Most Manufacturers have a website that you can access and pay for a day or more access. Usually it's the exact same one they use at the dealerships. I was able to print the manuals to pdfs.
I often use this site for service info. It’s all pirated from ALLDATA. Currently a comprehensive subscription to service info is around $180/mo. A modern repair shop can’t function without service information.
I often wonder what it will be like in the distant future if/when gasoline becomes a luxury that collectors purchase to operate “antique” ICE automobiles. Will we have little craft refineries brewing single origin artisanal gasoline? What will it cost?
Ethanol stills and combustion engines modified to run on 100% ethanol. Cost to own and operate is a few thousand dollars (still + engine modifications + feedstock).
Wouldn't that undercut the point of owning a classic car? If old engines were run on a specific fuel and operate differently when burning ethanol, then you can't get the same experience while running on ethanol.
I'm sure there would be differing opinions on this (and some people might just want the chassis and not even care about the engine), but I'd expect some people to see modifying the engine as heresy. Those people would probably want some sort of synthetic petrol fuel.
Ethanol has 30% less energy in the same volume, so you're certainly going to travel 30% fewer miles on a full tank, and you're likely going to have 30% less horsepower too.
And you usually lose less torque than power, so it won't matter much unless your engine is close to underpowered for the car or you're driving on a race track.
>Is there actually a fair bit of variance that is adjusted for in your vehicle?
The modern computerized fuel-injected ICE automatically adjusts for an incredibly wide variety of octane ratings and component percentages such as alcohol content.
Vintage carburetted engines could require careful mechanical adjustment if they were to be optimized for something other than the prevailing vintage gasoline when issued.
>operate differently when burning ethanol
Not in a very noticeable way when running. The problem is pure ethanol does not have enough vapor pressure to cold-start many engines, depending on how cold. Plus in case of fire during the daytime, the faint blue alcohol flame is virtually undetectable. These problems are overcome with the 15 percent gasoline content normally found in E85. Or with methanol, M85.
>you're certainly going to travel 30% fewer miles on a full tank
That's the big difference. Methanol has even less energy per gallon even though a gallon weighs about the same as a gallon of ethanol. About 5 percent heavier than a gallon of gasoline too.
>and you're likely going to have 30% less horsepower too.
This is not correct. The alcohol will burn with a much better antiknock rating than regular gasoline and if you step on it you can usually extract more horsepower from the same kind of engine, even if you do bring it up to a bit higher RPM, it's smooth as butter and roaring for more.
We will likely still need refineries for all the other products. Refineries can be designed to favor output of in demand products like fuel oil (today.) If in the future we still need (say) asphalt and lubricants from crude oil, tapping out some amount of gasoline would still be possible.
Likely, yes, just as one can buy racing gasoline in various formulations in a 5 gallon pail by special order today, for about $20 per gallon.
Boutique run fuel production for special groups is already done today. Every year, the Reno Air Racing Association orders a batch of 160 octane aviation gas that has not been otherwise available since around the end of the Korean war, for one week of qualifying and racing. It costs “If you have to ask you can’t afford it” per gallon, I assume.
For what it's worth, as an auto tech we are limited in what we can do. For a vast majority of car makes, we have no access to anything that happens on the back-end of the control modules. We can look at some data stream on a scan tool, but that is limited at best. There is no debug access or anything of that nature. It's also well outside the skillset of most technicians to delve into software. Also, If you look into the pay plan of most dealer technicians, (flat rate/paid per job) then you understand why we don't want to spend all day looking at your turn signal. We won't get paid for most of the diagnosis time.
Your comment perfectly matches the overal attitude of the dealer, and it really pissed me off.
I bought a 60k eur car in the same building. I do expect you to waste a day finding an issue on a brand new car. If you don’t want to, don’t sell the POS cars.
I'm an automotive technician, I have worked for an EV startup. Some of the most frustrating diagnoses I have been involved in were caused by bugs in the software. We had one where a power trunk would not release if the vehicle was out in the sun. The ambient light sensor and the power trunk actuator were not even on the same network bus. We had a gut feeling that it was software, but by the time we were sure, it had been 2 full days of extensive testing.
The equalizing brake force from the other side sounds good until you factor in things like ride height differences from worn suspension or imperfect roads. Those and other transient forces disturb that left to right balance. Weird things like bump steer start happening when left to right measurements are off.
I’m a technician at a dealership, I can think of a couple of possibilities. First off, I think it’s an add-on remote start module. It’s possible that a different customer wanted one installed and then the deal fell through. Or they got the stock numbers mixed up and the tech installed it on the wrong car. That would explain no paperwork associated with the install. It could have been a “dealer trade” where your dealer trucked a car in from a different dealer. It’s not a huge deal, rip that stuff out and restore the stock wiring. We get 1 - 2 hours labor for that. It’s a cakewalk.
Indeed, one of the things Uber disrupted was many lifelong taxi owner-operator’s retirement plans. An NYC taxi medallion was a valuable asset. It was a promise for exclusive market access. Giant $1M loans were taken out to pay for this privilege. NYC just turned around and gave it all away to Uber. When the value of NYC taxi medallions fell, while Uber was heavily subsidizing fares, small business owners were going bankrupt. Several people committed suicide. Real people lost their livelihoods while Kalinick and his buddies congratulated each other.
Showtime made a show about uber" Super Pumped" on showtime rigth now. Apple made a movie about We Work ( Adam neuman). HULU made a show about Elizabeth Holms. "Theranos". Nobody made a movie about yellow taxi cab drivers who lost it all when their medallions went to the SH*T house after uBER decimation to the yellow cab medallion industry in NYC.
I teach at a technical college and we were the recipients of a milt-million dollar donation from Makenzie Scott. Our students are mostly low income people with little or college experience. They are not privileged and often have few prospects besides a dead end mcjob. They leave our school with skills in trades that can put food on their tables consistently. I have no idea what the vetting process was for our grant, all I’m saying is not all of the recipients are some fringe or fashionable interest.
