The fuel and emissions control systems on 80s era Asian cars were just as problematic as the systems used on Big Three cars. The only difference is less bad press.
Speaking of emissions control, I had an '86 F250 with a 460 engine and California emissions. The engine was a beast when the emissions control spaghetti was working, but a nightmare when it wasn’t. The carb flooded, backfired, then caught on fire. Fortunately I had a fire extinguisher handy and put it out, but had to replace the carb. The dealer took 5 weeks to get a new carb in, and it wasn’t a CA carb as I told him it needed. Had to wait longer for the right carb. Finally got the right carb but the emission control was all screwed up. It never ran right again.
As far as the emissions go, I had an '89 Corolla with a carb and CA emissions; the thing was a nightmare, I had to disable solenoids left and right. Had a supply of paperclips and wires in the car. The engine would hiccup periodically and nobody could fix it.
The same engine with EFI was known to go 300K miles on some cars.
So I guess its not always the engine, it could be what you put around it.
Still wondering why the Teslar S which does 0 to 60 in under 5 seconds, is capable of 130 miles per hour and all on nearly 90 MPGe can’t be considered as having the best motor/transmission of all times. I hear of one replacement due to noises in the rear and three BATTERY fires. I didn’t know that the gasoline tank on an internal combustion motor was part it’s motor transmission.
My point has always been that the electric motor has been and will be the best motor for personal transportation. If we can measure great motors irrespectful of sales or problems with other systems in a gas powered car, the Teslar stands alone among it’s direct competition in luxury sedan power plants. EVERYONE has lauded the Teslar S for it’s over the road performance, do in large part to it’s electric motor AND SINGLE SPEED TRANSMISSION. That in itself has to indicate how great an electric motor is.
The motor can’t be criticized because the auto industry still refuses to provide a competent battery because of it’s love and dependency on income from the ICE motor. On a smaller scale, the Chevy Spark EV has gotten great reviews but is for sale in only two states BY NECESSITY, California and Oregon while saddling it with artificially long charging times…wonder why. http://www.edmunds.com/chevrolet/spark-ev/2014/ The greatest motor of all time has been with us for decades and we still rave over polution generating ICE motors. I still say the best motor is the one most specific to the job at hand. The best motor for my Echo brush cutter is a dirty little two stroke; the best motor for a tractor is a diesel, and the best motor for a car is an electric.
http://green.autoblog.com/2013/07/18/cr-if-you-buy-a-chevy-spark-make-sure-its-the-ev/
dagosa 2:14PM edited 2:39PM Still wondering why the Teslar S which does 0 to 60 in under 5 seconds, is capable of 130 miles per hour and all on nearly 90 MPGe can't be considered as having the best motor/transmission of all times.
Make a habit of routinely accelerating to 60 mph in under 5 seconds and going 130 mph and lets see if that Tesla gets 90MPGe or has a 200 mile range.
The motor can't be criticized because the auto industry still refuses to provide a competent battery because of it's love and dependency on income from the ICE motor.
Refuses to?, or simply can’t. There’s a conspiracy theory to explain everything and they are usually just that, conspiracy theories.
Yep, no conspiracy theory needed, it’s VERY difficult and (obviously) expensive to provide enough battery size and power, with obvious compromises necessary in battery pack size (OVER 4’ X 8’) and vulnerability. I’ll be impressed by a $40,000 great EV, not a $80,000+ EV.
And if you apply that failure/fire rate to regular cars, our roads would be littered with flaming wrecks.
“The fuel and emissions control systems on 80s era Asian cars were just as problematic as the systems used on Big Three cars.”
+1
I can recall driving a new Datsun (California specification), circa 1980, and its acceleration was just as unpredictable as that of the Caddy V-8-6-4 that I drove a few years later. Most of the time, that Datsun was like a snail, but–every once in awhile–it took off like a scalded cat. I am very sure that this situation was the result of the jerry-rigged emissions system on the Datsun.
A car whose accelerator pedal response is unpredictable is…not safe.
