Just a litle oil educion... In the heirarchy of oil refinement you have basic categories of refinement and production...they are as follows:

(most refined to least refined)
Jet Fuel/Kerosene
Premium Gas
Mid-Grade Gas
Regular Gas
Diesel
Heating Oil
Asphaltine (Use to make asphalt)

you can get each one of these products out of a single barrel of crude, however the amount are not going to be equally distributed across all categories...

just my educated $.02

 

I will definitely continue driving my SRT, but I might start looking more seriously into a daily driver now. I wonder if my job would mind me tying my horse up in the parking lot??? I heard in the Middle East, Saudi Arabia to be exact, that gas was still around $1.00 per gallon. Boy would that be nice. Maybe I will move there and drive a cab or something.

 

Thanks, Matt! Suspicions confirmed. So, if diesel is less expensive to refine & it has to be used less than gasoline just why is it priced so outrageously? Supply & demand don't seem to apply here.....wait, I think I see.....less diesel is being produced in order to produce more gasoline. A "limited" amount of oil so more of the barrel is being carved-up for gas.
Kerosene is more highly refined? You wouldn't think so considering how much smoke it produces.

 

I actually watched a segment on CNN yesterday about that guy. Is it harmful to your vehicle to cut your engine while in drive (autostick) and coming to a stop, and do you guys think the savings would be significant (if you're at the light longer than 10 seconds or so)?

Edit: After reading/thinking about this some more, I think this is a really, really bad idea. I'm just going to start driving the speed limit.

 

it does produce more smoke, but it is the factors that go into making it that i would guess make it more refined....to get it to its level of combustibility...definately not an expert on the subject...just someone who has done a little personal research in the past...and who has a good number of friends in the oil industry...meh.

 

I'm thinking that the more it's refined the more energy you could get out of a gallon hence why it's used as jet fuel. It's just confusing because I always thought (from who knows where!) that kerosene was a low energy fuel simply because it always appeared to be smoky.
Another mystery......

 

When did kerosene start smoking? Thats what they use around here to heat homes and garages "inside with no vent at all". Kerosene burns extremly clean and has no smoke at all that I've ever seen! Plus its basically jet fuel and I never seen a jet smoking either?

 

From my understanding, premium fuel actually has slightly less potential energy than regular fuel. Its main selling point is a higher ignition point.

 

Kerosene smokes in a lamp when the wick is improperly trimed or set to high for the amount of avaliable oxygen. Wick lamps are very low tech.

Jet engines supply plenty of air to the combustion chamber. Old ones smoked, not from the fuel, but from the lubricating oil pumped to the inner bearings to keep them cool. Newer, high bypass engines have overcome this problem and do not dump the oil into the combustion stream.

Kerosene is extremely clean burning. We used to put it thru our engines to burn off carbon deposits. But that was back in the old,old, really old days.

Wouldn't even think of doing it now.

roadster with a stick

 

Rock, to answer your question: Yes, this guy is going to wind up losing all the money he saves on gasoline fixing his tranny. You never want to coast with your engine off and the tranny in neutral. (unless they've made some drastic changes in automatic transmission technology that I'm not aware of).
If the guy was a true zealot he would have had a Honda with a manual tranny. Coasting is a great way to save on fuel usage, and staying off the brake is too. Sitting at long traffic lights with the motor running wastes gas also.
I drive for a living. I use a Honda Civic, and a 1 ton Chevy extended window van. On the highway at 70 mph I get around 38 mpg, but if I slow down to around 60 mph I can usually pull over 40 mpg. with my Civic.
Around town it's so easy to shut off the motor and coast, (sometimes for as long as a mile at a time) before popping the clutch to start the motor again. I know the skeptics say it's not worth the extra effort, but believe me it does add up.
On a recent 400 mile round trip that I make on a regular basis, I drove normally and averaged 38 mpg, but the next time I made the very same trip and raised my average to a little over 40 mpg using some of the techniques shown in that video. Figuring $4.00 per gallon, I saved over $20.00, enough for a cheap steak dinner for two at our local Texas Steak House.
Albeit, if you live where the roads are really flat, coasting isn't much of an option, but here in N.E. Ohio there are lots of hills. I live on the outskirts of Akron Ohio, most all my trips start with me driving West for about 7 miles, to a location where I purchase most of my groceries and gas up the car.
I discover that just by paying a little more attention to the lay of the land, and traffic, I can coast 4 of those 7 miles going west, and over 3 going east. In other words, cutting my fuel usage in half.
Like I said, it all adds up, but you need a manual tranny to really reap the benifits.

 

It's not exactly the same as what you're talking about, but my understanding is that newer stick shifts use a fuel cut-off when coasting in gear... You actually use less gas by staying in gear then shifting to neutral. However, your method tops them all... coasting without engine braking, and cutting the engine too...

 

There is a similar procees to corn ethanol using sea weed and algae. Things we dont eat would be a better fuel source, but seaweed doesnt vote or make political contributions so it will never happen.

 

Whales and Dolphins don't vote but they carry a lot of clout in DC.

Seaweed grows off the costs of California all the way up to Washington. Can't touch that "pristine" evironment off the coasts of Blue states.

Wouldn't want to mess up Barbara Striesand's view.
Or put windmills off the coast of Massachusetts and spoil Ted Kennedy's sailing.

roadster with a stick

 

As of this evening: full serve avgas if over 50 gallons purchased - $5.86, under 50 gallons - $5.99. Jet fuel - $5.99.

Does anyone know if diesel is higher because of storage and distribution costs?

 

Diesel is higher because I bought three diesel vehicles to cut costs.

roadster with a stick

 

I talked to my son in law about wind generation, he is a lineman in Montana. His comment was, the idea of wind generation is a great idea only once they built some of the facilities they forgot to ask the tree huggers if they could build power lines from the plants. I guess that was not in the orginal legislation and so guess who won.

 

Figures.....
We have many of the turbines popping up around the home state here. It makes sense, fairly cheap & everytime I see one it makes me think "well, there's less barrels or a few less cubic yards of natural gas used".
Just a thought - couldn't they bury the lines ( I know this would a heck of lot more expensive) & make everyone happy?

 

Bury the lines? Are you insane? Think what the EMF would do to the earthworms! Earthworms need love too.

 

LOL!!
Earthworms, how could I be so foolish as to forget the Earthworms!
I see a "Save The Earthworms" movement starting as we type!

 

burying power lines is a good idea, that way First Energy can't claim that "blowing salt" in the wintertime sticks to power wires and eats them.