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That's neat bykfixer. I know they are trying to also make them wind efficient, but I wish they would try for a more retro look. It would be neat if they came out with hand controls only and put a crank with some pedals on it down on the floor so people could manually charge it as they drive. On a long trip people could swap up and overweight people could lose some weight. Since the battery would carry/power the load of the car and hills, the charging system pedalling rate wouldn't very that much and with a small gear/pully on the crank and a large one on the powerful alternator a person could pedal at slower, steady and paceful rate. Be able to pull over and charge- even let a kid that can't drive pedal. That would help harness all that energy kids have that we don't have anymore.
Also not even pedal at all for a while till the battery meter gets down enough that you can't put it off any longer. Also fix it where it can be plugged up and charged all night.
All this along with a solar panel that would double as a pop up window or even the retro "T tops" would be ideal.
I know all this may sound comical, but I'm serious- and probably stupid (I might be able to make enough to afford a turnip green sandwich) if this is a good ideal since I put it out there, but I just want to pitch in and have a hand in any future change. It might help me to digest it better without getting acid reflux.
 
Heck I'd own an electric car if it could back up to a door, pop a hatch and swap out battery packs. Phooey on getting half way to Myrtle Beach and have to plug in my car for a few hours.
There was a time when you pulled into a gas station and the guy with the star on his hat filled your tank, wiped your windows and checked/filled your oil upon request so why can't that happen with battery packs in 2021? Plus that would create jobs.

Green Pond, Acura made a hot rod NSX with 4 electric motors that supplimented the gasoline engine. Give it time and somebody will race them, put wheelie bars, spoilers that act as wind turbines and who knows what.
 
the benifits of eletric blow my mind there a century or so behind gas engines but they get better everyday we used to have a cool guy on this forum he had one of the first eletric cars i forgot his name
 
[Posted by bykfixer:
"Green Pond, Acura made a hot rod NSX with 4 electric motors that supplimented the gasoline engine. Give it time and somebody will race them, put wheelie bars, spoilers that act as wind turbines and who knows what."]

Sounds like that accura had a setup like a train. If not they ought to do that. I wonder how much hp it would take to run a generator that could energize an electric motor on each wheel. GM ought to be able to build one with the technology from their electromotive division (EMD). Would be cool to have an engine under the hood no bigger than a 5hp go cart engine.
 
raggie33 said:
the benifits of eletric blow my mind there a century or so behind gas engines but they get better everyday we used to have a cool guy on this forum he had one of the first eletric cars i forgot his name
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Yes raggie33, electric vehicles should get better as time go on. Turbodog not long ago named that fellow you just mentioned in the cars forum. He said that fellow had a chevy volt and a electric Ford ranger.
 
Raggie33, its on page 96 of the "cars,man" thread. I was mistaken- Turbodog didn't name him, only what he had and then below my post thanking him he posted a wikipedia link to the electric Ford ranger- good read.
 
greenpondmike said:
That's neat bykfixer. I know they are trying to also make them wind efficient, but I wish they would try for a more retro look. It would be neat if they came out with hand controls only and put a crank with some pedals on it down on the floor so people could manually charge it as they drive. On a long trip people could swap up and overweight people could lose some weight. Since the battery would carry/power the load of the car and hills, the charging system pedalling rate wouldn't very that much and with a small gear/pully on the crank and a large one on the powerful alternator a person could pedal at slower, steady and paceful rate. Be able to pull over and charge- even let a kid that can't drive pedal. That would help harness all that energy kids have that we don't have anymore.
Also not even pedal at all for a while till the battery meter gets down enough that you can't put it off any longer. Also fix it where it can be plugged up and charged all night.
All this along with a solar panel that would double as a pop up window or even the retro "T tops" would be ideal.
I know all this may sound comical, but I'm serious- and probably stupid (I might be able to make enough to afford a turnip green sandwich) if this is a good ideal since I put it out there, but I just want to pitch in and have a hand in any future change. It might help me to digest it better without getting acid reflux.
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The pedaling idea won't even be remotely practical. Human beings put out a pathetically low amount of energy. As an example, I'm a fairly strong cyclist and can put out about 180 to 200 watts for an hour, smaller amounts of power for longer than that. Maybe on a long ride before I'm spent I might be able to put out 500 or 600 watt-hrs. For comparison typical EV battery packs are upwards of 50 kW-hrs, or about 100 times the amount of energy I could add in a few hours of pedaling. So I could in theory increase the state of charge by a lousy 1% at best. An average person might be closer to 0.5%. It's probably more practical to just put high efficiency solar panels on the car so it can be charging at a low level whenever the sun is out, even if it's parked.

