Science/Engineering/Technical forums

And probably certified. We were out the other day and happened to stop by our favorite auto store, and well....I did it again. I'm now the owner of a new Cruze, and really liking it so far.
40+ mpg highway, but fast, silent, comfortable and quite modern. 1.4 L turbocharged engine, DOHC, 4v/cylinder, kind of a mini hot rod, but with the luxury and appointments you could barely get for any money a decade back Got mine fairly loaded for the very low 20's, so not bad there either. The back quarter of the piece of junk huge 15 passenger van I traded for it is showing on the left, and yup, I already have a Camaro. This is almost precisely what I've been ragging on GM to make for some time now -- 1/2 a Camaro (and priced accordingly). So why did I sell my nice Buick for a couple K and then buy this for ten times that? Like I said, certifiable on any given day, but the kicker is this:

I've been bugging these guys to get me a Volt, for which I have plans of integration into the house solar system - it would be ideal on a number of levels - a much bigger and cheaper battery with a real warranty, a backup generator that can drive for its own gas, and so on. Well, in this market, Volts are going to be quite a long wait - maybe a year. And with the Camaro being my best gas milage car -- well, good as it is, 22 mpg ain't that great, and frankly, you have to be in the mood to enjoy strapping on an air superiority fighter to go out and play with ....Piper cubs (new V8 Mustangs or new Dodge hemis) or paper airplanes (everything else). So far the one car that shows any chance of catching the Camaro (with license plates) has been a turbo v10 Dodge Viper, but he was still a good few lengths back in a run from 60 to 180 mph.

And the kicker is -- they are guaranteeing if I don't wreck this car, they'll take it back for that Volt at a very very good trade-in price. So I get an econo to drive in the meanwhile at very low cost, considerably less than a lease would be, total out of pocket. And then I'll get my Volt....whenever, too hook to the house and give me a use for my excess (!) solar power on those days, and a way to recharge the house when those other days and weeks happen.

This is a luxury car all the way -- silent at 90 mph and you don't even know you're hauling till you look at the speedo. This is not related to a Vega in any way...different planet.

If you get a chance, drive one -- you'll be shocked by now nice it is, far above the Japanese cars in the same class, just no comparison. Drives like butter and has a sporty side indeed. Chirps the tires nicely on manual shifts of the 6 speed auto trans, runs on cheapo regular (no pings even at max boost). Stereo kicks, (3 speed heated) leather seats, all that nifty stuff.

Sigh, that's going to hurt my finances slightly, but I really needed to get out more, and this makes it cheap and automatic. It's really fun to drive, and I finally caught a clue bat on what color to get for where I live -- dust....

Kinda fun to rod around in a car that has less displacement than my lawn tractor, but still flies. (anyone know how big a Model T was?) And boy, does this thing ever coast well -- around here with a car like this you can often go 5-8 miles without using the engine at all (but you need one going the other way!). To do that, you need a car that corners, no road here is straight for even 1/8 mile...and this one does fine.

'no road here is straight for even 1/8 mile...and this one does fine.' - over here it is about 100 yds and on Rathlin Island one should sound the horn when leaving a pot-hole -- congrats Doug - have fun.

Thanks John, I'm surely enjoying it. What's great for me is I live in this maze more or less -- things are hard to find around here, and the nav system in there is really quite decent -- these things used to send one down roads that "no longer exist" and so forth, but I've been testing it and it's accurate to within a few yards, and gives good routes -- neither the shortest or the easiest, but the same ones you'd select after trying a few and making the tradeoffs yourself. For example, on a trip I commonly make (to the nearest town for groceries and gas) I have more or less 3 choices. Two are "easy" (if you know where the blind/no landmark turns are) and one is a "shortcut" that involves a very hard road to drive on (gravel, super twisty). It picks the shorter of the easy ways, which is what I do myself -- the one that's easiest on the car and the people. Maybe luck, but it's nice.

The thing seems to be getting really good mileage even with the very thick break-in oil they put in it, so I have high hopes there. The one lack is that it acts like GM says - a car with two engines. Most of the time you're running on the econo one, only a few squirrels running in the cage. When you ask for more, it's as though another group of squirrels gets a page, wakes up, drinks a cup of coffee, and then starts running -- once they do, performance is reasonably impressive, you can't keep your foot in it long at that point. But the process takes about 2 seconds, which makes it a dog trying to turn across traffic when the "holes" aren't so large. Those first two car-lengths from a dead stop are on the slow side, but then it takes off like a rocket.

