound of a ground pounding V-8 or the scream of RR V-12 and I will probably never see the demise of the internal combustion engine but I have real concerns for my grandchildren and the future world they will be living in. Ed 94 30' Breakaway #3864 30-BS-6B side entry New Cummins 5.9L, 375+ HP Allison 6 speed Spartan chassis K9DVC Tankless water heater | |||
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| 2/16 Captain Doom  |
Low sulfur fuel is already in the pipeline. One of the underappreciated issues is: What the heck do you do with all that sulfur you remove? I remember being at my company's LA refinery in the 70s There was a 40,000T pile of sulfur, that was being sold overseas. But how much of a market is there? Lowered sulfur will help motor oil longevity, however, BTW. Rusty  "StaRV II"'94 28' Breakaway: MilSpec AMG 6.5L TD 230HP Nelson and Chester, not-spoiled Golden Retrievers Sometimes I think we're alone in the universe, and sometimes I think we're not. In either case the idea is quite staggering. - Arthur C. Clarke It was a woman who drove me to drink, and I've been searching thirty years to find her and thank her - W. C. Fields | |||
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Everything about this problem is fortitude!!! What problem? There is no "shortage" of fuel (excepting a few normal, local aberrations); if you, like me, are still in a '60s mental fiscal mode, you're going to have to change your thinking. "You are what you drive" - Clint Eastwood | |||
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| 4/09 Founder and Moderator Emeritus  |
hey folks wait till you states get as smart as ours and demands at all gas be 10% ethanol. I bet that no one "really" knows how much it costs to make ethanol. Who cares the state will subsidize it with my property tax dollars.  | |||
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| 3/12 |
I have got to get gas this morning on the way to work so i will let you know what the price is.....a day or two ago i saw that it was still at 3.18 for regular. | |||
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| "5+ Years of Active Membership" |
 I'm on the Kansas / Missouri state line and gas in MO was $2.57 on tuesday - great change... But I feel the oil companies are still the culprit in all this -- It's amazing how happy people are now that gas is DOWN to $2.60 ...Russell and Donna 1988 GM 454 powered 33' Barth Regal Gibson Exhaust, Bilsteins, ipd sway bar | |||
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1/09 |
The above statement is not necessarily completely accurate in the practical sense. Diesel tanks at stations cannot be switched to low sulfur instantaneously, which would require completely draining them. The tank contents have to be 'watered down' over time so that they will pump fuel to spec on the deadline date. That means that low sulfur fuel delivery has to be started well before the deadline, probably weeks. Of course this has absolutely nothing to do with price. That is controlled by oil company greed, with governmental 'influence'. | |||
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| The Old Man and No Barth |
Jeez, I paid $2.97 for regular at Costco last week & thought I was in fat city. Venting about the government & oil companies is good for the soul, but doesn't address the problem. Our lives, our economy, our energy supply depend on petroleum, a finite resource. Competition for this resource grows as third-world countries' economies improve. Biofuels & other alternative energy sources may be a crock, but we have to do the research to find if that's true or not. We can't decide on the basis of off-the-cuff opinions. I don't mind if my taxes subsidize ethanol. As world-wide competition drives up petroleum prices, the day may come when we thank those midwestern politicians for pursuing their parochial interests. I'm an old man, & barring some disruption in the supply chain, am unlikely to suffer from changes that occur as the petroleum resource runs out. It's my great-grandchildren & succeeding generations I worry about. | |||
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| 4/09 Founder and Moderator Emeritus |
I would rather have an oil company scam me than the government. Government subsidizing of consumables is bad news unless it is war time. Right now there is a vast shortage of ethanol plants. There are some 30 ethanol plants under construction. Primarily in states where government subsidies or percentage requirements exist. In Minnesota some of the ethanol for fuel production is been slowed because it is more profitable to use the same equipment to make vodka. I am guessing but pretty confident that some of the big gas companies, here in Minnesota Super America and Holiday have all of there pumps hooked up to computers which gage the number of gallons pumped per hour. As situations change such as holiday weekends or the end of summer they can see demand going up and down by the minute. I am suspecting that pricing is based directly on this change in demand. I know for sure by talking with a little Texaco station down the street that when they lower the price demand shoots up immediately.. like with in an hour or so. When we see the profits of these gas companies go up, remember that we own them.. You do in your pensions and 401K, if you don't you should.. I have great faith in supply and demand economics. I remember when I first moved to Minnesota 30 years ago I lived in a little farm town in Wisconsin called Baldwin. At that time a farmer who go 65 bushels per acre was a good farmer... This year; Wisconsin farms average 174 bushels per acre.. If ethanol was the way to go, I am confident that Exxon would in a few short year have an ear of corn the size of your car or have hydroponic gardens pumping out 100 bushels a minute. | |||