Aerodynamic efficiency is very important for anything which moves through the air, but especially EVs. It's the old form follows function thing. If we bothered streamlining vehicles to the maximum extent practical we could get ranges of 1,000 miles or more, like this car:

https://robbreport.com/motors/cars/aptera-new-solar-ev-can-cover-1000-miles-no-charging-1234585242/
 
Maybe little Johnny or Jane can have a dynamo device in the back seat to power their GameBoy while travelling to and from grandmas someday Green Pond.
What would be really cool is to see a technology that uses the orange goo that collects on your fingers from eating Cheetos.
 
bykfixer said:
Maybe little Johnny or Jane can have a dynamo device in the back seat to power their GameBoy while travelling to and from grandmas someday Green Pond.
What would be really cool is to see a technology that uses the orange goo that collects on your fingers from eating Cheetos.
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Lol, yeah that would be good.
 
Well, seems like we have talked about cars here more than anything. I guess with all the rumors (I'm guilty of some) floating around about higher gas prices it has people concerned. Vehicles are a big thing because they can for the most part safely take you here and there, but most important is that they can take you to work. Higher gas prices means you put more in the tank, but bring less home in your pocket. I only worked 11 miles from home, but because I had to run my truck all night, four nights a week to just keep the inside of my truck warm it cost me almost $20 a night, $80 a week which adds up to $320 a month. Can't wait for winter to end. During the summer I could throw my bike in the back of the truck and make rounds with it and since summertime is warm I will have no other reason to crank my truck except to go to work and go home.
But as things go I got replaced by a high tech alarm system when things was going well and the customer said they were satisfied.
I'm scheduled starting Monday to start 2 new post that will give me more hours at a slight decrease in pay, but one of them has a guardhouse with heat in it so, less money, but also less gas used. This might work out to allow me to have more spending money in the long run. If gas does go up to $7 a gallon that would wipe me out. I'm still employed at my job, but posts come and go and range from $7.50-$11.00 an hour. It's your typical mom and pop guard service that are trying to stay in business.
I say all this to say that if the price of gas goes up and those new fangled vehicles costs over a $1000 I'm messed up. By the way, I know they cost way more than that. They probably start out at $50,000 even with subsidies in place. Yes I'm concerned. Looks like my wife and I will have to learn how to eat and like opossum. I guess with enough quality ranch on it we could manage.
 