Remember, my other car is ~1 hp per 8 lbs, so when I say this one is decently fast, I'm not blowing smoke -- it really is once it gets going and into the torque band, which the 6 speed tranny (plus two speed torque converter) keeps it right in the middle of. Not like the hot rod, but real good regardless, you don't get the feeling of a big limitation at all - it's about like a large-engine luxury car in that regard.

In fact, that's what I'd call this thing -- a luxury car, just a down sized one (price too), which for me, is just right. I could easily put a demo fusor setup in the cargo space, so that's enough too. We just tried it with our month's grocery shopping and the trunk was actually too large to keep the stuff from rolling around in there -- I will have to add a net or something.
Some one is finally "getting it". People don't just buy small cars because they are cheap, and have low expectations. Sometimes you just want a small car. That doesn't mean you don't want luxury along for the ride, and this delivers that much better than Toyota or Honda in the same price range and size.

If I were a Japanese car maker, I'd be getting worried about now. Looks like Ford is on a good track too. I'm not a Ford guy (it's amazing how loyal most are in this country to one marque or another. and I'm as guilty as anyone) but I really like their CEO and wish we had him here to run our show -- Alan Mulaly is a hero. Chrysler and Fiat are probably going to continue on their roads to self destruction. Mercedes was smart to dump them and cut their losses.

Anyone who saw the three USA CEO's testifying in congress knows. The GM guy didn't understand -- just clueless (he's gone now). The Chrysler guy offered to quit and just kinda tossed up his hands -- no clue what to do next. Alan looked and acted like the single person in the room with an IQ above room temperature, and a plan, which he drove home relentlessly. We need him as president! Probably too smart to take the job though.

To be 'simple' about it, Doug, you are experiencing the way cars started going in Europe about 25 years ago. Mid 80's, the European trend in performance cars was downsize with high specific output, preferably turbo charged. As we [here] all found out then, a big turbo on a small car makes for a 'variable' transmission quality. Since then plenty new technology improvements have come along over here, variable geometry turbos (mainly driven by diesel engines) and variable inlet timing/geometry.

Fortunately, you are now benefitting from these technological developments, but there is no getting away from the fact that to get smooth power you need big engines. If you want race performance from a little engine, odd power-maps are inevitable!

Interestingly, though the Cruze has been selling here in Europe since 2008, it is only supplied with 1.8 or 2.0 litre 'standard' engines. Interesting that GM decided to launch a smaller engine than the equivalent European model. I don't think we even have that engine in our market yet.

Sometime soon, your legislature might even get around to allowing european style diesels - and now that we are up to torque outputs like >300lbft from a sub 2 litre diesel at 2,000rpm {yes, those figures are right!!} you guys might be in for a bit of a shock at how far diesel tech has actually got to these days.

Yes, you're right about all that. I think they could have done a bit more with the torque converter (more slip when unlocked) and a faster dashpot on the turbo waste-gate, but maybe those things will loosen up (or other parts become available -- you can already get a computer tuner for these that lets you play with tuning). I was surprised to find (after I bought the thing) that there's a whole set of aficionados who race them and make aftermarket parts as well. I might get the slightly stiffer rear suspension parts for it...

It seems the narrow torque band is something that tends to come along with any high performance engine too -- even the naturally aspirated Camaro LS3 engine has this "feature" in spades, and is very unlike the old Chevy small block which had a lot of bottom end grunt and not a lot of room on the tach at the other end. It's tuned like a NASCAR racer, more like (7k+ rpm redline).

You can even accidentally stall it if you let out the clutch a little quick without a lot of revs - embarrassing in a hot rod. Both engines seem to be using some pretty sophisticated acoustic tuning in the manifolds as well to get over 100% volumetric efficiency in a band, which is quite a trick to get in a wide band. It's kind of fun looking at the "warts" on the Camaro intake and actually knowing why they are there, just like the zeros in a Chebyschev filter. Since I once was an audiophool, I'd read all the books on things like that, Beranek's Acoustics being the prime one.

I'm at a bit of a loss as to why with variable cam timing (on both sides in the Cruze) you can't do pretty well at the low end as well, at least as regards torque -- maybe the compression is too high to do that with "regular" gas. I think they overshot on the low stall speed of the torque converter in this one, and that with a stick shift, that would go away entirely. But owning one of those is enough (more than enough if you ever get caught in bummer to bumper traffic), sometimes it's nice to just have the car drive itself.

