Daily Shaarli
June 14, 2023
We’re now more than 20 years removed from the arrival of electronically controlled diesel engines, so why are mechanical diesel engines still part of the conversation? For one thing, mechanical diesels remain relevant because a solid majority of them are still ticking. For another, many OEM’s and remanufacturers continue to produce, repair or rebuild the mechanical mills of old. But exactly why do mechanical diesels continue to be so desirable? In a word, reliability. No matter how refined, clean-burning, and powerful new-age, electronically controlled diesel engines become, their added complexity, shorter injection and turbo system lifespans, and higher costs continue to keep their simpler, mechanical counterparts in high demand.
To be sure, there are undeniable performance advantages associated with electronically controlled diesel engines. But when it comes to million-mile durability, mechanical remains king. This time, we’re spotlighting why mechanical diesels are more reliable than their late-model electronic siblings. And because the internal hard parts are essentially the same between these two engine types, it means the pitfalls of an electronic engine often exist in the electronics themselves. Below, we’ll cover everything from common injector issues to VGT turbo failure, and even the crippling effect a faulty sensor can have on an electronically controlled engine.
Launched in 2012 with the Tesla Model S, the NACS plug predates the widespread CCS—and now succeeds it—as the primary EV connector used in the United States. Found at Supercharger stations, the NACS connector is capable of up to 250 kilowatts of DC fast-charging following the upgrade to Tesla's Supercharger V3.
By contrast, the newer CCS was designed with loftier capabilities in mind. It's already capable of 350 kW at some Electrify America stations, and is designed to handle up to 800 kW with an upgrade to liquid-cooled cables. That's more than triple the power of a Tesla Supercharger V3, and more than twice what the most powerful Electrify America stalls can put out. When it arrived as a competing standard, and was adopted by most of the auto industry, it seemed only a matter of time before its superior potential would force even the pioneering Tesla to switch over. (To some degree, it has: a CCS variant is Tesla's standard connector in Europe.)
Fire has a natural place in the ecosystem; it can be a very healthy thing. Take for example serotinous conifers. (“Serotinous” is a great Scrabble word, by the way.) The pine cones in serotinous conifers require some sort of event like a wildfire to open, drop their seeds and propagate the species.
Fire can also “clean up” a forest and make room for new and healthy plants and trees, so unless a town, power lines, utility plant, or another thing, which are also known as “values,” are threatened, the land management agencies may let a fire burn. This works very well in forests that are somewhere near the “healthy” range, but as any Boy Scout knows, the more fuel, the bigger the fire. So these days, it is not uncommon to get bigger and more destructive fires, which in turn make New Yorkers think that the world is coming to an end. //
Nitro Nora
3 hours ago
Correct, "climate change" has nothing to do with this. Back in the 1990's we had vast tracts of land that were hand planted by the USFS, hundreds of thousands of trees every year. Too big of an investment to let burn. "Prescribed burns" in these plantations were exactly that. Flame height and perimeter was predetermined. The days it was done were approved on a day-by-day basis by the air quality board in the County.
This way, we cleaned up the forest without losing our investment and with no catastrophic air quality disasters. Also, the clear cuts were designed to be fire breaks on a landscape scale. We also had wood cutting areas where people could take all the dead and downed wood on the forest floor. Thousands of people did that & it was a big help keeping the forest clean. And of course the cattle grazing permitees managed the cattle and that also helped keep the forest clean.
Then the "environmentalists" got their foot in the door and eventually took over the agency. After a few years of "doing it naturally," (basically hands off) we now get catastrophic fires almost annually. They have no clue.
Of course we would all like to have a "pristine" forest, but because humans have transformed the landscape with towns, farms, ranches, cities, highways and railroads, we can't allow these giant fires any more. We must take a pro-active management role to keep the forests healthy. The greenies don't have any idea how to manage forests on the landscape scale. The greenies have destroyed our forests. //
https%3A%2F%2Fwww.oregon.gov%2Fodf%2Ffire%2Fdocuments%2Fodf-century-fire-history-chart.pdf