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So many things have changed and so many things have stayed the same. Food is one of them.
I think past and present food could be covered here. One of the things that have stayed the same is those cheap square tostinoes pizzas. I don't know if I spelled the name correctly, but they still taste the same as when I was a teenager and they still have that great crust that surpasses anything that even eat in pizza places could make. They used to be round though, but that is no big deal at all.
What bothers me is the great food that doesn't exist anymore and the ones that do in name only, but taste way different. Now at 55 you could say that my taste bud have just changed, but why is it that so many foods still taste the same also if that is the case.
I've noticed that a lot of foods that tasted just fine the way they were are changed now and they put some form of sweetner in them to try and make up for the change. They cheapen them and have the motto to just add sugar and no one will notice.
Well I notice and I'm not happy with the trash some companies are putting out nowadays and they call that progress? Maybe for their pockets, but not for my taste buds. Nowadays it is difficult to find some quality ranch. O'Charleys used to be among the best out there. It still isn't cheap, but it sure taste like it is. I don't like to waste, but even if it costs $3+ if it don't taste right it is going in the garbage. Blueberry stuff now taste awful- almost like raspberry (yuk) and kraft mac and cheese- you know, the original powdered stuff that tasted soooo good ten years ago is nasty now and they have also sweetened it. Tv dinners have ol nasty gravy that doesn't hardly have any taste to it, but it is slightly sweet.
This all is in the ready prepaired stuff that isn't good for you anyway, but what about all the gmo vegetables? My mother's side of the family have lived longer because they were brought up to eat more greens. I made myself like turnip greens, but they have to be fresh. Those seasoned ones in a can that used to taste so good have had sweetner added. If I went to a restaurant in the past and I wanted a salid all I was concerned about was if the bacon bits were real, but now most of them have also cheapened their ranch.
If you dip smokeless tobacco- good luck finding the good stuff from the late 70s to mid 80s because most have also been sweetened. This is especially true if you prefer the long cut type.
I admit, some stuff just needs a little bit of sweetning- sweet tea, ice cream, etc, but some stuff tastes better sour or bitter.
I don't like ground turkey, but there was one brand that was soo good and it came in a 3 pound packs. I could make it into a patty and cook it up just right and then mix some el-yuckatea habinero pepper sauce and some of that "just" mayonnaise together and put on it and man that was good. Only thing left now is the pepper sauce. The mayonnaise is still around somewhere I heard, but not easily assessable as it used to be. Winn dixie's pimento farms pimento cheese spread has been sweetened and I could just go on and on about good stuff that is either gone or messed up if it still exists. There are some positives though. One of them is that good ol popeye's fried chicken. Once a blue moon came around and I actually had some extra money so I bought $100's worth of popeye's and me and my wife and her family got down on some fried chicken eeeew-weeee!
 
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Like others here I'm disappointed to see the consolidation of radio stations under large corporations. It causes a lot of stations to lose their personality and connection to the local market. I also hate the idea of voice tracking where an announcer records all of their patter ahead of time, maybe from a faraway city, and it gets dropped into the program digitally at the appropriate times to make it seem as if they're sitting there doing the show in real time when they're not. It's cheesy and it has a hollow ring to it. There's still a small amount of personality driven radio here but it's becoming rather sparse.
 
PhotonWrangler said:
Like others here I'm disappointed to see the consolidation of radio stations under large corporations. It causes a lot of stations to lose their personality and connection to the local market. I also hate the idea of voice tracking where an announcer records all of their patter ahead of time, maybe from a faraway city, and it gets dropped into the program digitally at the appropriate times to make it seem as if they're sitting there doing the show in real time when they're not. It's cheesy and it has a hollow ring to it. There's still a small amount of personality driven radio here but it's becoming rather sparse.
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I've noticed that advertising has also increased. I listen sometimes to "coast to coast am" sometimes and notice that the program is like a big hamburger with a tiny thin piece of meat in it- the meat being the subject. I've noticed it about other programs also, but coast to coast is the worst. I know that advertising is how they make money, but radio has gone to the greedy side.
On tv though, I like those Lemo Emo commercials. I want one of them emus.
 
When I get the chance to twist the dial at 2am I like hearing stations from far away. Red Eye radio is one I enjoy when the coast to coast is discussing free healthcare for oppressed vampires. One station in New York is pretty lively and it's amazing the hear "2 mile backup on the freeway" at 3am. At 3am where I am you hear crickets chirping or an occasional tractor trailor whizz past. Red Eye radio lets me know what is on the minds of people across the country.

But when coast to coast talks about how the mega microphones tuned to outter space were tuned to the ocean floor and discovered a bunch of volcanoes and how monitoring those can actually help predict El Nino's, which then help predict hurricanes……I can wait through a comercial break or two. My coworkers call it "the ghost to ghost tin hat show".

