A64Pilot

The new Diesels you DON’T want to idle them anymore than you have to. The reason is the Diesel Particulate filter, it “regenerates” that means it gets stupid hot like a catalytic convertor and burns off the soot that it filters, it can do this one of two ways, Passively when your under a significant load it gets hot enough to stay clean, and actively when the restriction gets high enough raw fuel is injected into the exhaust by a couple of different means when the raw fuel hits the DOC or Diesel Oxidation Catalyst mounted just ahead of the DPF it’s gets very hot, hot enough to hopefully burn the filter clean, but they often fail, I’ve been told your lucky to get 80,000 miles from a DPF, don’t know about the DOC So if you can avoid active regeneration your better off and hopefully the DOC and DPE will last longer, so you want the exh hot and anyone that has Diesels knows that at idle the exh temp is very low because the engine is pumping a full amount of air as there is no throttle. Some Diesels can do a “parked regen” which is driver initiated and you try to burn off the filter when parked. I’ve been told to make sure nothing flammable is near the exhaust when you do this, but I don’t know if mine can do a parked regen or why you would want to. On my Motorhome this DOC and DPE are Huge honestly probably 10” around and maybe a foot long, they are part of the exhaust system of course. I crank my Motorhome in the hangar with the door closed and he’s right, you don’t smell the thing at all, and it never smokes, the smoke is of course soot and that’s filtered out. The magic of Common Rail makes them quiet. Many years ago I had a series of Merc Diesels starting with the little 220 and the last one was a 300SD, Mercedes has a very long history with Diesels, after all Rudolph was German. But in WWII all their tanks etc were gas, only the Russians ran Diesels, and yet Russia gets stupid cold? Always wondered about that.

Diesels aren’t nearly as attractive as they used to be, back when I had my Golf it costs about half as much to drive as a gas car, first it got nearly 50 MPG and gas cars in the 80’s didn’t get good mileage and didn’t last like they do now, but at least as important fuel was much cheaper than gas. ‘I have always had a fun car and one that’s cheap to drive Now due to ULSD fuel is $1 a gallon more than gas and where they used to be reliability kings due to the emission controls they aren’t anymore. I just bought a used Diesel pusher Motorhome due to a good price, but I’m thinking seriously about selling due to the emissions problems, and the fixes cost thousands not hundreds to fix. EGR cooler for mine is about $2K and the Diesel particulate filter is about $2K, then of course there is installation costs. If the EGR cooler fails it could hydrolock the engine which now of course we are talking tens of thousands to replace

All the above is correct plus the car will use or lose if you will approximately 1% of charge even on a warm day if you don’t turn off the security feature. This has caught people who didn’t read the manual and parked at the airport with say a very low charge and left for vacation. Now the car turns off the security feature when it hits 20% SOC. But no battery that I know of doesn’t lose capacity in stupid cold. People that won’t drive their gas car with the low fuel light on will drive a Tesla down to almost zero for some reason. I think it’s the digital thing, people will run a battery down less than 10% and not worry but would never run the gas tank down to 1/10, can you even see 1/10? Ever owned a Diesel? An EV is similar to a Diesel in cold Wx, it’s best for both to be plugged in a couple of hours before you drive if it’s stupid cold and a 110V plug is enough, but so long as you don’t park the car with a stupid low as in less than 10% battery you will be OK. In the 80’s in Central Tx it got stupid cold one year and I had to put a little gasoline in my Diesel Golf’s tank to keep it from gelling. If I didn’t then I would have been stuck on the side of the road and some were of course, because they didn’t read the manual People just need to read the manual there is a learning curve just like there is for a Diesel, these things aren’t new. https://www.tesla.com/ownersmanual/model3/en_us/GUID-F907200E-A619-4A95-A0CF-94E0D03BEBEF.html#:~:text=In the mobile app%2C navigate to Climate > Defrost Car to,high voltage Battery as needed.&text=Tesla recommends activating climate settings,(see Operating Climate Controls).