I think this countries emissions regulations missed the boat utterly, being based on Los Angeles -- a city built in the stupidest possible place, where thermal inversions are the norm. They really limit NOx emissions, which you always have with a hot burn and high compression -- the very thing that makes an IC engine efficient. As a farmer/gardener, I think chemically fixed nitrogen falling out of the sky is a pretty nice thing, but in LA, it's another story. Seems to me you'd more than overcome that by the fact that you burn less gas in a more efficient engine, but here we like 'em big, so more efficiency usually translates to more power in the same size engine, rather than burning less net fuel.

Diesel is not as popular here (though Bill drives a turbo diesel large truck and it's nice) because our fuel taxes, while far lower than yours, are really far higher on diesel fuel, so it's more expensive than even high octane gasoline. The rationale is that it's mostly burned in tractor trailers, and that the tax is for road work, and there's no doubt those big guys do the most road damage. Even the new ones tend to stink a little bit, and of course they are much harder to start in -10F (-23C) weather than a gas engine. And we do get that sort of thing here, as well as 110F (43C) - a couple weeks of both a year.

What is funny is that most gas stations have 3 grades of gasoline, and a more or less fixed price differential between the grades of octane. With the rise in overall prices, that differential is now in the noise, and you're actually better off in a car that demands high octane now (because of the better thermodynamics with high compression) -- that's a new thing for us.

However, a fellow who lives nearby has converted all the cars in the commune he lives in to small diesels (mostly no turbo) and makes his own bio-diesel to fuel them. That's the best of all worlds, as long as the tax man doesn't catch you (he now knows where to buy the special dye that marks the fuel as taxed ). You don't do well going down the road smelling like french fries (chips?) and hamburgers, which is where most of their feedstock is currently coming from. They are playing with that algae, but I've heard no results yet on that. The fast food restaurants have caught on and now charge for their waste grease, but its still reasonable - if you can find them that haven't already made a deal with someone else for it.

It looks like the newest thing is going to be direct injection even for gasoline engines, much like diesel is normally. That will be nice, and allow much broader computer tuning and fuel variations without loss of performance, I think - and with a controlled flow-burn, you could get away with a lot less octane for a given compression (same as diesel). With that, you could use LNG or propane too, and avoid the effective displacement loss due to the fuel basically being a gas and taking up too much room. Turns out that recently we've found huge (really huge) amounts of nat gas in the US, and have a way to get it -- called hydro-fracturing, or frakking for short. But the usual "not in my backyard" folks are all turned out against it, fearing things like ground water contamination - most of the US outside cities doesn't have government supplied water, but is on wells dug by the property owner. It's probably not the threat they fear, due to the differences in depth, but...that's always been a hot button. The truth is there's a lot of well water that isn't so great already and a lot of people see easy money in a lawsuit -- the bane of this country and some others. For example, any blasting needed for highway construction brings lawsuits from everywhere nearby, claiming it messed up their wells -- many of which never were good, but now we have a way to "make someone else pay".

Going forward, I don't see any realistic competition from things that have to carry their own oxidizer (batteries of most types). For me, the Volt is a special case, as that's one heck of a lot of KWH worth, and any vehicle I own spends lots of time sitting in the driveway -- so integrating it into the solar system makes a lot of sense. I have solar energy to spare for 3 of the four seasons, so I could drive it "free", and use it's battery to have more fudge in the house system as well. In winter, it's a rolling backup generator with a large capacity for fuel that can drive itself to get more, a big improvement over dealing with hauling semi leaky plastic gasoline cans, keeping them out of the sun, and keeping water out of the gas.

Just for interest (and to make the point!!) I owned a Kawasaki KR-1S motorbike for several years (before, unfortunately, having to sell it when I took a sabbatical in Australia).
This was a track racking bike with a number plate. It produced 65bhp from its 250cc engine, and weighed in at 105kg.

Now, over 250bhp per litre from a normally aspirated engine is quite some. It had [/needed!] nickasil bores to help with thermal conduction. Like most high power two strokes, it came with a variable valve induction system. Now, one of the issues for two strokes is that as the timing changes over the rev range at some speeds you get the induction charge coming back out of the engine. This is a problem because it means that [some of the] induction charge passes through the carb not one but three times, thereby causing it to go over-rich. For the road, the usual solution was to put a valve in to stop this happening. Yamaha had the 'power valve' which altered the effective height of the intake port as the engine speed changed. Rotax and a few others used reed valves, which were poular because they were cheap and reasonably effective. Of course, you get nothing for nothing and putting these in reduced the absolute volumetric efficiencies.