AM radio in my view is more relevant than FM due to the nature of the typical programming. It's an archaic format to the typical person who gets annoyed when the station fades out under bridges, it's a throwback to my youth when cars came with an AM radio, a cigarette lighter, and a heater……and that was it for the creature comforts. No cup holder, no USB port, no backup camera, no passenger side rear view mirror unless it was a sports car or a Cadillac. Now I do enjoy the a/c, electric seats and yes the backup camera, but I can live without them.
 
bykfixer said:
When I get the chance to twist the dial at 2am I like hearing stations from far away. Red Eye radio is one I enjoy when the coast to coast is discussing free healthcare for oppressed vampires. One station in New York is pretty lively and it's amazing the hear "2 mile backup on the freeway" at 3am. At 3am where I am you hear crickets chirping or an occasional tractor trailor whizz past. Red Eye radio lets me know what is on the minds of people across the country.

But when coast to coast talks about how the mega microphones tuned to outter space were tuned to the ocean floor and discovered a bunch of volcanoes and how monitoring those can actually help predict El Nino's, which then help predict hurricanes……I can wait through a comercial break or two. My coworkers call it "the ghost to ghost tin hat show".

AM radio in my view is more relevant than FM due to the nature of the typical programming. It's an archaic format to the typical person who gets annoyed when the station fades out under bridges, it's a throwback to my youth when cars came with an AM radio, a cigarette lighter, and a heater……and that was it for the creature comforts. No cup holder, no USB port, no backup camera, no passenger side rear view mirror unless it was a sports car or a Cadillac. Now I do enjoy the a/c, electric seats and yes the backup camera, but I can live without them.
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The creature comforts I like are power steering and auto trans when I have to work a post that requires making rounds with tight steering. An auto trans helps me to creep slower in gravel than idling in first gear and creeping with a manual.
On the contrary though the manual steering helps me keep my arms built up and on the truck I'm driving now (I guess the way the seat sets) I used to have to assist lifting my left leg onto the clutch pedal but now I don't have to assist it, so I guess driving that truck built it up some. I think vehicles have too many distractions nowadays and of course you have to pay a premium for all that and usually it comes standard. One time I wanted to buy a new late 90s nissan pickup and I didn't even want a radio in it- I wanted to install my own. To order a truck minus all the standard foolishment would actually cost more than buying it with all that. I didn't buy the truck either. Probably the last chance to get a base vehicle would have been in the mid 80s.
One time a friend sold me a 77 Ford swb with 89,000 on the odometer for $1000. It was very well taken care of. He told the Ford dealer he wanted a 6cyl body with a 302 in it. Power steering and auto trans with manual brakes. A chrome front bumper and a heavy duty back bumper. It cost him around $4700 back then. He had a jvc stereo in it with pioneer speakers, a black leather seat and magnesiun slotted mag wheels (70s style). Black inside and out with no side chrome. Before I got it I wanted to tint the windows, put on some craiger ss rims- deep dish in the back. Install a chrome and black general lee style push bar on the front bumper and paint it pearl white with dual exhaust and maybe thrust mufflers.
Time I got it though I changed my mind and figured it looked good enough. It sure seemed to turn heads and it was a hard working and smoothe running truck and had the original exhaust on it that was still in good shape around 50,000 miles later.