You know I never understood how before the pandemic I could rent an economy car for $30 a day, but I did it frequently, so I started researching that being Retired and having the time to do so. What I found out was that due to the vast numbers of cars that they bought they get screaming deals that you and I could only dream of, so good are these deals that if they sell the cars when they get one year old or so that they can get what they paid back or even a slight profit depending on how much that vehicle depreciated, Jeeps for instance seem to hold their value. For a couple of reasons reselling an EV you take a greater hit than an ICE car, largely because of the big tax rebates, your 40K car wasn’t really a 40K car it was a 32.5K car and depreciates from 32, not 40K. Then the used buyer doesn’t get the big rebate so they are incentivized to buy new not used. I think these rebates actually hurt buyers in the long run not help them. Maybe better to lease? You can lease a model 3 right now for $400 a month, my payment is almost twice that and it’s a 1.9% loan, of course there is upfront money. I have never leased myself so I really don’t know. I started this EV car experiment with the idea of buying a used Nissan Leaf because before the pandemic you couldn’t give one away, they went cheap like $5000 for one just a few years old with the idea of if the experiment was a bust at least I didn’t lose much, but for some reason used car prices went through the roof even for the Leaf, so I rolled the dice and bought the cheapest Tesla and so far have been pleased. But won’t really know for at least five more years because I think a car ought to last more than ten years and think I’ll have a better idea then if it will than I do now, because I don’t think anyone knows truly. The batteries are changing and when they change I don’t know if the old data is valid or not. Used Leaf’s were cheap due to the rebates, they had terrible range, weren’t performance cars and frankly were cheap cars to begin with and the batteries as they had no active cooling weren’t lasting well but it would have told me if an EV was viable or just Green marketing nonsense.

Well got my insurance quote yesterday and while I don’t remember exactly what it was last year, this year seems to have been about the same, possibly a little less. On another front the news is reporting in Chicago Tesla “graveyards” at Supercharger stations. Who knows, but I suspect it’s not very many and it’s people that wouldn’t read the instructions so to speak, or surely every year there would be “graveyards”?

I tired something new, hope you don’t mind me altering your post, but other than what’s in red I didn’t change any of it. It seems however and I do understand this, but your “beef” doesn’t seem to be against electric vehicles but the Government, for that I don’t have an answer for you, but I concur, but think it goes deeper in truth than most of us know about. As a partial answer I give you this picture and link, it’s crude oil production in the US going back for years, you can see the immediate effect of the “war on oil”, but you can also see it was almost immediately stopped, I think because it was wrecking the economy, I leave it up to you to decide why the cease fire was done, but it does make me wonder why we haven’t heard a peek out of the climate change activist why it is that? we are right now producing more domestic oil than at any time in our history? That’s the conspiracy theorist in me I guess. But why aren’t they protesting like mad? US government link so hopefully a valid one https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=MCRFPUS2&f=M

That’s a red herring and always has been. Such a “report” was done in 07 proving how bad a Prius was for the environment the Dust to Dust report, very long and seemed to be correct, got all the rave reports from the people that for some reason hated the Prius, it was of course pure BS Found it, it was 458 pages a huge amount of work https://www.cnwmr.com/nss-folder/automotiveenergy/DUST PDF VERSION.pdf Anyway those horrible batteries made from slave labor or whatever will be recycled, why? simply because they can be and when there are enough of them to make money they will be. Read this written by Elon Musk written my God has it been 18 years ago? Of course you can believe he’s stupid and doesn’t know what he’s talking about, he’s been working the EV “thing” for about 20 years now. https://www.tesla.com/blog/secret-tesla-motors-master-plan-just-between-you-and-me

I was able to watch most of it, it froze up when the guy started talking about the environment. Normally I’d cry BS, but the Chinese have a history of this kind of behavior, they apparently have entire empty cities from some kind of real estate fraud deal Since we are doing videos watch this one, hundreds of Billions of dollars of waste, I know China has unimaginable wealth but can they continue to survive with this much waste? I try to link to believable sites, this is Wall Street Journal Google China’s ghost cities, it’s not just one. ‘Maybe they should put those cars and bicycles in the Ghost Cities?

