Fuel prices

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Sweep
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Re: Fuel prices

Post by Sweep »

reohn2 wrote: 5 Aug 2022, 8:41pm
Mike Sales wrote: 5 Aug 2022, 9:06am
reohn2 wrote: 5 Aug 2022, 8:51am
My point is that £2per litre hasn't stopped people driving or significantly reduced car use,but due to transport costs has driven up the cost of living whilst the fuel companies have made quadrupled their profits as crude oil prices have fell.
There is no alternative transport other than the car for most people and won't be for the foreseeable due a titally inadiquate public transport system which like the care sector is currently is run for profit not as a service to the public.
True, as far as it goes, but reducing car use has to be a part of our zero-emission future.
The present unsustainable situation has grown up over many decades of encouraging car use, not least by ignoring the external costs, many of which are paid by the carless. Eviscerated public transport is a product of this.
One of the sticks driving the change has to be increased costs. The necessity to run a car is itself a cost of our disfunctional system, and yes, better public transport is important. However, the present distribution of work, shopping, housing and schooling is a product of the distorted economics etc. over many years, and will not be easy to reverse, but it is imperative, for the future of all that it is reversed.
Actually, I suspect that the age of many of the forum members makes only the near future relevant!
I totally agree,there isn't the infrastructure or the political will generally to get people out of theirs cars for unnecessary use,which is what I've been saying.
Things won't change easily in the UK due to the outlook of the public and politics.
Yep - will be difficult - but I wouldn't just diss the UK.
From my experience of Italy, there is far worse.
Many there consider the car part of their body - giving up the car would be akin to amputation.
Sweep
Biospace
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Re: Fuel prices

Post by Biospace »

PedallingSquares wrote: 4 Aug 2022, 6:03pm
Keep the engine running to keep the aircon/inside of the car cool 8)
I start my car 10-15mins before I use it in Winter to defrost the screen and get the seats and interior up to temperature.
The fuel it burns stood still is minimal and worth it to be comfortable.
My current car has the stupid stop/start feature which is turned off!
This doesn't only damage your engine and waste huge amounts of fuel but unless you're on the top of a windy hill with no neighbours, pollutes the air pretty badly. You can buy a mains-powered engine pre-heater for very little money, which will pay for itself after just one winter if the engine is anything more than tiny.
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mjr
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Re: Fuel prices

Post by mjr »

Sweep wrote: 5 Aug 2022, 9:05pm
reohn2 wrote: 5 Aug 2022, 8:41pm
Mike Sales wrote: 5 Aug 2022, 9:06am

True, as far as it goes, but reducing car use has to be a part of our zero-emission future.
The present unsustainable situation has grown up over many decades of encouraging car use, not least by ignoring the external costs, many of which are paid by the carless. Eviscerated public transport is a product of this.
One of the sticks driving the change has to be increased costs. The necessity to run a car is itself a cost of our disfunctional system, and yes, better public transport is important. However, the present distribution of work, shopping, housing and schooling is a product of the distorted economics etc. over many years, and will not be easy to reverse, but it is imperative, for the future of all that it is reversed.
Actually, I suspect that the age of many of the forum members makes only the near future relevant!
I totally agree,there isn't the infrastructure or the political will generally to get people out of theirs cars for unnecessary use,which is what I've been saying.
Things won't change easily in the UK due to the outlook of the public and politics.
Yep - will be difficult - but I wouldn't just diss the UK.
From my experience of Italy, there is far worse.
Many there consider the car part of their body - giving up the car would be akin to amputation.
But many Italians will gladly give up their car if you offer them beer: https://www.betterpoints.ltd/blog/watch ... terpoints/
MJR, mostly pedalling 3-speed roadsters. KL+West Norfolk BUG incl social easy rides http://www.klwnbug.co.uk
All the above is CC-By-SA and no other implied copyright license to Cycle magazine.
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PedallingSquares
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Re: Fuel prices

Post by PedallingSquares »

Biospace wrote: 5 Aug 2022, 10:19pm
PedallingSquares wrote: 4 Aug 2022, 6:03pm
Keep the engine running to keep the aircon/inside of the car cool 8)
I start my car 10-15mins before I use it in Winter to defrost the screen and get the seats and interior up to temperature.
The fuel it burns stood still is minimal and worth it to be comfortable.
My current car has the stupid stop/start feature which is turned off!
This doesn't only damage your engine and waste huge amounts of fuel but unless you're on the top of a windy hill with no neighbours, pollutes the air pretty badly. You can buy a mains-powered engine pre-heater for very little money, which will pay for itself after just one winter if the engine is anything more than tiny.
Wrong :roll:
1.The Engine benefits from being warmed up.
2.It wastes next to nothing.Or rather the waste is minimal and worth it.
3.I don't care about air 'pollution'.The air is polluted anyway and has been since the Industrial revolution :roll:
4.I really don't care so long as my car is warm when I get in it.
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6.5_lives_left
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Re: Fuel prices

Post by 6.5_lives_left »

pete75 wrote: 3 Aug 2022, 10:36pm But it will be mainly drivers who are paying that subsidy through taxation. People who drive pay the bulk of UK tax. It's the group of people who don't drive, mainly the poor and elderly, who are being subsidised by the tax drivers pay. Remember motorists don't just pay fuel duties/tax, they pay a hell of a lot of income and others taxes as well.

