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Post by c64 on Jul 26, 2015 15:52:13 GMT
To make it easier to get at the part you need to replace every week. The engine. I have heard this discussion before, from a mechanic who knew Wartburgs, and he liked the idea of having the parts he needed to work on where it was easier to get at them.... This mechanic is S/M? The ignition breakers are located in a tin can on the end of the crank case. After removing the license plate, only a gynaecologist might finding adjusting the ignition timing acceptable. Scrubbing the contacts as you need to do every few 100km is a nightmare, you better remove the entire front of the car for reasonable access to the breaker unit. Back then, luxury cars had lights under the hood to check the engine at night. All cars made until the 1980s broke down every now and then and the driver had to re-plug or unstick something. The Wartburg was a luxury car as well and naturally, it has a tiny bulb in the engine bay. The neon bulb indicating that my first fridge I owned has power was a lot brighter than that. And the light is blocked by the carburettor. But it makes sense the first time you have to remove the top of the carburettor at night discovering that the chamber is empty (again). The light shines right into the carburettor chamber when the top is removed which is convenient so you have less spills when priming the carburettor. Cranked by the starter, the gas pump can't keep up with demand so there is no way to start the car without priming. To make sure you can restart, rev the engine when you have stopped and turn the key. See the 3 ignition coils in the picture? They don't care if they are cut off by the breakers or by key. Then it sounds like firing both barrels of a shotgun simultaneously. So using your Wartburg at 3AM can wake up a lot more neighbours than using a Trabant! |
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Post by c64 on Jul 26, 2015 15:58:01 GMT
You just pour in oil before pumping gas. Most Wartburg/Trabant drivers then put their foot on the bumper and "shake". The amount of oil isn't that critical, just make sure you put at least "enough" in and then some. There is an old saying, "first you smell a Trabant coming, then you hear it and then you see it." that would count as mixed for me. - I was meaning whether it was mixed in the gas tank or later. in the 90s the bigger two stroke machines here started having injectors that mixed the oil from a separate tank, but some people never trusted them, and they mixed the gas in the tank, anyway. The NSU Ro80 (Wankel engine) mixes its fuel automatically. It has a vast engine oil supply using it for everything (including Torque converter). NSU had advertised that this car never needs any oil changes. Every time you refuel, you refill the oil supply as well. The oil dosage pump is designed to take in the gunk in the oil sump so this really works, the oil in the engine never turns bad. All you need to do is to replace the oil filter which is also very large. And when you run out of oil (forget to refill when refuelling) or the filter becomes clogged, the torque converter fails and the car stops moving long before the car takes any damage. |
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Post by the light works on Jul 26, 2015 16:06:25 GMT
To make it easier to get at the part you need to replace every week. The engine. I have heard this discussion before, from a mechanic who knew Wartburgs, and he liked the idea of having the parts he needed to work on where it was easier to get at them.... This mechanic is S/M? The ignition breakers are located in a tin can on the end of the crank case. After removing the license plate, only a gynaecologist might finding adjusting the ignition timing acceptable. Scrubbing the contacts as you need to do every few 100km is a nightmare, you better remove the entire front of the car for reasonable access to the breaker unit. Back then, luxury cars had lights under the hood to check the engine at night. All cars made until the 1980s broke down every now and then and the driver had to re-plug or unstick something. The Wartburg was a luxury car as well and naturally, it has a tiny bulb in the engine bay. The neon bulb indicating that my first fridge I owned has power was a lot brighter than that. And the light is blocked by the carburettor. But it makes sense the first time you have to remove the top of the carburettor at night discovering that the chamber is empty (again). The light shines right into the carburettor chamber when the top is removed which is convenient so you have less spills when priming the carburettor. Cranked by the starter, the gas pump can't keep up with demand so there is no way to start the car without priming. To make sure you can restart, rev the engine when you have stopped and turn the key. See the 3 ignition coils in the picture? They don't care if they are cut off by the breakers or by key. Then it sounds like firing both barrels of a shotgun simultaneously. So using your Wartburg at 3AM can wake up a lot more neighbours than using a Trabant! I would have thought that was a gravity fuel system. |
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Post by the light works on Jul 26, 2015 16:12:11 GMT