@BLE
Make a habit of going 0 to 60 in an ICE car and see what mileage you get. Comparably to an electric car if you drive exactly the same way energy consumption will be at least 3 times as much…if not more. Again,…you guys keep dissing the batteries like I feel I should diss the fuel tanks on an internal combustion motor. The discussion is on the best motor, not the best energy delivery system. A soon as batteries have 250 mile ranges and are rechargeable to at least80% in less then an hour, soot champs will still long for and tout the “greatest motor” as being a some noxious gas burner with a gazillion moving parts whose main purpose is to extract more money in maintenance costs then the car ever costs to build.
We don’t need a conspiracy theory to acknowledge how the oil industry controls prices and forces consumption of their products to maximize their profits. We go to war and kill people at the request of oil interests…what’s a little task like delaying the production of worthwhile battery technology take ? Battery powerd cars that serve our purposes are here but overpriced to keep them off the market in large numbers to have an effect…while jokes like the Volt is sold by the same company that produces a very limited for sale, Spark EV.
@dagosa–that 90 MPGe is bullstuffing.
Electricity isn’t found in nature in a form readily harnessed–no going down into the electron mine–so when you run “on electricity,” you’re actually running on some other source of energy, generally something capable of boiling water.
The plant-to-plug efficiency of coal, at least, averages mid 30%, last I checked.
Take 90 MPGe * 0.35 = 31.5 MPG’s worth of burned stuff…not bad, but not conspicuously better than a current ICE of equivalent capacity. (A hybrid should beat it handily, both in efficiency and capacity.)
Electricity is not in a form ready to harness ? Tell that to the Chinese while we take that attitude and phase back industrial development and research only to have the them take the lead in solar cell technology. electricity IS in a form ready to harvest and in fewer then ten years, I feel it will make a significant contributions to private transportation in charginging electric vehicles in the sun belt. Then, the soot champions will have to eat their words as electric powered motor cars go whizzing by them up Pike’s Peak, around race tracks and to the mall. And do so, with a motor that has the potentially to be maintenance free and last decades compared to the average ICE motor. We had this debate before and even burning coal for electricity as just a percent of the total energy production as do, there is a significant savings in energy costs. They make up just a portion (57%) of the total energy production. You choose only the most inefficient to make your point…and that still is just a way of taking the topic away from the best motor…it’s still the electric !
BTW, production of PV ( photovoltaics) is the fastest growing energy technology IN THE WORLD. We will be harvesting electricity, SOON on very large scale.
photons =/= electrons.
Outside of providing 4.7 gigawatts to the flux capacitor 
I cannot think of an instance where natural electricity is harnessed to perform work.
Back on subject, GM 350 diesel conversions cannot be left off any list of “worst engines.”
I agree with the GM 350 conversions…
BTW, I thought all electricity being a force of nature was natural. Hate to think I was not using natural electricity but unnatural in my home. ;=)
Here are my candidates for the worst engine/transmission ever built. The 1953 Plymouth HyDrive had a torque converter which shared its oil with the engine. Behind the torque converter was a regular clutch and 3 speed manual transmission. Now the engine, a 217 cubic inch flat head 6 was a serviceable engine. There was nothing wrong with the 3 speed manual transmission. However, coupling this together with a torque converter that shared oil with the engine led to terrible problems. The engine and transmission couldn’t even be replaced by an engine out of a 1953 Plymouth with the regular set-up. The firewall was designed in the HyDrive models for this particular setup. Dodge also had a version in 1953 that used the “lift and clunk” transmission with a torque converter that shared oil with the newly introduced V-8 engine. This engine/transmission combination was called Gyro-Torque. There was also a GyroMatic. This version used the same engine and transmission, but had a fluid coupling instead of a torque converter. The fluid coupling did not share the same oil with the engine. I believe there may have been a Chrysler that had a torque converter that shared oil with the engine around 1952.
texases 3:02PM Yep, no conspiracy theory needed, it's VERY difficult and (obviously) expensive to provide enough battery size and power, with obvious compromises necessary in battery pack size (OVER 4' X 8') and vulnerability. I'll be impressed by a $40,000 great EV, not a $80,000+ EV.