So for out-and-out mental race bikes, forget the valve, just keep the bike running at the optimum speed it was designed for. And my KR1-S - yeah, you guessed, no valve.

The outcome was a fiendish bike that required total mental concentration. If you got it at the wrong engine speed at the wrong moment, it'd chew you up, spit you off, and laugh at you. When the gearbox was cold, dropping it into gear (clutch disengaged - but a little oil drag) would stall the engine. You had to hold high revs just to select gear 1! Revs at 2 to 4,000 or so to pull off, no real problem - no weight to speak of. Acel and get to 5,000..oh dear, where's the power going...5,500 ... flat spot...almost no acel. If you get caught at that engine speed, forget it - slow down again or dip and slip the clutch to get the revs up. OK, now we are over 6,500 and it's accelerating OK..7..8..er... where's the power gone? Not quite a flat spot but you either spin it through to 8,500 quick where the KIPS valves cut in, or change gear and get the sub 5.5k torque again. Through 8,500..ah! now it feels like it's accelerating... 9.. 9,200 yikes... how come its just accelerated to 10..11...sheeeiitteee....Did I do that!?! What happened?!.if you weren't expecting that power band from 9.5 then you might've ended up at a place not of your intention!!!

So, the secret of riding fast - keep it between 9 and 10k. Get the wrong gear or drop the engine speed by 10%, remember you may not have the power to hold that corner-tilt! Mental... totally mental...

I usually prepared myself metally for riding it for a couple of hours beforehand. Once day, my car threw a wobbly and I was forced to take the bike, unexpectedly. By the time I got to work I needed another hour to calm down and get over the unplanned ride on it!!

Oh, I forgot to mention how sensitive and unforgiving the ride was. Pick the wrong moment to turn into a bend, a bit too early, a bit too late, yeah, you guess, it'd chew you up, spit you off, and laugh at you. Actually, I never dropped the bike in the 10 years I had it - all things considered probably down to luck rather than skill, because I knew after 10 years of riding it I was still not really its 'master'. The whole power delivery was too complex to properly get skilled at for all the permutations of conditions and road layouts you might find on the road. It was a track bike. It was as unsuited for the road as a lion is for a pet - wrong place for it!

Anyhows, that's my tale of flat spots and power bands from a small engine!

Oh, just a 'PS'; I used to average around 45mpg with it. I once pushed it along country roads as fast I dared on a reasonably long journey lacking main roads...and managed to return just under 19mpg. From a 250cc engined 100kg bike! That's how much fuel it could burn!!

A real hot rod, that. I played with a 350cc two stroke a bit (and yes, it was a screamer), but I preferred 4 strokes for most things. After trying various bikes I wound up with a 650cc twin Yamaha, which I truly loved. It was about as fast as the Camaro on a straight line, at least from 0-100, after which I got nervous. Of course, no bike can actually corner as well as a car before pegs scrape. I had two of them, one for parts, which was good as the first one got run over by a drunk just after I dropped it against a bank and got off....the drunk was a friend of mine, we tossed it on the back of the truck and put together another one from the set of parts. Rode it for a couple of years -- lots of fun, but around here there are some pretty serious road hazards, to include drunks, but worse, old folks who recently had their meds kick in. They drive in the middle or worse, and don't seem to notice even a loud bike with a headlight or think to move over. As a result I got some serious injuries on my right shoulder from whacking fenceposts and barbed wire after being run off the road....and while I still keep the bike endorsement on my license, I don't do bikes anymore, I've become aware I'm mortal!

The Yamaha was fairly well behaved in power curve -- more conservative, and weighed about 550 pounds, rode nice, very intuitive. I lifted it once -- my wife didn't get off quick enough when we got run over, and I had to toss the bike off of her....amazing how strong you can be in an emergency. But I paid later in a lot of pain once the adrenaline wore off.

I liked that one best though. I'd had a big 4 cylinder Honda as well, but my feet didn't reach the ground too well, and it was a real bear to right if you dropped it, which I did a couple of times. Embarrassing to have to go for help in that situation!

Of course here in US, there's a large class of people who think that only a Harley is a real bike, and I took some "stuff" for driving a rice-burner. So be it. I found that the first question the insurance guys asked was "is it a Harley" -- because they didn't want to insure them due to the reputation of many of the people who rode them. I never saw the attraction, myself, though I did hang with the crowd some -- we were the official rock band to the Pagan bike gang for awhile (a nice gig). Now, my pal Frankie Dalton rode a BMW, and no one ever gave him any "stuff" about it as at least it wasn't Japanese....and maybe because he's 6'6" and 350 lbs of muscle. A good guy to go drinking with, because you could run your mouth, and if anyone got offended and wanted a fight, Frankie would stand up -- and everyone else in the bar suddenly felt the need to sit down.