that would count as mixed for me. - I was meaning whether it was mixed in the gas tank or later. in the 90s the bigger two stroke machines here started having injectors that mixed the oil from a separate tank, but some people never trusted them, and they mixed the gas in the tank, anyway. The NSU Ro80 (Wankel engine) mixes its fuel automatically. It has a vast engine oil supply using it for everything (including Torque converter). NSU had advertised that this car never needs any oil changes. Every time you refuel, you refill the oil supply as well. The oil dosage pump is designed to take in the gunk in the oil sump so this really works, the oil in the engine never turns bad. All you need to do is to replace the oil filter which is also very large. And when you run out of oil (forget to refill when refuelling) or the filter becomes clogged, the torque converter fails and the car stops moving long before the car takes any damage. I've seen a few Mazda RX-7s (also wankel) that I suspected never needed to have the oil drained. my fire tender actually has to use 15W-40 grade motor oil in the automatic transmission to keep the transmission from overheating. as a result you have to run the thing hard for the first few miles to get the transmission hot enough to work right. - the excuse the mechanic gave was that the transmission was designed for farm trucks in flat terrain. |
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Post by c64 on Jul 26, 2015 16:41:11 GMT
To make it easier to get at the part you need to replace every week. The engine. I have heard this discussion before, from a mechanic who knew Wartburgs, and he liked the idea of having the parts he needed to work on where it was easier to get at them.... I dont know how having the radiator "not at the front" affects airflow, but I suspect if the fan gives up, so will the engine. However, I have driven trucks with engine and fan reversed, and that always works well. The reason is simple: Space! This is a first generation FWD car. The gearbox has to be sitting between the wheels and with a classic configuration that makes the engine sit in front of it which in turn requires a very long engine bay - or you make room by placing the radiator on top of the gearbox or behind it. The most famous car with a modern FWD configuration was the Rover Mini, here the engine is installed sideways. Here is a picture of a Morris which is the same:  To make things more compact, they had tucked the radiator into the fender (of the Mini) and used an electric fan. This design is as compact as it can get. The visible radiator is just a fake as in all modern cars! Customers find it unacceptable when there is no radiator visible, they think the car must overheat. Actually, with the classic "open radiator" design it does when driving in reverse, then the hot air from the radiator is drawn back. To fix that, modern cars use an air scope beneath the bumper for the radiator and the grid in the front is fake. In the late 1980s, VW engineers had designed the Passat without listening much to marketing.  This is the car model I drive since 1995 and I still often hear concerns about how the engine could possible be cooled without radiator grid. After the car came out, "fake grid" stickers came on the market and in 1993, VW was forced to make a "facelift" adding a fake grid and spoiling the excellent aerodynamics of the car. Even if the car is basically the same, I like the original much better since it has more top speed and better mpg. And for the very same reason, BMW - after buying the Rover Mini - had to redesign the engine bay and squeezing the radiator into the front to make potential customers feel better about engine overheating. In reality, the BMW Mini is much more likely to overheat and a lot harder to do maintenance on. Also if the rubber parts of the engine mounts wear out, a Rover Mini just emits "clunk" noises while a BMW Mini can destroy its radiator or if you are lucky its wiring first. The worst engine bay design failure did Citroëen with their DS. They had designed the car body with a Boxer engine in mind. After designing the car body, they had failed to come up with a beefed up, water cooled "VW bug engine". And none of their ordinary engines would fit. To keep the shape of the car, they had to move the engine to where the firewall was planned to be. They moved the driver's seat back very far but the car still has not much leg room for the driver and they placed the pedals in very unusual and odd positions. Then they added an air duct for the radiator and declared the extra room in front of the engine as the emergency wheel compartment. But this is the space the engine should have been!  |
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Post by c64 on Jul 26, 2015 16:52:57 GMT
The NSU Ro80 (Wankel engine) mixes its fuel automatically. It has a vast engine oil supply using it for everything (including Torque converter). NSU had advertised that this car never needs any oil changes. Every time you refuel, you refill the oil supply as well. The oil dosage pump is designed to take in the gunk in the oil sump so this really works, the oil in the engine never turns bad. All you need to do is to replace the oil filter which is also very large. And when you run out of oil (forget to refill when refuelling) or the filter becomes clogged, the torque converter fails and the car stops moving long before the car takes any damage. I've seen a few Mazda RX-7s (also wankel) that I suspected never needed to have the oil drained. my fire tender actually has to use 15W-40 grade motor oil in the automatic transmission to keep the transmission from overheating. as a result you have to run the thing hard for the first few miles to get the transmission hot enough to work right. - the excuse the mechanic gave was that the transmission was designed for farm trucks in flat terrain. The Wankel engine of the NSU Ro80 is lubricated by mixture. The oil is mostly for cooling the engine. The oil is then cooled by a heat exchanger and the water is controlled by thermal controlled valves. So the engine warms up very quickly, even the gearbox. This car is perfect for winter. It has a lot of heat problems during summer (carburettor directly above exhaust manifold, tends to boil) but it never fails to start during winter. Starting the Wankel doesn't require much battery power and the mixture doesn't have much time to condensate so the engine starts fine at -10°F and lower temperatures. |