The problem with conspiracy theorists is that even if there is no evidence whatsoever to support their conspiracy theory, that only proves the extent of the coverup.
On the Tesla topic; We have so many beaters on the street that are poorly maintained, with a tank full of combustible material and they don’t catch on fire that often. And the 3 Tesla’s have fires from their batteries-I know how and why, but just find the concept a bit amusing.
In reality, it ( these fires) could spell the doom of a great car with the best motor ! Even though the fires were slow developing and escapable, 3 in 19000 still has a Pinto ring to it. At least it only applies to the Yuppy crowd and not to those who can really cannot not afford them. It shows you the farce of using Lithium batteries that need their own cooling system under neath a vulnerable part of a car instead of using NiMH batteries which are still in use today delivering better performance then ever thought possible in old Toyota EVs and no record of fires. Now, why can’t they be used in larger applications then in hybrids which Toyota and others have for years ?
No, I don’t believe the World Trade center is a conspiracy and I don’t believe in the Rocky Knoll Kennedy conspiracy…but, making EVs less viable then they could be, is good business practice. Having cheap personal transportation with a refilling station potentially at ever telephone ( electric line) pole is a real scary proposition to the oil industry. The electric motor is the best motor…period !
http://www.evworld.com/article.cfm?storyid=1198
@asemaster: I don’t think the problem with the 8-6-4 was the computer technology available or processing speed–there were certainly process-controlled systems in factories, run by computers in the 80s, that were plenty efficient and reliable. For something single purpose, you don’t need that much processing power, and it’s not like the system had to manage nearly as many parameters as today’s vehicle computers. I think it’s more the hideously unreliable system of solenoids used to actuate the cylinder deactivation and the very poor programming and overall development of the system. For one thing, modern cylinder deactivation is oil actuated with one solenoid controlling the process. And what was GM thinking trying to do two different modes? Even now, I think cylinder deactivation is limited to 8-4 or 6-4 in engines.
Was it dagosa that mentioned: “I’m not so sure if I would trust a car that plays the Microsoft Windows bootup tune when the ignition is turned on though.” --Can’t say I disagree with you there, though Ford’s in-dash entertainment systems were designed by Microsoft (at least the software), and they are arguably the hardest to use and flakiest in the industry.
@oblivion
I can’t take credit for that remark but it is worth noting that an Apple logo on the dash could be a bigger selling point for most cars. But, making software for cars can be a loose/ loose proposition. The software alone can turn a good motor into a dog, along with the nauseating boot up tunes.
But the primitive fuel injection system coupled with an electronic valvetrain and ridiculously slow and unreliable computers was a disaster.
The computers at the time had NOTHING to do with the problem. First off the computer themselves were extremely reliable. The problem was in the components that connected to them. Second…Yes they were much slower then computers today…but they were MORE THEN CAPABLE of handling the simplistic software to run that system. There was no need for a 10bip machine…any .5mip processor could easily handle it.
I agree with @MikeInNH
Computers and software seem pretty stable and simple in cars. It’s usually the sensors IMO, and connections to the physical side that have been more of a problem. I feel Interactive gaming software can be much more sophisticated then that operating the systems on a car. Maybe protecting the computer from interference and physical damage could be an issue in older cars, but all seemed quite capable given their comparably simple tasks. Now, exposing sensors and solenoids to the elements and expecting ultimate reliability instead of hand operated cables and levers, that could be a problem. But, EFI for example has turned the corner and will become common place in the worse marine environments year by year, making good marine motors great. Just bought my first EFI outboard a couple years back. Now, the fuel delivery system and operating flawlessly has become the least of our worries compared to other maintenance; just like cars. My little EFI 40 hp outboard has more practical delivery power then a friend’s sometimes hesitating, stumbling carb fed 50 hp motor. No comparison !
His motor IS faster…when the motor is completely warm, the humidity is right, the gas is fresh and …