Thread: How are gas prices affecting you???

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Originally Posted by Rocky72

In the other post there is claim that Clinton stopped all the exploration

This is not true, here is the quote.....

Originally Posted by Don Shillady

As I recall Bill Clinton vetoed the bill for drilling in ANWR and the obstructionist D-party has continued to block drilling and other energy policies but today had the nerve to grill oil company execs and blame them!

Don Shillady
Retired Scientist/teen rodder

This in fact true, in 1995 Bill Clinton vetoed the entire U.S. budget because it included opening up ANWR for drilling.

So again, Can you explain exactly how this administration has anything what so ever to do with what you are claiming here?

I bought an electric motor scooter (Schwinn S-500) to get around the neighborhood... I'm seriously considering building an electric 3-wheel car for work commute and grocery-getting (3-wheelers are legally considered motorcycles which are cheaper to insure and license). I have been playing with electric race cars for a few years and learned a lot. I'm about ready to apply what I've learned to everyday life...

soon, all the rent-a-cops will be working as armed guards at gas stations instead of banks

Duplicate post... please delete.

I stand corrected, we no longer have to worry about offending the caribou in ANWR since the Polar Bear has been declared "endangered". Optimistic estimates are that while the State of Alaska is suing the U.S. Govt. to reverse this, it will take at least five years and so we can forget about the oil in ANWR for a long time! Still what is needed is a new refinery to process the heavy crude that is available. I have been reading/studying Electric Vehicles but It looks to me that it would be at least $10,000 to convert a vehicle to electric power, BUT (!) even if you make the conversion, most EVs are limited to a range of 100 miles or less per charge unless you have a hybrid like a Prius. The electric '29 roadster "Lightening II" featured a few years ago in Rod Action is very interesting but again it's range is limited without an onboard charging system. Almost ten years ago Mother Earth News had a set of plans to convert a VW Beetle to electric drive but with a lawn mower engine under the front hood (bonnet) that would run a generator while the car was parked to charge the batteries and they claimed 90 mpg but with a caution regarding the heavy weight of the lead acid batteries and the small drum brakes on the VW.

J. Robinson, what is your take on the Optima Yellow Top deep cycle batteries? They are cheaper than the red top version at only about $170 each AND they only weigh 26 lb. each. That means 13 such yellow top Optima batteries would only weigh about 340 pounds and cost only about $2200. With a 9" 100 HP DC motor (about $1500 and about 150 pounds), a rebuilt T5 for anywhere from $200 used to $700 rebuilt, a 1200 amp controller (another $1500 ??) and thirteen 12 volt batteries ($2200) and another $500 or so for cables and minimal instruments I could convert my '29 'glass roadster to a 156 volt EV but then it would probably have a range of 100 miles at best. Sooooo, it looks like the Prius model is pretty good, except for the weight and expense of the batteries. Then there is the three-wheeled model with both a small diesel engine and electric power but that is a whole new car, not a conversion of my present '29. My present conclusion is to keep studying the EV situation, but go ahead and finish my ICE roadster under the assumption that it is only a car for special occasions and that there still will be some gas even if the price goes up to $10/gallon. There is hope that if a new refinery could be built to process oil sands tar and heavy crude that there still will be some gas available in the next ten years or so. There is always the SASOL process developed in South Africa to make gas out of coal. Evidently it is a practical reality that a common sense solution is unlikely to emerge from Congress unless or until there is another attack on U.S. soil.

Oh yes, here is another question. A recent conversation with a professional EV builder/converter here in Virginia offered an interesting idea of using a fully synchromeshed T5 transmission WITHOUT A CLUTCH. Occording to that gentleman all you have to do is "back off " the amperage for each shift and there is no need for a clutch, just shift during the rpm lag as racers have done for a long time??? However, I would really like to know if the synchromesh can really do this for long? Does this seem reasonable to folks on this Forum? (It sure solves the clutch linkage problem!)

Finally, another question is whether this Forum will readily accept EVs, so I commend J. Robinson and look forward to other EV builds.

Don Shillady
Retired Scientist/teen rodder

By the time the general public nimrods demand action and Congress acts we will all be in electric scooters...not electric cars.

Saving our oil is confusing....IF we save it for the "future" then why are we developing technology to "replace our dependence on oil"...why not just wait for the future and use the oil we saved? The entire mess is about political power.... and we haven't any.

Originally Posted by Don Shillady

J. Robinson, what is your take on the Optima Yellow Top deep cycle batteries? They are cheaper than the red top version at only about $170 each AND they only weigh 26 lb. each.

...a professional EV builder/converter here in Virginia offered an interesting idea of using a fully synchromeshed T5 transmission WITHOUT A CLUTCH. Occording to that gentleman all you have to do is "back off " the amperage for each shift and there is no need for a clutch, just shift during the rpm lag as racers have done for a long time...

...so I commend J. Robinson and look forward to other EV builds.

Don Shillady
Retired Scientist/teen rodder

Thanks for the commendation, Don, but I am certainly no hero. I sort of fell into playing with electric race cars because of my students (long story).

