dirocyn

I'm building a fuel-economy car from the ground up, trying to select the lightest FWD transmission. I know a Toyota C50 trans weighs about 76 lbs, I'm really hoping to find something lighter. This trans will only need to handle about 35 hp.

I'm in the planning stages for building an extreme fuel-economy automobile, and I need to select a transmission to use. I expect my engine will make between 20 and 40 hp, and will need an adapter to fit anything. The overall vehicle will need to be as light as possible. So what's the lightest weight transmission I could reasonably expect to find in U.S. junkyards or part-outs, and what vehicle did it come in?

I'm not wedded to a particular direction of engine rotation, direction of engine/trans mounting, etc. I do want at least 3 forward gears plus reverse.

My 1996 Bravada has a missfire, it runs fine when cold, the miss starts when the engine is fully warmed up--but not every time. Once the engine is warm, the miss comes and goes as though by the flip of a switch. It feels like a regular, recurring miss on one cylinder, sometimes two. Sometimes the miss will go away when I blip the throttle, sometimes it gets worse when I do that.

Scanned codes are rear heated O2 sensor inactivity (the one after the cat) and Intermittent Missfire. I replaced the O2 sensor, cleared codes and the code came right back. Backprobe of the O2 sensor harness shows voltage in proper range, and definitely not inactive. The sensor wire swept between .2 and .9 volts 6 times in 20 seconds, which (as far as I understand) is what it's supposed to do.

Trying to chase down the miss, I've replaced the spark plugs, plug wires, rotor (cap is 1 year old and appears to be new) and coil. Also I used a soda-can to block off EGR, none of these made any difference. Any idea what else to test?

1996 Olds Bravada, having trouble with an intermittent miss when the engine is fully warm. Tested the ignition coil wire with a multimeter and measured 1.7 ohms. The wire has "Autolite professional series premium" printed on it and is about 14 inches long. From what I've found in my own research, most spark plug wires range from 50-500 ohms per foot with Granatelli having the lowest advertised at 2 ohms/foot. I'm guessing this wire had higher impedance when it left the factory--otherwise Autolite would brag about it. But could it cause a missfire?

I saw a program that mentioned Dark Energy, went and looked it up but I still don't get it. Wikipedia says 74% of the Universe is Dark Energy, which we know nothing about. We apparently think this because distant galaxies are moving away from us(their light is red shifted) at a greater rate than galaxies that are closer. So what is the basis for believing that the red-shift is caused by acceleration rather than by some other factor that effects light (e.g., space dust over billions of light-years, or interaction with the background radiation) or acceleration of Earth itself?

I've got a 1988 Chevy C1500 (with 6.2L Diesel, 22 mpg, love it!) and my steering has become loose and sloppy. The truck will wander, sometimes pulling to the left but usually pulling to the right. It's bad enough I no longer feel safe above 60 mph. The problem is MUCH worse when pulling a trailer. I already adjusted at the steering box and replaced the pitman arm, both made major improvements to steering play--I went from over 3" play at the steering wheel down to about 1"--but the steering still feels sloppy and unstable, not at all like it did a few years ago. I already checked the rag joint and tire pressure, pretty sure that's not the problem. I want to fix it but I'm not sure where to start, definitely don't want to rebuild the whole suspension system if I can help it. What could cause this, and how do I check it?

Here's the article:

http://icecap.us/images/uploads/REVISITINGTHEANALO...

A brief summary: Orbital cycles would indicate we're about to have an ice age. The Loutre and Berger climate model is based on the 400k year interglaciation which is not a correct analogue for our present situation. So what's wrong with this analysis?

People post questions and answers on here just about every day, claiming that global warming is a myth, a fraud, a farce. Come on, deniers and skeptics, show me some real evidence that global warming isn't happening. Show me how temperatures have not, in fact, risen by 0.6-0.7 degrees C over the past 100 years. Preferably something from a real scientist who is not employed by an energy company.

I am not looking for information about causes of warming (or the lack thereof). This is a question about thermometers, not CO2 and sunspots.

Okay, I know, technically we are, but we're in an interglaciation. Why? When you look at Vostok or Greenland ice cores, the most prominent feature is the sawtooth 100k year pattern of interglaciations. Most of the time, temps peak, then drop slowly for an average of about 6k years, then fall back down to glaciation levels 6-8C colder than our 1800 norm. But for the last 11,500 years, temps have always been within 2C of that baseline, and most of the time within .5C of that baseline. This long period of steady temperatures is the biggest anomaly to the ice cores in several million years. So why did the pattern stop? Why didn't we slide back into a glacial period 6,000 years ago? Does someone have a different way to interpret the pattern which would predict this long period of steady temperatures? If so, when does this end and what's coming next?

As a tangent, I'll point out that Homo Sapiens have been around for about 200kyears, and our female common ancestor lived 187kyears ago, right as temperatures were starting to rise. Likely she had some feature (lack of body hair, perhaps?) that was an advantage in a rapidly warming climate. As a species we are on our second interglaciation.

Let's say, just for the sake of argument, that we were able to stop adding carbon to the atmosphere faster than it's absorbed. Never mind how we accomplish that (economic crash, nuclear war, pandemic, Al Gore becomes Pope and reveals the 11th Commandment "thou shall not burn rocks," alien invasion, or new and better technology fixes everything), I'm not asking about that.

I'm asking what would happen if CO2 levels stabilize just exactly where they are, at 387 ppm, that Methane stabilizes exactly where it is, too. This year. Would the global mean temperature increase or decrease, how quickly, and by how much?

And, more importantly, what's the science behind it?

I have a 93 Chevy Blazer, 4.3 Vortec, Vin "W" (Central port injection). It's a balance shaft engine. The engine is making a tapping noise, sounds exactly like someone tapping the tip of a pencil against a table. Most of the time it's steady, but it gets louder and softer (sometimes it entirely disappears for a few seconds). Also, sometimes it turns into a double tap, like someone tapping both ends of a pencil on the table. When it does that, the sound seems to move towards the right side.

The tap seems, for the most part, to be in time with one of the cylinders. I've read that pulling off a spark plug wire will make the sound change if it's piston slap in that cylinder. I tried it for each cylinder, got no change but on the #1 cylinder I was getting shocked in time with the tapping sound.

The sound seems to be coming from low on the engine, it is definitely not in the valve covers. When I listen there, I can hear the tappets, they're quiet and smooth. It's also in the front of the engine, right around the crank pulley, not back in the oil pan. It is not an engine accessory, I've tried running it with the serpentine belt off. The crank pulley has some visible wobble when the engine runs.

Other info: The oil pressure reads high, tops out the gauge most of the time, but fluctuates (sometimes comes down to 30) once the engine is completely warm. I'm running 10w40, should have used 5w30. I did a motor flush before the last oil change, the oil appears perfectly clean. There is no significant oil leak (engine is dirty, no drips). The engine is running fine, not missing. The noise does get faster and louder with rpms.

So, does anybody out there know what this is?

1.55 Trillion dollars of extra deficit spending, all outside our regular budget, all approved during the last two months. There are only 300 million Americans, so this spending is $5,000 per person. Only 11 million unemployed Americans, as of December. So this spending is over $100,000 per unemployed person. Can we possibly believe the purpose for this is to create jobs? Whose economy, exactly, are we stimulating? Can we possibly spend this much without devaluing the dollar? How far can we go before people stop buying U.S. bonds?