…and I wanna talk some more… about energy.
I have previously on here mentioned the young lad who hops on a Honda C90 and rides to as far away places as the arctic circle and the middle east.
85cc, 8 bhp, 50 mph top speed, 4 litre fuel capacity giving 90 odd miles range, 90 kilos with fluids topped off.
A top pro cyclist can output 400 watts, few can aspire to that, a labourer is usually outputting 75 watts for his 8 hour day.
The measly Honda C90 puts out a measly 8 bhp PEAK, 8 x 746 =5,968 watts, it’s putting out about 3,000 watts at 30 mph, the equivalent of 7.5 top pro cyclists, or 40 labourers, and the labourer is the better benchmark because the little Honda will do that all day every day for as long as you like.
It takes a man who could walk maybe 40 miles a day, Roman legionnaire style, if the roads were good enough, and allows him to travel over a significant proportion of the globe, and do at least 400 miles a day, and carrying his own body weight again in gear.
DMJ in his post apocalyptic novel missed a trick, the survivors on mechanical transport will be running Honda C90’s, and nothing else… except maybe the odd wood gasifier 4 wheel job, or a cow/pig/chicken shit methane eater, but they will be rare.
I will freely admit, my modern socket 2011 i7 PC sips power compared to the 300 MHz Pentium 2, and delivers *vastly* more computing power, I will also freely admit that my Samsung SGS3, Note2 and Note 10.1 all sip power, all wonderfully efficient things. LED lighting, wonderfully efficient… Even my Giant 46″ Samsung LED TV uses less power than an old 14″ green phosphor monitor.
But there it ends.
Back in the day, Lister made a 6 horsepower single cylinder diesel engine, unlike the little honda that displaces 85 cc, the Lister was nearly 1.5 litres, and everything else weighed accordingly, 300 lbs of flywheels etc, nobody cared, it wasn’t a mobile engine, it was a stationary engine, and massive construction = long life, low stress, minimal vibration, very smooth.
They coupled this engine, via twin vee belts, to a 4 pole 240 volt AC generator, capable of outputting 2.5 kW peak/continuous, it was the same thing to the old Lister.
What made this a trick, was they added a DC circuit to the alternator, eg added a dynamo, that and a few relays, you ran the DC through the mains circuit, when the user closed a switch to turn on the electrically powered item, this closed a rely on the lister, that took DC from the batteries to use the now DC motor in the alternator to spin the big diesel lump up, and when up to speed the DC was taken out of the mains circuit and 220 VAC was put in… and when the customer turned the switch off on the electrically powered item, this prompted “no load” on the alternator, and after a few seconds of this relay shut the rack down on the injector pump on the lister, and when it span back down, back to DC sensing on the mains circuit.
This then, was called the Start-o-matic, and it was hugely popular, but it didn’t sell to houses much, it sold to farms, farms in every country in the world, and the electric light it brought to those farms was incidental, it brought mains power for everything else, well pumps, refrigeration, shearing machines, power tools in the workshop, you name it.
2,500 watts.
Eventually they replaced the 6/1 engine on the startomatic with the 8/1, and the alternator on that would output 3,500 watts, heady days.
If I bought a car in my youth, chances are it would be producing 40 to 50 bhp, BMC A & B series engines and so forth, get medieval and buy a 3.5 litre Rover V8 based on the Buick block and an awesome 155 bhp was on tap.
Harley big twins were still 74 cubes, and plenty people arguing that 74 cubes was too much, not as nice as the 60 cube motors, same shit was being said of Triumph when they put the twins from 650 to 750, and the fucking Norton 850’s shook everything off every 50 miles, hell there were even jokes, as Triumph had gone to 750cc and unit construction and BSA A10 were still 650 and pre-unit, and a *lot* smoother, about Triumph riders being turned away from the blood donor rooms because their blood was too frothy.
Then the Harley’s went to 80 cubes, and the only good thing about that was the promo (put another six inches between your legs) and now from the factory they are 100 inches…. Not to be outdone the japs are now making 1,900cc vee twins, and the cunts riding them are more limp wristed than we were as youths, when frankly a 1 litre motorcycle engine was all but pointless…
Meanwhile things like the Suzuki 650 single Savage, a frankly lovely little bike, are seen as “a girl’s bike”…. WTF????