Optima red tops sell for $149 here. I believe the yellow tops are slightly more. I have not researched /used the yellow tops because they are not on the approved list for competition in Electrathon. Electrathon America Electric Vehicle Competition index

Anyway, dealing with electric power has forced me to re-learn some things about horsepower and transmitting power to the driveline. Also, I still have a lot to learn... First, there is little if any need for a multi-speed transmission on these lightweight cars we build and race. The orange car pictured in my previous post has a six-speed derailleur in it, but we never use it. In fact, it has proven to be more problematic than useful. A DC electric motor generates power as soon as you put electricity in the windings. The motor in that car (Briggs Etek) is rated at 3.5 continuous hp at 1725 rpm on 24 volts. However, under load it is capable of 8.5 hp at 24 volts over a wide rpm range. The more load it's under, the more amps it pulls, but hp is there and produced under demand. This is all contrary to internal combustion engines which get their power from combustion /leverage; rpm's = hp up to volumetric efficiency limits.

Maybe a heavier car would require a multi-speed trans to keep the motor operating in its peak efficiency rpm range... As I said, I still have a lot to learn. I will not be converting my coupe or roadster to electric power; I might convert them to run on ethanol when it becomes available in this area. Tenatively, the electric vehicle I envision building for work /grocery getting will be similar to that orange car, but considerably larger. I need it to carry two people and a weeks worth of groceries. If I use a Briggs Etek motor and six batteries, I can wire it for 36 volts. It shold be capable of 40 + mph and have about 40 mile range. The orange car only uses two batteries, according to Electrathon America rules. It will easily top 40 mph, but only for a short time. In a race, which is a 1-hour timed event, it will run a steady 24 to 28 mph for the full hour, depending on the course surface, turns, etc.

I don't know if this forum wil be overly receptive to electric vehicles, but I'm sure there are forums just for that. The way things are going, there might be a lot more very soon...

Duplicated again! Please delete.

In the other post there is claim that Clinton stopped all the exploration , but if you lived here you would see thats a bunch of bull . They look for coal and gas just about anywhere they please .

You could live in Sweden or the neighboring countries and pay $11+ per gallon...

...but if you really want a deal, emigrate to Saudi Arabia. Their gas is 45 cents per gallon. You could get a job ironing white robes, or polishing their Ferraris! :-)

basically i have to borrow money just to get to work.

Well in reality,we do have an excellent source for combustable fuel,and its source nobody wants near them either. Funny thing is,everybody has to have at least one,and millions of tax dollars are spent to build the sites and then not take advantage of the fuel they produce. The fuel is called methane,and every single landfill produces it. Most places I know of just burn it off,instead of putting it to work. Hank

The comments by Dave are encouraging. It makes economic sense to build a new refinery in the N/S-Dakota region and of course boom town mentality is a dynamic process. You can find references to Marathon Oil drilling near Bismark ND and if/when the oil sands in Canada are piped out it will be from a region roughly north of Bismark. Some of the drilling sites are on Indian land and some on Federal land. From what I can understand the oil is really deep and requires horizontal drilling under a lake. In the case of the Canadian oil sands in Saskatchewan and perhaps also near Bismark, the oil may require piping steam down the well hole to liquify the petroleum or treating crushed shale with steam in the case of the Canadian oil sands. That is why the sources were previously too expensive but with oil now at over $135/bbl it is possible to get the oil and make money after all the expense. As Itoldyouso and others have mentioned U.S. gas is still much cheaper than in other parts of the world but the recent sudden jump in price is making tough growing pains in the U.S. economy. Thanks for the local info Dave, it looks to me that the price of gas will remain high but it is there for maybe the next century from new sources in North America. For me to answer the question of this thread, it is ranging from depressive worry over "why should I build a SBC 350 which will at best get maybe 24 mpg using an AOD" to "Hey, never mind being on a fixed income in an inflationary situation, there will still be some gas for quite a while". Overall the main problem is the inflation that the increase in oil prices brings to folks on fixed incomes, but considering the roadster will probably only be used on summer weekends all I have to do now is get one of the 34-36 mpg little Chevys for everyday use. Thanks for the chance to discuss this and thrash it out!

Don Shillady
Retired Scientist/teen rodder

We lift 2 or 3 miles from a landfill that has contaminated all the wells around here and we have had to bring in Lake Michigan water and seal our wells-


The landfill sells off near a MILLION dollars per month of methane gas to ComEd which burns it for electric generation

Landfill is Mallard Lake Landfill in DuPage county Illinois if anyone wants to research the mess

The use of methane from landfills is a very good idea where possible. Methane is actually a worse greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. Since carbon dioxide is a linear molecule with only three atoms it only has four vibrational modes while methane has five atoms and is tetrahedral so it has nine vibrational modes. Although the vibrational modes absorb and hold infrared heat energy to differing extents depending on their vibrational frequency, 9 is more than 4 so methane can hold more heat in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide and so is a much more effective greenhouse gas than methane. In fact, folks who wanted to deny that global warming is caused by human combustion of fossil fuels used to bring up cud-chewing animals like cows as a source of methane in cattle flatulance! Maybe it is worth mentioning that some greenhouse gases are necessary for life as we know it since without greenhouse gases the daily energy from the Sun if not held by the greenhouse gases would lower the average temperature to totally freeze all the oceans and in fact there are theories that long ago when the composition of the Earth's atmosphere was quite different the whole planet did indeed go through a "snowball" stage where all the oceans did freeze. So we do need greenhouse gases to hold the heat from the Sun but the argument is about how much and what causes fluctuations in greenhouse gases. While we are on this subject, whose fault is the occasional volcanic eruptions which spew incredible amounts of gases and particles into the atmosphere which tends to cool the Earth! Just some random thoughts related to methane as a fuel and/or greenhouse gas.

Don Shillady
Retired SCientist/teen rodder