I believe inductive charging is also inefficient. https://batteryuniversity.com/article/bu-412-charging-without-wires#:~:text=Adding the losses of the,is only 75–80 percent. But these busses and the school busses etc that are out there are I believe at best Kludges, by that I mean most are pretty much not any more evolved than what a good backyard mechanic can build, take a Diesel School bus, pull the motor source a rear axle drive motor from God knows where, a huge amount of batteries and other mostly off the shelf components and there you go. What do you think these things odds of success long term are? The first Tesla’s had many problems it’s the way anything new is, Tesla has been working the bugs out of their Truck for years and is now running a small fleet I’m sure to work out more bugs. Most EV’s I think could be placed into this category, with anything new there is a learning curve, the more of a hurry you are in and the more push there is about launching the new vehicle soon, the more likely it is that there will be problems, some not so minor.

A few statements if you don’t mind. For day to day driving you should only charge to 80%, this according to Tesla not me, but I understand why and concur As a general rule every 10% less than 100 you charge a Li-ion battery doubles its cycle life, of course there is a point of diminishing returns. So again according to Tesla you should only charge to 100% if needed for trips. What this means is of course a prudent shopper shouldn’t take the claimed range at face value but reduce it to 80% and I’d go even further and reduce it to 50% just for unplanned side trips or whatever and using the AC or heat to pre-condition the car, and just because I’m risk adverse, so in my opinion if 50% range won’t cover your day to day driving and work charging isn’t a thing perhaps a Tesla is not a good choice for you. I would go further and say that if you don’t own a home where you can install a charger that a Tesla may not be a good choice. No proof that Supercharging reduces battery life, but it’s pretty accepted that rapid charging a Li-ion does, and besides it’s roughly twice as expensive as home charging, so I almost never Supercharge, only for trips. In our experience not having to stop for gas a couple times a week more than makes up for the charge time you spend when traveling, only you can decide that though. I’ve met more than a couple of people that have Tesla’s that came with free Supercharging that as Retired people they do extensive traveling because the charging is free, some have hundreds of thousands of miles in their cars and they aren’t dead yet, so who knows. The only real high mileage cars I know of are / were in S California and shuttled people from one airport to another and racked up as much as 17,000 miles a month, called Tesloop. Their cars were the earlier Tesla’s Model S and X but seemed to hold up. https://www.autoweek.com/news/green-cars/a2155251/how-do-300k-mile-teslas-hold-ev-fleet-operator-has-some-interesting-data/ So of course no one vehicle is best for everyone, I used to need a Dually, but most don’t, and I don’t anymore. But I do miss the BAT, kids name for it. If navigating to a Supercharger almost always even in Summer the car will pre-condition the battery, the only exception that I’ve seen is if the charge level is too low to support pre-conditioning. It pops up a message that tells you it’s pre-conditioning and if you listen you can hear the heat pump increase speed. The heat pump is used to keep the battery at optimum temps regardless of OAT and not that I have experienced it but just like a Hybrid range drops in cold Wx, in severe cold probably by a lot. Often in Hot Summer Fl Wx 5 min or so into Supercharging you will hear the heat pump ramp up higher than you ever hear it driving, I assume it’s cooling the battery then because rapid charging creates a lot of heat. I can’t find the size of the heat pump but I think it’s large, my guess is maybe over 5 tons as it heats and or cools everything, car, battery, drive train, computers etc. The car drips water from three places in hot humid Fl. If just driving around the car does not calculate when you need to divert to a charger, that’s on you. However if you simply tell the car where you are going, usually only need the business name it will calculate the amount of battery required to get there and you can make multiple nav points or round trip, if needed it will direct you to a Supercharger. So if it’s a question simply push the button on the right side of the steering wheel and say go to xx, it uses the internet to find your destination. If you get into the Boonies charging stations are few and far in between. I feel certain for example if you live in Montana that a Tesla would not be a good car to have for example or any other sparsely populated area, surely they are best near populated areas and if traveling on the Interstate if anything there is an excess of chargers, back roads in small towns? Most probably not, in fact in Rural Alabama you had to pay attention. It’s a little like flying, surely we all check fuel before we plan a flight and not just head out with the plan of I’ll stop when the low fuel light comes on. If you adopt the airplane attitude and think about fuel in your Tesla before you head out you will be fine and or find out if your destination is feasible, I’m sure many are not. My worst case scenario is I’ll charge from a drier plug or maybe an RV park, but I’ve never had to do either.