In short, what we TODAY take for granted as a “normal” personal energy budget, whether it be the electricity supply to our homes, how many horsepower our vehicles have, etc etc, is, even when compared to what was “normal” 30 years ago when I was a young man, completely fucking outrageous…. as indeed was *my* energy budget as a young man, compared to my dad, when he was my age, jack the lad he was, with his 500 cc ohv single Rudge, the only person more jack the lad was his mate Bob, but Bob’s family was loaded, so Bob had a Vinnie black prince… dad bought his own bike.
For a short while I toyed with a home build Z1000 bored to 1200 and with a turbo with eeeek boost fitted, I can tell you for a fact those old Z bottom ends would handle 200+ bhp / 25 mpg no sweat, I can also tell you after shredding a 
brand new rear tyre in one 120 mile journey of normal ish riding, I sold it, to a guy who ran Ford cortina square section car tyres on the rear end, cornering was even worse, but at least he had some rubber left on the tyre and not just the road… I went from that back to a “mere” 74 bhp / 60 mpg from this lump.
Meanwhile, boiling 2 pints of water in an electric kettle uses exactly the same energy as it did when my parents got one for a wedding present just after the war.
A 1 kW bar electric fire uses exactly the same energy as it did in 1950, and a 60 watt incandescent bulb ditto.
But the essential difference even back then as a callow yoof was the same as it is today, travel astride something exposed to the elements, or carry your own armchair, heater, air con, stereo and weatherproof box everywhere so you can travel in the same comfort and attire as sitting here on my sofa typing this, the latter vastly increases the energy requirement.
Nothing else has changed.
But it *could* have….
In my workshop I have a 1.5 kW one “bar” quartz tube heater, one of the pukka ones, most of the output is infra red, I still find myself reluctant to use the fucker, because it is hard to relate the heat output to the energy consumption, it looks sorta like a 1 bar electric fire, but the heat output is prodigious, 10 feet away from a bar fire I can barely feel anything on my skin, I can sense it with my face, but there is no actual warmth, 10 feet away from this thing it is like sunbathing in summer on the beach… waaaaarrrrmmmth… ten minutes later you start to sweat…. it is efficient because it heats ME, not the air around me.
Same with cars, ALL the energy expended in making them move is shed by converting it to heat, and the 50 bhp car of my yoof that is now 100 bhp, well yes, there is more safety shit to drag around, but also, the bulk of that extra goes on performance
The A60 austin cambridge I used to drive as a boy had 60 bhp, 24 seconds 0-60, the car outside (same engine capacity) now does 0-60 in under 11 seconds…. there isn’t actually any NEED for double the acceleration of the old A60, sure, I *use* it, tyres and diesel cost me nothing, but I don’t *need* it…. and if I was paying for tyres and diesel I wouldn’t be using it.
That was the old lesson from the blown zed thou, beyond a certain sedate point, fuel energy is used to chew up tyres and brakes, I really can’t remember the numbers or anything else except the conversation itself now, but one of my customer back in the day was a 747 pilot, before that he used to fly English Electric Lightnings, RAF interceptor squadron, I do remember him telling me that could drink fuel far faster than a jumbo, and I don’t remember the numbers, but when he said far faster he meant a LOT.
As an aside this guy was telling me that when BAE was testing the Concorde in the early 80’s, they offered it to various air forces as a test target, so the yanks brought F14/15/16 and Starfighters to the party, the French turned up with Mirages, but one of the lightnings from his squadron was the only plane able to make an intercept, but then they would do runway to 39,000 feet in 3 minutes.. >;*)
So, from the time when my dad was a boy, to when I was a boy (for variations of boy that mean under 20 but old enough to drive) it went from only the very very few having a 50 bhp motorcycle, to anyone who wanted one having a 50/60/70/80/90 bhp motorcycle.
And from when I was a boy, when only pub landlords and police had a 155 bhp car, to anyone who wants one having 150/200/250 on up bhp cars, I know a guy who just bought a used VW phaeton v10, chipped, a 400 bhp diesel car FFS.. he paid ten grand for it.
