That was my point.....muscle cars were called muscle cars(supercars back in the day) because of the high hp to weight ratio they had.

 

"The Man" called Stealth...

Said something about..."keeping you down"...

Chet had better starting pack up meow...teh blackhawks are on teh way!!

 

well for 1/2mv2, you have to look at what poisons are coming out of the exhaust with a cat on. then find something that the poisons can attach to in the exhaust so they arent emitted anymore.

 

High as in...

+2 Tons...so needed +600HP for any decent 0-60...

 

nah, i will just watch what i say better. i swear i have turett fingers.

 

Not sure where you are getting your facts from. Most cars were in the gross 3,000 lbs range back then despite how big they look. The low quarter mile and 0-60 times were usually due to traction problems created by the crappy stock tires they put on them.

 

Well let me qualify the statement...

I was being slightly silly so let me restate...

Muscle cars had "leaded" fuel which was good for power, but bad for everyone...and regardless of how much power they put down...the 1/4, trap, and 0-60 times were not "significantly" better than most sports cars today.

Example...

Plymouth would install a 426 CID Hemi rated at 425 bhp and 490 ft·lbf of torque. Combined with low weight, the 6-passenger Road Runner could run the 1/4 mile in 13.4 seconds at 105 mph (169 km/h).

The LS6, with 450 hp and 500 ft·lbf of torque, would rocket the Chevelle through the 1/4 mile in low to mid-13 second times at 105 to 108 mph.

Motor Trend tested a 1971 GTO with the 455, four-speed transmission, and 3.90 axle, and obtained a 0-60 mph time of 6.1 seconds and a quarter mile acceleration of 13.4 seconds at 102 mph (164 km/h).


They were loud, and cool looking...but nothing special...

 

wow, bland at best, but they do sound really nice.

 

I don't know about you but those are pretty respectable numbers to me. People on here complain about finicky throttle......imagine having a 400hp carburated engine that burns the tires off everytime the secondaries open up. These cars were traction limited. A 0-60 time of 6 seconds does not equate to a 13 second run so there was obviously a ton of ground made up after traction was caught.

 

Actually, silicon based solar panels are non-toxic. 25% of the earth crust consists of silicon, if silicon was even remotely toxic we would all be dead by now. There's even more silicon than water!

True, crystalline silicon is not inexpensive, but not that bad compared to what people pay for homes nowadays (whether the roof only protects from rain or also produces heat and electricity doesn't affect the house-price tremendously and saves money in the long run).
This is why I pointed out thinfilm photovoltaics, which is basically window glass with a thin layer of amorphous and microcrystalline silicon. So the solar panels are relatively inexpensive. http://www.uni-solar.com/interior.asp?id=102
Expensive is basically the equipment needed to produce them.

An oerlikon thinfilm solarmodule-fab with a yearly output of 160 MW cost around $250 million. http://www.oerlikon.com/ecomaXL/inde...l&udtx_id=3277

If the US would spend 1% of its yearly defense budget on solar fabs for the next 20 years, it could produce 56.4 GW of solar modules per year.
These clean solar modules produce would produce about the same power as 12 nuclear power plants. That is 12 nuclear power plants every single year.

I don't say there's no market at all, I just don't see a hydrogen economy substituting the current hydrocarbon economy any time in the near or even far future.

Efficiency is not bad if you look at fuel cells, but fuel cells are still worse than batteries and fuel cells are currently not affordable. Also, the efficiency of electrolysis is also worse than storing electric energy directly in a battery. Besides, a fuel cell driven car still requires a battery as the fuel cell cannot simply store electricity from the braking electric motor. After all, the costs of the fuel cells is one of the reasons why Mazda and BMW still work on the far less efficient and less clean hydrogen internal combustion engines.

