Ace-Garageguy Posted January 21, 2019 Share Posted January 21, 2019 CLICK HERE >>>>>>> http://www.rokemneedlearts.com/carsindepth/wordpressblog/?p=1028 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Richard Bartrop Posted January 21, 2019 Share Posted January 21, 2019 Though not strictly speaking a bellytank, still a neat piece of history. That would make an interesting subject for a model. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Joe Handley Posted January 21, 2019 Share Posted January 21, 2019 Wonder how fast an electric belly tanker would go with today's tech......... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Richard Bartrop Posted January 21, 2019 Share Posted January 21, 2019 Apparently the current electric LSR is 341.4 MPH Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ace-Garageguy Posted January 21, 2019 Author Share Posted January 21, 2019 2 hours ago, Richard Bartrop said: Though not strictly speaking a bellytank, still a neat piece of history... Which is why I put "bellytank" in quotes. Still, the basic shape and layout predates real postwar bellytankers by 44 years. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Richard Bartrop Posted January 21, 2019 Share Posted January 21, 2019 They already knew a fair amount about aerodynamics even back there. Here's the Stanley brothers using the same approach which their steam powered "Woggle Bug" Those surplus belly tanks were just a quick and dirty way to get the same results. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ace-Garageguy Posted January 21, 2019 Author Share Posted January 21, 2019 (edited) 31 minutes ago, Richard Bartrop said: They already knew a fair amount about aerodynamics even back there. Here's the Stanley brothers using the same approach which their steam powered "Woggle Bug"... Those surplus belly tanks were just a quick and dirty way to get the same results. Exactly...and cheap. And I always think it's interesting and worthwhile to put this kind of stuff in historical perspective. Loads of folks think electric cars are something new, but the first production one was built in 1884, and electrics held the land speed record until around 1900. Lotsa folks think gasoline-ethanol blends are something recent too, but ol' Henry Ford was pushing the idea in the 1930s (in part to help depression-hammered farmers find a market for their corn). Edited January 21, 2019 by Ace-Garageguy Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Richard Bartrop Posted January 21, 2019 Share Posted January 21, 2019 57 minutes ago, Ace-Garageguy said: Exactly...and cheap. And I always think it's interesting and worthwhile to put this kind of stuff in historical perspective. Loads of folks think electric cars are something new, but the first production one was built in 1884, and electrics held the land speed record until around 1900. Lotsa folks think gasoline-ethanol blends are something recent too, but ol' Henry Ford was pushing the idea in the 1930s (in part to help depression-hammered farmers find a market for their corn). No argument there. Electric trucks? Been there, done that. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Joe Handley Posted January 21, 2019 Share Posted January 21, 2019 6 hours ago, Ace-Garageguy said: Exactly...and cheap. And I always think it's interesting and worthwhile to put this kind of stuff in historical perspective. Loads of folks think electric cars are something new, but the first production one was built in 1884, and electrics held the land speed record until around 1900. Lotsa folks think gasoline-ethanol blends are something recent too, but ol' Henry Ford was pushing the idea in the 1930s (in part to help depression-hammered farmers find a market for their corn). It would have neen interesting to see how electricity and alcohol fueled vehicles could have evolved without WW1 and the 18th Amendment, or the continued ban on hemp growth, since that was Ford's preferred feed stock. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Richard Bartrop Posted January 21, 2019 Share Posted January 21, 2019 5 hours ago, Joe Handley said: It would have been interesting to see how electricity and alcohol fueled vehicles could have evolved without WW1 and the 18th Amendment, or the continued ban on hemp growth, since that was Ford's preferred feed stock. Good question. Edison developed a new battery for electric cars that charged faster, and held more charge, but gasoline power was already pulling ahead by the time he came up with it. What's driving battery technology now is all those cell phones, tablets and laptops. From what I understand, the big deal breaker with alcohol is that the US doesn't have enough farmland to both fuel every car, and keep everyone fed. One result of WWI was a boom in trucking. One of my favourite stories is how during WWI, people were agonizing over how to find enough railcars to transport all those trucks, until some genius suggested that they could just drive them. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ace-Garageguy Posted January 21, 2019 Author Share Posted January 21, 2019 (edited) 1 hour ago, Richard Bartrop said: ...From what I understand, the big deal breaker with alcohol is that the US doesn't have enough farmland to both fuel every car, and keep everyone fed... The real big deal-breaker is that by many metrics, for most accepted processes for fermenting, distilling and distributing corn-alcohol fuel, it takes more energy to make the stuff than you get back when you burn it in vehicle engines. (There's also the little problem that ethanol contains less energy than an equivalent volume...like a gallon...of gasoline, so vehicles not specifically optimized to work most efficiently on alcohol get reduced performance and worse fuel mileage...and there are unfortunate side effects that can damage older vehicles' fuel systems over time.) I worked with a pilot solar-distillery program back in the early 1980s that could have gone a long way towards turning the balance sheet from red to black. I ran my personal Triumph GT6 on solar-distilled ethanol for some time. There are also better feedstock-plants available for making ethanol that are NOT foodstuffs, grow fast, and are cheaper than corn. But as with most things humans are involved in today, there's FAR more hand wringing, posturing, politicizing, arguing, foot-dragging and finding reasons why NOT to do something than there is just getting down, getting dirty, and making the dammed tech work. NOTE: Last time I looked, Brazil was doing the best job of getting alcohol fuel from biomass: sugar cane. Edited January 21, 2019 by Ace-Garageguy Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mark Posted January 21, 2019 Share Posted January 21, 2019 If more houses had had electricity at the turn of the century, electric cars could have come out on top. Instead, most houses outside of major cities were then lit by kerosene lamps. Refining crude oil to get kerosene resulted in large quantities of waste by-products, including gasoline. Some gasoline was sold as cleaning fluid, but not much. Cars running on gasoline created a market for something that was, at the time, largely being dumped back into the ground. By the time the need for massive amounts of kerosene for lamps was eliminated, gasoline was entrenched as automotive fuel. Alcohol was in the running as an anti-knock additive in the Thirties...tetraethyl lead got the nod mainly because it could be patented as an additive, while alcohol couldn't. Ethyl Corporation = General Motors + Standard Oil. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Richard Bartrop Posted January 21, 2019 Share Posted January 21, 2019 55 minutes ago, Ace-Garageguy said: NOTE: Last time I looked, Brazil was doing the best job of getting alcohol fuel from biomass: sugar cane. I've heard they're doing a pretty good job of it, but Brazil also a lot fewer cars than the US (43 million total vs 255 million, or 207 per 1000 people vs 910 per 1000, according to Wikipedia) Whatever you use, even if humans can't eat it, you're still going to need land to grow it on. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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