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Post by c64 on Jul 26, 2015 20:15:02 GMT
We had a VW Beetle (59 I think) that had a similar fuel management system. The jack handle, which was stored next to the fuel tank, had calibration marks on it indicating fuel quantity. You just stuck in down into the tank and you instantly knew how much fuel you had. It had another nice feature in case you didn't check often enough. There was a small (about 1 liter) can inside the fuel tank that was connected to a lever on the firewall. Turning the lever dumped the can and gave you about a 10 mile reserve. The only problem was that if you used your reserve, you had to make sure you reset the lever when you filled up the tank. This is how you "run out of gas" with your girl friend and then miraculously drive back after you are done. |
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Post by silverdragon on Jul 27, 2015 6:34:49 GMT
The worst engine bay design failure did Citroëen with their DS. They had designed the car body with a Boxer engine in mind. After designing the car body, they had failed to come up with a beefed up, water cooled "VW bug engine". And none of their ordinary engines would fit. To keep the shape of the car, they had to move the engine to where the firewall was planned to be. They moved the driver's seat back very far but the car still has not much leg room for the driver and they placed the pedals in very unusual and odd positions. Then they added an air duct for the radiator and declared the extra room in front of the engine as the emergency wheel compartment. But this is the space the engine should have been! What a bloody stupid engine bay design... |
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Post by c64 on Jul 27, 2015 8:04:30 GMT
The worst engine bay design failure did Citroëen with their DS. They had designed the car body with a Boxer engine in mind. After designing the car body, they had failed to come up with a beefed up, water cooled "VW bug engine". And none of their ordinary engines would fit. To keep the shape of the car, they had to move the engine to where the firewall was planned to be. They moved the driver's seat back very far but the car still has not much leg room for the driver and they placed the pedals in very unusual and odd positions. Then they added an air duct for the radiator and declared the extra room in front of the engine as the emergency wheel compartment. But this is the space the engine should have been! What a bloody stupid engine bay design... The design wouldn't be bad at all if they would have managed to make that Boxer engine they had dreamed of. A Boxer engine is wide and flat and it would belong into the empty space in the front, then there would be plenty of leg room. But what they finally made is a nightmare for service. Drop a screw and you are screwed. Some people claim that you can pour a bucket of rice into the engine and no single grain will fall through. What's also worse is that Citroën also owned a screw and bolt factory. They did make them according to DIN but they also made all theoretical only sizes. Nobody except Citroën uses M7 (7mm diameter bolts), they don't exist in the real world. While M11 and M13 do exist, they are very rare and can't be bought in normal stores. And there are plenty of them in the DS! |
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Post by the light works on Jul 27, 2015 14:23:25 GMT
American carmakers usually stick to one stupidity per engine bay. like say, putting the aircon lines AGAINST the oil filler cap, so the cap must be broken off to add oil. putting one spark plug behind the cabin air intake box.
the real winner for engine manufacturer shenanigans is rumored to be Caterpillar, who allegedly made one engine using no two bolts the same size.
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Post by GTCGreg on Jul 27, 2015 15:39:29 GMT
American carmakers usually stick to one stupidity per engine bay. like say, putting the aircon lines AGAINST the oil filler cap, so the cap must be broken off to add oil. putting one spark plug behind the cabin air intake box. the real winner for engine manufacturer shenanigans is rumored to be Caterpillar, who allegedly made one engine using no two bolts the same size. My dad had a 78 Pontiac where you had to remove the right fender to replace the battery. You could get to the battery to check the electrolyte level by just lifting the hood, but there was no way to actually get it out without dismantling the fender. |
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Post by the light works on Jul 27, 2015 15:40:19 GMT
I just occurred to me that Citroen could have used Corvair engines.
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Post by GTCGreg on Jul 27, 2015 16:15:43 GMT
I just occurred to me that Citroen could have used Corvair engines. And then they wouldn't have needed a radiator as the Corvair engine was air cooled. |
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Post by c64 on Jul 27, 2015 18:41:08 GMT
I just occurred to me that Citroen could have used Corvair engines. Citroën doesn't make Corvair engines... While most EU car manufacturers buy half of their cars from the same suppliers, Citroën used to make everything all by them self, even the nuts and bolts. That's why car electronics is usually pretty reliable in most EU cars (Hela, Bosch, etc), Citroën is different. |
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