You raced Clubman too?

I don’t know and there are things with mags that I can’t explain. For instance I believe on my 1946 C-85 the left mag fires only the lower plugs, the right the upper, and they are timed 2 degrees different with the lower plugs firing first. It gives different mag drops between the two mags too. The supposition is the mixture is leaner near the exh valve and that leaner mixtures flame front is slower and the 2 degrees makes up the difference. Point I guess being that even 100 years ago they weren’t stupid and had these motors figured out, nothing in truth is new and we shouldn’t go changing things assuming there won’t be any difference. I’m not inferring you did or anything, just saying as A&P’s we aren’t allowed to not follow the manual, and sometimes there are reasons for things being the way they are that we don’t know about and we could cause unintended consequences if we go mucking about with things. Besides one has to question someone who says a miss on one mag is from mixture and says the carburetor needed to be leaned out? Makes you wonder how he meant to lean the carburetor out? Only way I know is by changing the main jet and or venturi, the screw adjustment just changes low speed (idle) mixture.

Interesting I’ve never wheel barrowed an aircraft or if I did I didn’t know it. I’ve rarely touched down in a three point meaning all three at once when I’ve screwed up though. I did that the other day and it surprised me. I see a lot of the Embry Riddle students landing on three points though, so many it makes me wonder if that’s being taught now? How do you know you are? How do you know the mains are still in the air? Other than seeing a student pushing the nose wheel down resulting in an immediate bounce and a go-around I’ve never seen a “wheel barrow”. I learned in a C-152 and it got beaten into my head that their nose wheel being attached at only the firewall was fragile and it was only to be used for steering on the ground, you were never to land on it, so from the beginning I was taught to land on the mains and to slowly lower the nose just before the elevator couldn’t hold it up anymore. If you don’t land on the mains, aft pressure and go-around. I googled it and came up with this Youtube that seems logical to me and may answer why so many Mooney’s seem to have control issues after landing, where I think a Mooney steers better than most tricycle aircraft, better than either a Piper or a Cessna anyway, especially a Cessna Looking at this picture I think the left main being in the air is maybe more from aileron than elevator though.

We all do especially soon after installing a monitor, it’s normal. But all motors, especially these old designs have a significant amount of variability in them, the matching injectors to even out when they all peak is a band aid way of addressing that, I say band aid because the best way is to blueprint the engine so that all cylinders are identical, but who’s got $50,000 to fix something that arguably isn’t broken, so matching injectors is acceptable $ wise and gives an acceptable result, best bang for the buck. See all of our cylinders aren’t making the same amount of power, some have higher compression that’s a function of combustion chamber volume and some flow better than others, so therefore even if cooling were identical there would be some spread in cyl head temps with the ones making more power running slightly hotter than the others. Heat of course follows power production if all other variables are the same. The issue is how much difference is too much? I’d ask the engine manufacturer for an answer myself, I won’t hazard an answer myself because I think the honest answer is it depends like most things when you try to drill down to specifics. We seemingly accept the differences in EGT as normal, I guess maybe because you can’t do anything about that, but the differences in EGT give a good clue as to the variability between cylinders. I suspect what they show is the differences in compression from one cylinder to the next, because I don’t know what else it could be, assuming ignition system is in good shape of course. it’s not mixture if we are talking about differences at peak. Interestingly the higher the EGT, the lower the compression, and most likely the higher the EGT the lower the power output which is just opposite to what seems to be logical, all this is getting into the weeds because other than noticing it you can’t do anything about it.