Even the fucking VW up, a one litre three cylinder jobbie, chucks out 60 bhp, and that’s not even “a girls car” it is a motorised shopping trolley.
Nobody, but nobody, but nobody, gives a fuck about efficiency.
Profligacy is the name of the game.
95% of what we call our current, normal, western standard of living is in fact nothing more than profligate personal energy expenditure on a scale that would have been simply unimaginable when I was a boy.
I have said this time and time and time again, the per capita energy budget of a nation denotes the technological progress and status of that nation, nothing else counts.
sure, we could *probably” maintain today’s standard of living and achieve and 30-40% cut in this current per capita energy budget (a 30-40% cut with no gains in efficiency would take us back to 1980, no internet, no personal computing, no mobile phones, no digital equipment) by going balls out for efficiency anywhere and everywhere we could…
the *average* standard car factory alternator is rated at 70 amperes… 70 x 12 = 840 watts, over a bloody horsepower, just to charge the 12 volt system…and run all those incandescent or xenon lights, and that 200 watt stereo, and move the windows up and down, and run the video game console instruments…
30 second 0-60 times are good enough.
regenerative braking could be done today, and do away with the engine powered alternator altogether as a by product.
every single vehicle could be factory speed limited to 50 mph
all lighting could be LED
There is just no will, and no awareness of what could be done, today, with today’s technology, not tomorrow’s unfeasible magical unicorn solutions.
UNSUSTAINABLE.
It´s the operating word of our global civilization. Maybe have to add “by design”.
In my opinion a logical consequence of the ponzi scheming, bankster operated (& for our conspiracy friends .. cabal run) world economic system.
The whole electric car change is another phenomenon of it.
It´s basically impossible to make Tesla´s electric motor design inefficient, so what do they do?
DO NOT start a “Manhattan project” for advanced super capacitors!
Instead make inefficient batteries barely efficient enough to be somewhat usable but NOT a real game-changer.
And use rare earths, so there´s still a inbuilt safety bottleneck to the tech. With the added bonus of having to fuck up even more pristine earth environment to dig it up.
Comment by hans — June 12, 2014 @ 4:00 pm
Actually, I’m going to take issue with you, tesla’s motor *design* is very inefficient.
There is zero excuse for anything except direct drive hubs, and with that regenerative braking comes free, as does independent all wheel drive, braking and stability control.
Ripping out an IC motor and replacing with an electric motor, and leaving all the mechanicals is, is pathetic.
Ripping it out and going for direct drive hubs also removes propshaft transmission tunnels and axle tunnels from the body form, for a much more efficient use of space.
To me, the tesla is basically a 1950’s era compton/electricar/smiths milk float, with li-on batteries instead of deep cycle lead acid traction cells, some electronics instead of mechanical wound resistors etc, and a kit car body from a 1970’s era turn your beetle into a lambo dropped on to it….
and this for 100,000 bucks a pop????
or, in another universe…
when Smiths was bought out by the yanks, they abandoned lead acid cells in milk floats, and went to li-on based vans and trucks, and they are selling like shit, compared to everything except tesla of course…
http://www.treehugger.com/cars/electric-milk-trucks-still-working-jolly-old-england.html
Comment by wimminz — June 12, 2014 @ 4:24 pm
Oh but even this internal combustion thingy can be done more efficiently. Simples.
Get one of those ultralight aerodynamic bikes.
Strap a 10BHP engine to it.
And pray for your life.
There, it’s fuel efficient, and lethal enough to prevent women from even considering using the road.
Comment by Digger Nick — June 12, 2014 @ 4:42 pm
Heh, I meant the actual Tesla.
Can´t really mess with his genius inventions and designs without rendering them useless.
Frankly didn´t even bother finding out how Musk fucked up his version of the “electric combustion car”, I simply don´t trust the bastard one bit.
Jeez that´s really crappy what you described there. A shame.
But I guess if they dared building actually vastly superior electric cars, they never would´ve come even that far.
BTW the rare earth safety bottleneck I meant is their scarcity. Of course there´s a new clever RE-free battery design out every month, but I´ll bet my knickers none of them will ever find their way into production. Just like all these super-solarcells.