I also had an FJ1200, with some additional 'delimiting' on it so that it was around 150bhp. OK, so bikes these days are even more powerful than that, but as per the discussion on big versus small above, this was the opposite of the KR1-S - an enormous wodge of torque compared with most bikes. A very strange pair of bikes to own. Very different. (Also has a 1 cyl DT250 trail bike - a two stroke with thumping low torque. Very different again.)

Actually, I considered the FJ fairly dangerous. It would go from 80mph to 130mph in around 4 seconds and, in all seriousness, you just couldn't tell how fast it was accelerating at those sorts of speeds, the world gets a bit surreal with that much power/torque in a bike and it flies by more like a video game. It was a one-previous-owner bike, the previous being the RMPS (Royal Metropolitan Police Force - not sure they are called 'Royal' any more?!!). I did get stopped once on it, I 'undertook' an unmarked police car. He claimed he was doing 100mph at the time. I said I was just filtering through traffic! Oops. I still wonder to this day whether getting only a 'caution' was in part because of the previous owner, the details of which pop up on their database. I swear I never went over 170mph on it, though. My concern over the speed rating of the tyres stopped me going 'too' fast.

I have been eyeing up some of the post-2008 BMW diesels recently (as a 2nd hand purchase). I've been driving the cars I've got for a long time now - there was a time when they were not too old, now they are just plain old! So, getting to thinking about smartening up my drive and shedding the rusting metal.

The post 2008 5-class BMW diesels [looking at an estate - family needs, and all that] are borderline on my affordability scale [read- debt scale!], so I think I will ponder such a purchase until a later date. No need to rush, current wheels work fine. Nonetheless, I am maintaining a watchful brief on the nearly-new and fresh tech that is coming from some of these companies. 2008 marked a distinct improvement in both economy and performance for the 5 series, hence focus on that age of motor.

I've just been taking a look at the latest figures for the current 5 series. I could not help think of this thread.

OK, so the point of this post is just to link you US chaps to the page with the data on I want you to see;

http://bmw.co.uk/bmwuk/pricesandspecifi ... pec&isPGA=

You will note this is a full-sized 'station wagon' that does 56 mpg on the highway yet produces 313bhp and 600 Nm * and hits 62 mph in 5.7 seconds.

*[600Nm is 450 lb.ft. Actually, the previous model, that 'only' had 300bhp, had a bit more, a sniff under 500lb.ft torque.]

As I suggested above, once the US gets into diesel passenger cars, it is in for a shock as to how far the Europeans have been pushing the technology.

Did you see the release of their new electric and hybrids? Protos at a sales event, but they sure made me drool -- and 0-60 times well sub 5 sec. Wonder how the carbon fiber and aluminum chassis do in a wreck, and they're very light, but sure are sexy. Their hybrid hot rod has electric driving one and and the engine driving the other end -- 4wd.

On the other hand, speed ain't everything. The Cruze is pretty quick, just jumps up these steep hills at speed or accelerating, but that long time to "switch engines" into power mode is real annoying if you have to turn through traffic from a stop. And, there seems to be no way to torque brake it or somehow get revs up before you go - computer keeps you from revving in neutral then jamming into gear, and the "manual" shift only gives you forward gears, no neutral in that mode. Torque converter too low a lockup for good starting behavior. So after taking what seems like forever to go two car lengths -- it spins the tires freely and you find yourself backing off, not a smooth thing. Diesels would be no better. This car was made to run stop signs in....so you don't have that excruciating pause from a stop.

We'll never have uptake on diesels here while taxes make the fuel cost more than racing gasoline. BillF has one, it's nice, but....There must be something wrong with them, as you see people just leave them running at the convenience store rather than shut them off and restart them. I've always wondered about why they do that, but it's rampant. And it makes the entire parking lot stink to high heaven as well. Pretty hard to sell that combo as "green" when you can put your face right in the exhaust of the Cruze or the Camaro and not smell anything at all (even though it's probably just as bad re pollution). I do note the newer ones at least don't spew 100 cu ft of black smoke on takeoff anymore.

These aren't quite like the beemers I saw at the show, but close enough:
http://www.topspeed.com/cars/bmw/2013-b ... 99499.html