Everything reaches a point at which if priced higher profits will go down based on decreased business, perhaps we are reaching that with Aviation insurance? However from my perspective Aircraft insurance hasn’t seemed to outpace the inflation rate for most things say food for instance, but mirror it. From 2018 to 2022, the all-food Consumer Price Index (CPI) rose by a total of 20.4 percent https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/ag-and-food-statistics-charting-the-essentials/food-prices-and-spending/?topicId=1afac93a-444e-4e05-99f3-53217721a8be I pay more than most at my experience level as I’m based off a grass strip, yet when I compare what my aircraft insurance is compared to the Motorhome I just bought, the Airplane is actually less, the Motorhome’s agreed value is 20% less than the Mooney, but priced the same or very close, and that’s with me based on grass, so it would be much better if I was based at a public airport, so Motorhome insurance is it seems way more expensive. I don’t think the biggest part of increased insurance cost is from excessive profit taking, I think a large part of it is from lawsuits and the amount and way lawyers are paid. In short while it seems many on the news are crying for insurance reform I don’t think that’s it, what we need is reform and controls for the excessive number of lawsuits I think and if we had that perhaps that would drive insurance down. I’m sick of the “I got hit by a careless driver and Dan got me 1.5 Million dollars” ads. Just based on the excessive amount of injury lawyer advertising it must be very lucrative to support so much advertising, and of course they advertise they aren’t sueing people, just insurance companies so they don’t hurt anyone just help you. In short I don’t know how much every one else’s has increased but as many of us pay one large bill every year as opposed to monthly we see the big yearly increase as opposed to the smaller gradual monthly increase. It just may be that our insurance rates have been pretty much mirroring the increase in food as an example? Thats a supposition though I’d be interested to hear examples of percentages of insurance increase year over year as I’m new to the aircraft insurance myself.

Most everything you decry is about the Government, not the vehicles, and I’ve agreed over and over, yet that’s ignored. Then most everything quoted negative about them is pure BS, like the guy who spent $200 in a cold day charging his, he was cold sitting in the charging car. Think for a sec, Supercharging is twice as expensive as home charging at 34 c per KWH, so he charged his battery 12 times from full dead to 100% in one day? Why was he cold in the car? Run the heater, he’s plugged into a huge source of power, or it takes 40 hours charging to cross the country etc. it’s all BS and is history repeating itself, the same people made huge claims about how horrible the Prius was, and every bit of that was BS. Has Ford and GM et all made a mess of it? I’d suspect so as I think their sudden love for EV’s was actually a money grab, and you don’t go from zero to full throttle overnight without making a mess Every single thing quoted is BS, Sure Elon employees child slave labor in his battery plant in Nevada, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gigafactory_Nevada and his new Lithium refinery in Texas is raping the earth https://www.tesla.com/blog/tesla-lithium-refinery-groundbreaking. Did you know or do you care that a Tesla is made almost entirely in the US? Yes there is a Chinese factory but those cars aren’t imported into the US, the cheapest Tesla does now use a Chinese battery, because Tesla couldn’t build batteries fast enough. The Model Y, 3, X and S are all produced in Fremont, California, with the Y also produced in Austin, Texas, where Tesla is headquartered. Tesla claims 100% domestic production for all cars it sells in the United States, above the industry's 52% average, according to Cars.com. https://www.detroitnews.com/story/business/autos/2023/06/21/tesla-model-y-most-american-made-car-for-second-year-in-a-row/70326488007/#:~:text=The Model Y%2C 3%2C X,While neither General Motors Co. I doubt the 100% claim, nothing is 100% but whatever it is it’s way above 52%. I agree, I got zero subsidy when we bought ours and don’t think they should be subsidized, but the same people keep ignoring that. But enough about EV’s , I don’t start these thread drifts, I just respond to posts based on ignorance. No one has to like anything, I don’t like SUV’s but at least don’t just spout ignorance, and quote nut job internet links, at least base your dislike on logic and experience.