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Time for me to add my two cents. The price of gas in the metro Detroit area was $2.59 this morning. Ethanol will never be the answer, but it will help, of course, at the taxpayers' expense. Some of my friends at GM tell me that they are busting their butts to get a small turbocharged 3.6/4.0L diesel engine designed and tested to use on pickup trucks and the larger cars. Also, they are working on the dual stage Hybrid engines. So, hopefully we will have fuel efficient cars and trucks within the next two to three years. Also, the biodiesel companies are working very hard to build infastructure in Michigan. So, maybe help is on the way. Jake Jacobson | ||||
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| The Old Man and No Barth |
From frozen orange juice in 1946, to microprocessors, to today's miracle drugs, most basic research has been done in government labs, or government-sponsored university labs. Industry only shows up when profit potential appears. I'd bet the basic research that enabled a tripling of corn production in WI was done in a midwestern Ag school lab on a Dept. of Agriculture grant. From there, the seed companies, etc. took over. If taxpayer support refines the technology, & methanol production proves viable, Exxon will be there. The jury is still out on whether it will be viable. Exxon won't take the risk, but we better find out sooner rather than too late. And what the hey? If ethanol flops as a fuel, & it's more profitable to produce vodka in MN, why not those other states as well? Maybe the U.S. can supplant Eastern Europe as the world's vodka resource, & we can use the proceeds to buy Russian oil. That's serendipity, but it still doesn't answer what will happen when petroleum runs out. | |||
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| 2/16 Captain Doom |
Consumers Reports this issue has a test of flex-fuel vehicles - which got 27% less mileage on E85 than gaso. Not surprising, since the energy density per volume is less with ethanol. Rusty "StaRV II"'94 28' Breakaway: MilSpec AMG 6.5L TD 230HP Nelson and Chester, not-spoiled Golden Retrievers Sometimes I think we're alone in the universe, and sometimes I think we're not. In either case the idea is quite staggering. - Arthur C. Clarke It was a woman who drove me to drink, and I've been searching thirty years to find her and thank her - W. C. Fields | |||
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| She who must be obeyed and me, Ensign 3rd crass "5+ Years of Active Membership" |
As I understand the numbers it cost about 0.7 gal of oil to make 1 gal of ethanol. This assumes modern fertilizers and machinery, if you do not fertilize and plow with water buffalo I suppose you could change the ratio but with the drop in mileage I suggest that ethanol may be something to think about before we jump in. Even at a 10% return ethanol might be a good short-term fix but the lower mileage suggest we are close to a negative return. After reading this post I did do a little looking about on the internet to see about a home project that could make hydrogen, I was thinking with two solar cells on the Barth I could make some change. The sites I found suggest two solar cells will provide enough hydrogen each day to power my 454 for about five to fifteen minutes. The BMW approach has a tank that stores quite a bit of hydrogen, the tank is small enough that I could find a place to stick it on the Barth and the BMW tank should run the Barth 150 miles. Now there are two small issues, one the hydrogen has to be liquid that is -300 degrees Celsius or so and at about 4 atmospheres, building the tank appears to be a bit beyond the do it on a long weekend with a welder and a saws-all project. Secondly this approach needs two sets of injectors and a hand made intake manifold, this does not sound like a $300.00 project so I guess I'll keep looking. Another interesting topic, thanks. Timothy | |||
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| "Host" of Barthmobile.com 1/19 |
BTW: If your easily offended then don't click on the links. Read my posting first and then decide if you really want to know. So I Google "What do you do with sulfur" (rather simplistic) and was amazed at what I found as the number one post. Do You Have Demons in Your Colon? . It seems that there is a reason we ship it overseas and that either... A) your going to get upset with me about trying to save you.  B) your going to think I'm making fun of a Religion or Pastor. C) think I'm a racist. D) just posting some rather un-scientific ramblings from a very narrow minded person. Let's go with 4 as it's rather enlightening...  No matter what your take is on this we should be thankful that the ) and less harmful to the environment of everything else in the good old USA.We are going on a way back trip: I remember back to my childhood and the YMCA summer youth camp program. There was one water fountain that stunk of sulfur. The counselor that was running it had no problems with letting the little demons drink from it. I now wonder what his true stripes were... Bill N.Y. | |||
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