Someone I know well pays over £100,000 per annum income tax, never mind VAT, fuel taxes, VED etc. Please tell me how her driving is being subsidised by anyone else. Before I retired I was on a modest salary but was still stopped almost £2000 in income tax and NI each month - I doubt my motoring was being susbsidised by others either.
My emphasis

This page on the office for national statistics website contains a figure (figure 1) showing the weekly earnings of a full time employee on median salary, between years 2011 to 2021. You claim that your stoppages were circa £2k. A full time worker on median salary in 2021 has to work about three weeks to earn what you paid in stoppages each month. I wouldn't call your salary modest, I would say it was somewhat fat when compared against median salary.

How many years does your median salary worker have to work to pay your acquaintance's annual income tax bill?
reohn2
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Re: Fuel prices

Post by reohn2 »

Sweep wrote: 5 Aug 2022, 9:05pm Yep - will be difficult - but I wouldn't just diss the UK.
From my experience of Italy, there is far worse.
Many there consider the car part of their body - giving up the car would be akin to amputation.
Agreed,and developing countries are seeing and copying the "West's" example of car use and energy hungry consumerism.
BTW,just to be clear,I'm no inoccent in this and if anyone thinks they're even making a small dent in the use of petrochemicals to transport themselves they'd be wrong,not that I'm criticising their efforts.
Yesterday I drove from Sidmouth to where I live(close to Haydock Park racecourse)275miles using M5/M6 it was chocablock traffic all the way both north and southbound,it took 8hours due to delays and jams due to sheer volume of traffic and the odd bumper bender crash by people tailgating,etc.
I shudder to think how long it would have taken by public transport,we could of course gone to Southport(20 miles west of us) for our hols but there wasn't a Folk Festival there last week :wink: .
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Biospace
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Re: Fuel prices

Post by Biospace »

PedallingSquares wrote: 6 Aug 2022, 12:31am
Biospace wrote: 5 Aug 2022, 10:19pm
PedallingSquares wrote: 4 Aug 2022, 6:03pm
Keep the engine running to keep the aircon/inside of the car cool 8)
I start my car 10-15mins before I use it in Winter to defrost the screen and get the seats and interior up to temperature.
The fuel it burns stood still is minimal and worth it to be comfortable.
My current car has the stupid stop/start feature which is turned off!
This doesn't only damage your engine and waste huge amounts of fuel but unless you're on the top of a windy hill with no neighbours, pollutes the air pretty badly. You can buy a mains-powered engine pre-heater for very little money, which will pay for itself after just one winter if the engine is anything more than tiny.
Wrong :roll:
1.The Engine benefits from being warmed up.
2.It wastes next to nothing.Or rather the waste is minimal and worth it.
3.I don't care about air 'pollution'.The air is polluted anyway and has been since the Industrial revolution :roll:
4.I really don't care so long as my car is warm when I get in it.

Are you able to explain your thinking as to how an engine benefits from sitting idling for 10 to 15 minutes on an icy morning?
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PedallingSquares
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Re: Fuel prices

Post by PedallingSquares »

Biospace wrote: 6 Aug 2022, 1:27pm Are you able to explain your thinking as to how an engine benefits from sitting idling for 10 to 15 minutes on an icy morning?
Yes.
The question is are you able to explain why you think it doesn't :wink:
Biospace
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Re: Fuel prices

Post by Biospace »

PedallingSquares wrote: 6 Aug 2022, 5:21pm Yes.
The question is are you able to explain why you think it doesn't :wink:

The longest possible time it takes an engine to warm is by idling it as there's little or no load. Excess fuel is injected until an engine is up to temperature, it doesn't all combust and with cool internal surfaces starts to remove oil from the bore walls if temperatures remain low for long, which they do if there's no load as when idling. Added to which there is less efficient mixing of fuel and air at very low engine speeds and also at lower temperatures, resulting in more unburnt fuel in the cylinders.

With diesel in particular, but petrol also, this liquid fuel leads to sooting up of injectors and valves (and spark plugs in a petrol engine). If allowed to go on for long, as when started and idled from stone cold, it runs past the pistons and rings into the sump, diluting the engine oil, causing its level to rise (which in itself can cause damage) and lubricating bearings less well. This used to plague petrol-paraffin tractors, but they had a drain tap on the sump to remove this excess oil/fuel.

Having the heater on throughout this process makes all the above even worse, as the engine remains cool even longer. Modern engines are so much more efficient than they used to be that idling often isn't enough to reach working temperature.