Bykfixer, I also grew up with am radio. I was probably almost 14 when I got into fm. At the time it had more music with less personality and the dj's all pretty much had monotone voices on wrkk and wzzk. Kicks106 was like the older am stations, but cooler. Nowadays I miss those nutty personalities and would rather hear them than the music.
My dad used to pick up WWL in New Orleans, but I can't find it now. That is where I first heard the country redneck comedian Jerry Clower.
Concerning coast to coast, they really do have a bunch of bull on there from time to time- more often than not. Lol bykfixer, what you said earlier about coast was a good one :crackup:. I like George Norie's voice better (it just fits the show) but Art Bell had better guests. He came back twice with his own show that actually competed with coast. His last show actually had the coast music at the beginning and at the end. You can catch him on youtube. Coast dug into their archives and put him back out there and it is called somewhere in time, but that was when he was at coast. He has one on youtube called (MITD) midnight in the desert and one called called "dark matter". I think MITD was his last show and he had to stop because he was being harassed at his home which was also where he broadcasted from. The harassment was mainly gunfire. Seeing how he kinda lived in a isolated area in the desert, no one had any business out there especially firing a gun. It seemed like intimidation. Art's shows would cross the line while George's shows would just go near the line a little. That is why Art got the intimidation. I assume you know that Art has passed on now. I think it was a couple of years ago. May he rest in peace.
I never could get into red eyed radio, but it was better than listening to coast when they had lame subjects. I think George was better when he first took over coast, but now he has spread himself too thin with all the other stuff he's into.
 
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I don't remember if I've said this or not. I say so much that I don't remember. Hopefully I just hit on it and now I'm going to go into more detail.Life has been good since 9-11-2001, but it was real good before that. We are yet to recover from it and all the ramifications from just recently are yet to come and be felt. 9-11 killed a lot of the 8 hour a day 40 hour work weeks. A lot of 3rd shifts were gone and companies (at least around here) had only 2 twelve hour shifts. Country music went downhill except for the burst of patriotic songs. Tv shows got cancelled and 24 hour fast foods came to a haught. Some came back, but some closed early. McDonalds had a promotion that if they didn't have your food ready by a certain time it was free. America seemed to be bursting at the seams and most folks didn't have much of a care in the world before 9-11. To say it was the time of the American dream for all would be overkill, but what I'm describing is through my own eyes and IMHO. Do any of you feel the same way?

Ps: after 9-11, one positive aspect is that it created jobs in the security field especially for high risk areas like fuel terminals, but it also created anxiety in the minds of most folks. I guess the fact that we weren't as safe as we thought we were was a difficult pill to swallow.
 
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Just had another thought....how many of you liked the smaller Sam Walton controlled walmarts better with all the reasonally priced made in the USA stuff? I sure did.
 
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Our Sam Walton type Wal Mart got wiped out by a tornado. The tornado ripped through the doors on the front like a hot knife through butter. To the right of the doors were letters that spelled "discount city". The D and I were part of the hole but at the bottom curve of the letter S was a bird nest unaffected. I was helping with the cleanup and a coworker said "see, that just goes to show God is telling us we're ****in up". "See, all those cash registers are destoroyed but He spared that tweety bird nest". A few of us stood there pondering what he had just said as the sun was rising. We noticed we had worked from mid day that afternoon, all night long and into daylight again. When we approached the hole again instead of looking for carnage we peered to the right of the twisted beams, broken glass and general destruction and noticed fish swimming in an aquarium and hamsters running on the wheels in the Habitrail cages.

They rebuilt it at another location and it was big enough to have its own zip code it seemed. "Super Center" they called it. Super alright, but no fish and no hamsters have ever been sold at that one. I bought my first minimag at the original Wal Mart. I still have it. The new one used to have a flashlight section 50 feet long and 4 shelves high. Now it's about 8 feet wide and 6 feet high. Maybe 7, but there's lots of empty space in between the $1.99 junk and a few 3C sized Maglites.

Not long ago I used my last blank cd. I had bought 10 spools of 100 a few years back and burned music compilations for friends and family. I figured I'd run up to Best Buy and grab a spool or three. The guy said "blank cd's? we haven't had those in years"…… I chuckled and said "you guys would do well to have a 2016 section in your store, you know DVD's, compact discs, mp3 players, laptops with a disc drive etc"…… He said "you know, we get that a lot here". Then he tried selling me some kind of streaming device. Some kind of fire stick or something. He said "it's cheaper than cable". I retorted "what's cable?"………
 
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Just wait till we start blowing up each others satellites,, you'll need more than just batteries to survive.
 
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