Comment by hans — June 12, 2014 @ 10:43 pm
So what will change that lack of will? That’s the question. People are already struggling to get by, yet they drive the same inefficient beasts and live profligate lifestyles. Maybe a gradual increase in energy costs, but more likely, the collapse of easy credit and the currencies backed by it.
One thing that’s piqued my interest lately is the cost of accommodation. I looked at my budget and tried to find every place that I can reduce my spending to a minimum. No matter what, unless living with a friend/relative, I will be forced to spend $800/month on an apartment bill, not including utility costs. I am now spending 6x as much to have a roof over my head than I am to have more food and water than I can consume. There is no justification of that in any energy or physical world sense.
Comment by freeman — June 12, 2014 @ 6:26 pm
Bingo, on two counts.
#1 accommodations have *never* been so expensive, and I am talking about the very lowest levels of accommodations, not the prime real estate ones… when measured as a proportion of weekly income.
#2 reality intruding is the only thing that will change the lack of will, and at that point, will becomes far less relevant.
“option b” (as in a/ take the job a 50 mile commute away, or b/ don’t, because you can’t afford the transport costs) still isn’t “expensive” enough, people just sit at home in their negative equity and play farmville all day.
During rationing in the last war option b meant going without something else as well.
Due to my age, for most of my life, when sat *in* my home I had the options of reading library books, listening to the stereo, or watching some shite on the tv, but I never bother with the tv, except to grab a vhs tape from the video shop and watch that at night.
If the TV was “the idiots lantern” then the net, as it is used by the vast majority, is “the fucking moron’s Sun”, but nevermind, apparently it is now a basic human right.
Was just watching (on someone else’s telly) that fugly bint that did lara croft and one of our saddo slaphead politicians, apparently they are campaigning to end rape (of wimminz only of course) during war, so people and their homes being blown to shit and sprayed all over the neighbourhood, and UXB cluster bombs and landmines all over the land, and agent orange and depleted uranium in the food chain is all fucking fine, just so long as no fucking wimminz are raped.
Fucking clueless doesn’t even begin to describe these assholes.
Comment by wimminz — June 12, 2014 @ 6:48 pm
Angelina Jolie(fugly Lara Croft bint) is making my skin crawl, cannot even fap to that anymore.
Comment by hans — June 12, 2014 @ 10:49 pm
Watched the Sherlock pilot again. It´s just like Holmes and the Killer remark, people just DON´T think.
They behave like unconscious skinner box subjects on two legs.
Why? Because they CAN.
Once the “spice stops flowing”, alarm CLARIONS will star bleating and shit will go down. I simply dare not predict in what way.
Comment by hans — June 12, 2014 @ 11:32 pm
Two choices for a modern vehicle I’m considering:
Car: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honda_Fit Sips gas, fairly reliable, cheap, plenty of cargo room
Bike: http://www.suzukicycles.com/Product%20Lines/Cycles/Products/TU250X/2015/TU250X.aspx ~80mpg, fairly cheap
Comment by freeman — June 12, 2014 @ 8:59 pm
Personally I wouldn’t touch the honda, buy this instead
https://www.dacia.co.uk/vehicles/sandero/
tu250 is fine, if you want a bit more oomph or want to avoid a chain, suzi savage 650 single
proper review of the sandero
http://www.autocar.co.uk/car-review/dacia/sandero
Comment by wimminz — June 12, 2014 @ 9:50 pm
Unfortunately, we don’t have Dacias in the states. Other similar options would be Ford Fiesta, Scion (Toyota) xD, Toyota Matrix, Suzuki SX4, Nissan Versa
Comment by freeman — June 12, 2014 @ 10:11 pm
http://kia-cpo.com/Vehicle/KNADH4A32B6915150/2011Rio.aspx
Comment by wimminz — June 12, 2014 @ 10:18 pm
ot: dysgenic reactions
“Michael A. Woodley, Jan te Nijenhuis, and Raegan Murphy respond (in detail) to critics of their 2013 paper on the dysgenic implications of Galton’s reaction time data. Their adjusted evidence indicates an increase in reaction times among US/UK males over the period 1889-2004 from 187.1 ms to 237.1 ms (44.6 ms over 115 years), equivalent to a decline in g of 13.9 points, or 1.21 points per decade.”
if true, it certainly would explain a few things about the looming idiocracy.