As far as costs of hydrogen goes:
According to this study, small quantities of hydrogen costs about $100/kg and an entire truck with liquid hydrogen costs $7/kg (high volume price). And this is hydrogen produced from fossil fuels and not electrolysis. Not to mention electrolysis from clean electricity.
http://www.dotynmr.com/PDF/Doty_FutureFuels.pdf
http://www.dotynmr.com/PDF/Doty_H2Price.pdf

 

Oh I agree...but its rather pointless to have a 1000HP monster if it fails to do anything except go fast in a straight line and reduce your tires to plumes of smoke...

At least in my world...yeah its nifty...but not practical...I like going fast and doing more than holding the steering wheel straight...

 

lol....oh I'm sure if they released 400hp rx8 tomorrow, everyone on this board would want one and I'm sure we would all have grins from ear to ear while doing a smokey burnout in them too! ;-)

 

I need to post this just because it needs to be said. I have no harsh feelings towards any of you personally. Anytime you have a topic that is the subject of debate, opinions can run strong and sometimes things can get out of hand. As far as I'm concerned we are all friends here and we just disagree on a topic. That's it. I can be a bit harsh sometimes and for that I apologize. I think I should go paste this in the global warming thread too.

 

^^^^ +1 I didn't know there was a global warming thread....I'm all over it! lol

 

Heh...What a boring world it would be if we all agreed on everything...

Wait...then again...if we could all agree to stop believing in superstitions or that petty bickering was counter productive the world would probably be a better place...

But then I wouldn't have any excuses to lolcatz people to into submission...

I know I had a point about something...

 

Touche...

 

What?!? Where?!!?

I can totally weave in how we should bring back leaded fuel...and that its all a conspiracy!!

 

me too, i love debates, but i tend to yell sometimes. we all need a

 

lol....I think we should turn this into a debate class.

From now on the Hydrogen guys have to defend the petrolium side and the petrolium guys have to defend Hydrogen. Should make for some good learning on both sides.

I'll start it off.......Hydrogen sucks as a fuel, only retarded things in this universe like the sun burn the stuff!!!

 

Fortunately the sun doesn't burn it in an internal combustion engine!

Maybe I'll start playing Biodiesel advocate for a while. Perhaps even Ethanol advocate. That should be fun! We all know Butanol is the future anyways!

 

But if it did, what kind of car would that engine be in? It might be fun cruising the universe via a sun that burns it's fuel using a rotary engine in an intergalactic space car.

I'm getting loopy now, I better eat something...

 

rotary = stargate !

 

i just have to say that ethanol sucks a$$, but hydrogen RULES!!!

 

Uhh, never said solar panels were toxic. Like the manufacturing of many products, its toxic to produce. Such is the case for silicon solar panels. The earth does not contain any silicon in elemental form. The process to separate it is nasty.

Its the same for aluminum, except for it requires more energy than is dirty. That is why recycling a can is like saving the same amount of energy as not watching 6 hours of tv.

http://www.freepatentsonline.com/4457903.html

 

Back on topic, I do not see hydrogen as a possible future because the first law of thermodynamics makes so energy conversation from state to state is never 100% efficient. So using energy source (natural gas???) to energy to split water into hydrogen, then hydrogen to recombine to make energy. That adds to steps and hydrogen cells are very unlikely to become as efficient as gasoline motors (unlike power plant energy to batter powered cars... which i still want to see a good application though (Tesla???)). Even if one uses energy sources like hydroelectric plants, that's just too much upfront costs to be viable.

Second, new infrastructure will be need to create a hydrogen economy. Again too much upfront costs.

My opinion is that we are gonna see a future full of fossil fuels. I think the next step of energy use is gonna be liquidification of coal. If any one else here knows history, it was viable during WWI and WW2 for the Germans and during apartheid for South Africa. America has massive coal reserves and the point of profitable return is around $20 per barrel of oil (some sources). Even if the price of coal increases, still lower than our $96 oil today. Once again, infrastructure will be expensive to produce the refineries necessary but still much cheaper than the other possible ways.

And, there is so much coal in the world, there are massive coal fires everywhere, in Pennsylvania, China, and Australia, all underground. And no one cares.