>From the international perspective, I agree, it isn't quite on topic. Everywhere except the US, diesel vehicals are readily available, so essentially, this would only focus on the US market. And most of the US market for diesel vehicals has nothing to do with sustainability. A local guy was thinking about starting his own business doing diesel toyota pickups, but decided against it because his major clients would not be people who needed pickups but wanted to run biodiesel, but off-roaders who like diesels because of superior low rpm torque. He didn't want to end up catering to this crowd.
The american diesel market is a bit bizarre. Anywhere else in the world, who would rescusitate a 25 year old, underpowered truck, or bother with a complicated engine transplant not intended by the design engineers. Some of the reponses to my question about getting a 1981 toyota hilux running again were interesting -- basically that it had been superseded by much better technology -- but here in the US, if we really want to run biodiesel in a truck, this is what we are reduced to. Of course, in the long run, cars in general cannot be sustainable, no matter what they are running on, but in the near term, biodiesel is a stop-gap measure to try to not do quite as much damage, I guess. On 5/29/06, Keith Addison <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Hi Joe > > >Hi Keith; > > > >I'm sure if I was in that situation I would be thrilled to find the info > >and pics on a website but how many people will need it vs the cost of > >storage space on your site? I suppose that is why you are asking for a > >show of hands? > > I wasn't worried about the cost. > > It's good information, but that's not the only point. Actually > there's very little about cars and engines at our site, and what is > there isn't this kind of information. It would be a new direction, > and I'm not sure we want to take it. > > Several people have said it's "great biodiesel information", but the > "biodiesel" bit is only coincidental. We quite often get asked about > converting gasoline cars to diesel, but only by Americans, because > diesels are rare in the US but they want to use biodiesel. Most of > them are after avoiding the high US gasoline prices (which aren't > high enough, IMHO). > > Diesels aren't rare anywhere else. > > Some halfwit sent me an abusive email offlist saying "doug was > offering you free of charge a great addition to the journey to > forever biodiesel information" but I'd "ungrasosly" spurned it and > virtually told him to "piss off". Having just asked Doug for the > third time please to send it to me so I could upload it. Sigh. > > He's an American. But if you're not an American, what does it have to > do with biodiesel? Doug's in Laos and I'm not sure why he does these > conversions, but it's not clear that it's so that people can use > biodiesel in these vehicles, I don't think that's the purpose. > > Juan says in his interesting post it should be in the biodiesel > section at JtF, but he also doesn't say the purpose of the > conversions there is to use biodiesel. > > Diesels use less fuel, but that's a different issue. Actually there's > also very little at JtF about fuel saving, or about carbon saving and > global warming. Of course we think it's important, but when you have > a focused project and a focused website you don't just dump > everything in there that you happen to think is important. Well we > don't anyway. > > It's the same with this, and I'm not convinced. > > A major point is that nothing just gets dumped into our website, > there's always a lot of work in it. It has to be tailored, especially > if it comes from a mailing list, it's the wrong shape. Doug wrote a > whole lot, a lot of it in response to questions, it'll take a lot of > sorting out to make it accessible on a web page, quite a few hours' > work. But there's already a queue of stuff waiting for upload. > > If anyone thinks it's not necessary, that I should stop making a fuss > and just dump it all in, then they're welcome to see how well this > works: Doug sent me a bunch of photographs with quite a lot of text > explanation in an email. I'll upload the photographs (only the > photographs) to a special folder for this at the JtF site (like I did > with Jim's venturi pics) and post a message here with the links, the > explanation, and links to the relevant threads in the list archives. > That's 75 messages in all. Have fun finding the two or three or five > paragraphs about your particular diesel conversion amongst it all. > > But that's all I can do quickly (tomorrow). > > If I organised the copy and put it in the JtF Biodiesel section, > people would straight away start asking why this gas car isn't there > nor that diesel engine, and then they'd want information on LPG > conversions too, and on anything else that saved fuel (fuel or > money), and that's just not what we're on about. > > I'm still not saying no, I'm open to persuasion, but those are my objections. > > It might all be missing the point anyway. Why can't we just do it > onlist, like we do everything else? It's a kind of workshop Doug's > conducting, that's what the list is for, among other things. If I > upload Doug's images to the folder at JtF and Doug posts the > explanations here for further discussion, wouldn't that be enough? > > Best > > Keith > > > > >Joe > > > >Keith Addison wrote: > > > > > It's not easy to help Doug, no reply, no pictures. I'll try cc'ing > > > this to him direct as well. > > > > > > This is good information Doug offered, in this thread and the > > > "American diesels" thread, quite a few people said so. > > > > > > Who thinks it should all be available in the Biodiesel section of the > > > Journey to Forever website? > > > > > > Best > > > > > > Keith Addison > > > Journey to Forever > > > > > > > > > > > >>Hello Doug > > >> > > >><snip> > > >> > > >>>Have pictures of bellhousing being made here but not sure where to > > >>>put it or send. > > >>> > > >>>Doug > > >> > > >>Will you check this message please? > > >> > > >>http://snipurl.com/qq84 > > >>[Biofuel] Conversion tyo diesel > > >> > > >>Impressive information you're providing. > > >> > > >>There's a folder at JtF reserved for photographs and so on for the > > >>use of the list. It's not actually part of the JtF website, it's just > > >>for us here at the list. Members can send me stuff the list wants to > > >>see and I'll put it there and post a link. > > >> > > >>Send me the pictures direct and I'll upload them and do that. > > >> > > >>I'm not against having this resource at JtF, and thanks for offering. > > >>I have to consider it though, also how to handle it, and just where > > >>to put it. Organising it would be quite a lot of work, and there's a > > >>queue. But don't be discouraged, let's see how it goes and we'll see > > >>what we can do. > > >> > > >>Quite a lot of people have been writing to Journey to Forever asking > > >>about diesel conversions, nearly all of them Americans. Quite a lot > > >>also want to know if "biofuel" (turns out to be biodiesel) will work > > >>in their gasoline motor. Some of them just get impatient when you > > >>tell them it won't. "Why not? What do you expect me to do then?" > > >> > > >>So it might be popular, but that's not the only criterion; it's not > > >>our focus, but we don't really make rules about it. People here like > > >>what you're doing, that's always a good recommendation. > > >> > > >>Please keep going. Send me the pictures. > > >> > > >>Best > > >> > > >>Keith > > > _______________________________________________ > Biofuel mailing list > Biofuel@sustainablelists.org > http://sustainablelists.org/mailman/listinfo/biofuel_sustainablelists.org > > Biofuel at Journey to Forever: > http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html > > Search the combined Biofuel and Biofuels-biz list archives (50,000 messages): > http://www.mail-archive.com/biofuel@sustainablelists.org/ > > _______________________________________________ Biofuel mailing list Biofuel@sustainablelists.org http://sustainablelists.org/mailman/listinfo/biofuel_sustainablelists.org Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Search the combined Biofuel and Biofuels-biz list archives (50,000 messages): http://www.mail-archive.com/biofuel@sustainablelists.org/