I’ll find out this year soon I think, don’t remember when my renewal is but Feb maybe? Even if the market stabilizes we still have some inflation with us. Never have understood why even a low rate is considered normal

That’s my understanding as well

It shouldn’t and we as in A&P’s aren’t really supposed to just do things like reconfigure Mag firing on our own. Now if there is some kind of approved data like an STC for an Emag or something then we have to follow it, otherwise it’s supposed to be wired IAW the engine manual. One magneto fires negative and the other positive, meaning that one wears the center electrode and the other the side electrodes. Therefore there is a rotation order you follow for plugs to even the wear and make them last longer. https://www.aopa.org/news-and-media/all-news/2019/september/05/aircraft-maintenance-become-a-spark-plug-guru However I do not think the rotation applies to us with (D) as in single drive mags, I think but am not positive that both of them fire the same polarity. If so rotation won’t hurt of course just won’t help either I don’t have a clue about electronic ignitions

Just curious, is this your hangar as in you own it, or is this rented?

I have to agree with this, an issue with getting modern digital instrumentation is we think it’s dead nuts accurate and we want precision out of a very old design engine. I’ve been guilty myself, chasing high oil temps that weren’t really high temps, but higher than what I wanted, after spending a not insignificant amount of money and lots of time I gave up and of course it wasn’t hurting anything. I think those are stellar temps. Remember for ever it seems aircraft only showed you one heads temp and the gauge wasn’t even really marked very well, but it worked just fine.

Went to breakfast this morning, my trim on T/O and landing is set to the M in the word trim on the indicator. 81J, well above the T/O band. I do have to pull to get her to fly, not hard, maybe 5 to 10 lbs? I have no idea if the indicator on mine is the same as other year aircraft. In flight the trim indicator is set just below the band marked T/O. I can only imagine if I set mine in the middle of the band marked T/O that it would require a substantial pull to get it to fly. Foreflight says my CG is at 48.5” full fuel both seats occupied with not small people and 100 lbs in baggage and 5 lbs on the hat rack.

I like the idea of a sleeping bag. God forbid you have to put one down, but if you did a sleeping bag could come in handy. Come from being Military then I always carried a DiDi Mau bag in the cockpit, Backcountry flying some even recreated survival vests with some kind of fishing vest, probably a bit over the top for GA flying though.

Have you flown a 210? You do have to respect the gear and take care of it, but it’s not hard or expensive. Only money we put into it was when my Brother detonated the engine to death, but you can do that in anything. It was a NA 210, non turbo. Orders of magnitude more room in the front seats, two big guys sit in front and shoulders don’t touch. I own a Mooney and have owned a 210, room and hauling cargo wise there is no comparison. I don’t understand the way these things are measured but a Bo has a little more room than a Mooney and a 210 more than a Bo. Currently the Mooney fits my mission better, Retired and just the Wife but when the kids got bigger the 210 was nice. I would remove the middle row of seats and put the kids in back and put large ice boxes full of ice and food etc in the middle. A 210 is like a Station wagon, same fuselage as the 206, just the wheel wells take up room in the 210 where they don’t in a 206.

Ref a Bo and a Mooney, we can argue book measurements all day but a Bo feels roomier, maybe it’s because the cabin is taller or you sit higher, who knows. But both are cramped for big guys. Have you considered a Turbo Centurion ?Way more room that a Bonanza and still a nearly 200 kt airplane at altitude and with an over 1500 lb useful load everyone can go and they will fit too. The Information Manual (IM) for a 1979 T210N cites a service ceiling of 27,000 feet, an as-delivered useful load of between 1,729 and 1,785 pounds, and the ability to leap the proverbial 50-foot obstacle in 2,160 feet. The Cruise Performance tables in the IM lists a cruise speed of 180 knot cruise speeds (80 percent power/17.8 gph) at 10,000 feet and 196 knots for the same power setting/fuel burn at 20,000 feet. The performance tables show that a more reasonable 71 percent power setting (15.5 gph) at 16,000 feet will yield a true airspeed of 179 knots. (P) 210’s are more complex (expensive to own) and I believe have less useful load, but pressurization would be nice