Comment by village idiot — June 12, 2014 @ 10:37 pm
Interesting lab result data. Of course we know nothing of the studies methodology.
For example how many of the subjects were on “legal” prescribed psychotropic drugs or even just constantly imbibing fluoride laced water.
Comment by hans — June 12, 2014 @ 10:57 pm
The definition of English male has changed during that period. It now also includes ethnic Pakis, Indians, Africans, etc.
Comment by freeman — June 13, 2014 @ 12:11 pm
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-06-12/new-jersey-threatens-pull-teen-home-non-conforming-behavior
Straight out of gulag archipelago
Comment by freeman — June 13, 2014 @ 12:15 pm
Speaking of energy and performance, the Le Mans 24hour endurance race starts tomorrow. It is being streamed for free by NISMO tv: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SjORIV9EGso
Yea, it is highly regulated, but not compared to other modern racing series.
Comment by freeman — June 13, 2014 @ 5:24 pm
One of my buddy’s pointed something out to me; that “Broken Roads” isn’t about the future – it’s about today’s society. Gen X, Millenial, Boomer, and (in the next book) the Silents – ones like yourself that see the writing on the wall.
That whole stall-speed thing is exactly what Raxx is talking about in the first book, only he doesn’t realize it yet. Think I’m going to write a scene in the sequel where he figures out precisely that, while dealing with one of the many bullshit problems that I’ve run into with the various POSs I’ve driven.
In other news, I get great gas mileage because my stinkmobile’s clutch ain’t so happy, so I seldom peak the RPMs over 3000.
Comment by Aurini — June 13, 2014 @ 6:00 pm
Good, while it was an enjoyable read, it left me a bit like the prison books with the last ten pages torn out (after a while you learn to turn to the back to make sure they are there, first) … too many loose ends…. Get writing man..lol
I used to teach people to drive, when they asked, nowadays I refuse… one of the first lessons was don’t touch the accelerator at all, just use gears and brakes and clutch and steering, it’s amazing how easy it is to progress to top gear, even on moderate inclines… the second trick was a shoelace on the throttle body linkage so you couldn’t get more than 10% throttle opening, you could go on the roads with that, and still not hold up trucks.
Unless you’re racing, no car made since 1980 ever *needs* to go over 2,500 RPM, and they will *all* thank you handsomely in the pocket from less tyre / brake / drivetrain wear and tear, and *significantly* better gas mileage.
Optimal tyre pressures are key to good gas mileage, optimal being the high end of whatever range the manufacturer gives, that and tracking and toe etc, and of course check you brakes ain’t grabbing, not even a little.
Engines will thank you for being made to work hard from low to medium RPM for 60 seconds at a time, rather than being revved to death or coasted under no load…
I always adjust my tickover RPM right down too, provided there is oil pressure, it’s good to go…. cutting from a factory 750 to a stable 500 rpm tickover is a 30% reduction in fuel consumption at tickover, and if you are an urban driver, that adds up real fast.
Binning belt driven accessories off the motor makes an amazing difference too, so electric temp controlled radiator fans instead of running off the engine, wind the windows down instead of using a/c, and don’t forget clean air filters and minimal exhaust restrictions.
Comment by wimminz — June 13, 2014 @ 6:51 pm
My first motorbike made about 5hp. It went fast enough to get yourself killed if you weren’t careful, which was fast enough for me.
My last motorbike was a CB750. I only had it a couple of months before I sold it on. It was too heavy for me to lift. I won’t ride a bike I can’t lift.
Nowadays I ride one speed push bikes, mostly fixed wheel. I can make better than 200 watts for extended periods. Peak over 1000. Working on getting back to near the range I had when I was racing, but even now only a few in my area riding carbon fiber zoot scoots can come anywhere near me on my high tensile steel, Edwardian rig.
The only real downside I find in not having a mobile bordello is that it makes it harder to make the rabbit rifle unobtrusive.
My kitchen is all LED lighting and I’m working on the rest. I started with them in the 90’s when I was working on some optical data acqusition hardware and had the shit lying around on the workbench, so, what the hell, make some lamps and shit.
Comment by kfg — June 14, 2014 @ 4:25 am