As a result, excess wear occurs in particular to the camshaft and the bores, but all bearings can suffer if an engine isn't subsequently worked so hard the oil reaches close to 100C (not easy) and the dissolved fuel evaporates off. Some of the liquid fuel will make its way past the exhaust and through to the catalytic converter, which are damaged by unburnt fuel, misfires from sooted-up plugs etc.

There are a host of other nasties which can result, especially with the crazy amount of complexities relating to emission control on modern engines and their very tight tolerances. I've seen the results of one such engine - it originally had a failed cat, which had already been replaced by a garage which hadn't bothered to see why it had failed. The EGR side of things was totally gummed up and had to be replaced along with the cat and an injector.

Although there were only 60-odd thousand miles showing, the engine felt as loose as one with 10 times that mileage. The owner - a cousin - was advised to sell, having paid for her (well into four figure) repair. As with almost all mechanical failure, you get away with something for a while, but then the viscious circle kicks in and things can go wrong pretty fast, without warning.
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mjr
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Re: Fuel prices

Post by mjr »

180p/l in Hardwick End near King's Lynn this morning,
172p/l in North Wootton nr KL,
174p/l in Sutterton,
172p/l in Grantham,
175p/l near Nottingham,
180p/l in Derby.

All with free 0.1p. All oil company, not supermarket.
MJR, mostly pedalling 3-speed roadsters. KL+West Norfolk BUG incl social easy rides http://www.klwnbug.co.uk
All the above is CC-By-SA and no other implied copyright license to Cycle magazine.
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Cugel
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Re: Fuel prices

Post by Cugel »

Biospace wrote: 6 Aug 2022, 7:57pm
PedallingSquares wrote: 6 Aug 2022, 5:21pm Yes.
The question is are you able to explain why you think it doesn't :wink:

The longest possible time it takes an engine to warm is by idling it as there's little or no load. Excess fuel is injected until an engine is up to temperature, it doesn't all combust and with cool internal surfaces starts to remove oil from the bore walls if temperatures remain low for long, which they do if there's no load as when idling. Added to which there is less efficient mixing of fuel and air at very low engine speeds and also at lower temperatures, resulting in more unburnt fuel in the cylinders.

With diesel in particular, but petrol also, this liquid fuel leads to sooting up of injectors and valves (and spark plugs in a petrol engine). If allowed to go on for long, as when started and idled from stone cold, it runs past the pistons and rings into the sump, diluting the engine oil, causing its level to rise (which in itself can cause damage) and lubricating bearings less well. This used to plague petrol-paraffin tractors, but they had a drain tap on the sump to remove this excess oil/fuel.

Having the heater on throughout this process makes all the above even worse, as the engine remains cool even longer. Modern engines are so much more efficient than they used to be that idling often isn't enough to reach working temperature.

As a result, excess wear occurs in particular to the camshaft and the bores, but all bearings can suffer if an engine isn't subsequently worked so hard the oil reaches close to 100C (not easy) and the dissolved fuel evaporates off. Some of the liquid fuel will make its way past the exhaust and through to the catalytic converter, which are damaged by unburnt fuel, misfires from sooted-up plugs etc.

There are a host of other nasties which can result, especially with the crazy amount of complexities relating to emission control on modern engines and their very tight tolerances. I've seen the results of one such engine - it originally had a failed cat, which had already been replaced by a garage which hadn't bothered to see why it had failed. The EGR side of things was totally gummed up and had to be replaced along with the cat and an injector.

Although there were only 60-odd thousand miles showing, the engine felt as loose as one with 10 times that mileage. The owner - a cousin - was advised to sell, having paid for her (well into four figure) repair. As with almost all mechanical failure, you get away with something for a while, but then the viscious circle kicks in and things can go wrong pretty fast, without warning.
I've a feeling that the fellow you're mainly writing to is not very interested in that sort of thing. He is living his one life as he pleases, even if it displeases many others having to breath his car-fug. :-) "I don't care" seems to be the, er, logic involved in most interchanges of view.

Perhaps The Thatcher-Thing persuaded the lad that there is no such thing as society, only individuals striving to be car-mad alienates in the great car culture she envisaged for us all? Nothing outside the windscreen matters, see?

Cugel
“Practical men who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence are usually the slaves of some defunct economist”.
John Maynard Keynes
Biospace
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Re: Fuel prices

Post by Biospace »

Cugel wrote: 6 Aug 2022, 10:08pm I've a feeling that the fellow you're mainly writing to is not very interested in that sort of thing. He is living his one life as he pleases, even if it displeases many others having to breath his car-fug. :-) "I don't care" seems to be the, er, logic involved in most interchanges of view.

Perhaps The Thatcher-Thing persuaded the lad that there is no such thing as society, only individuals striving to be car-mad alienates in the great car culture she envisaged for us all? Nothing outside the windscreen matters, see?

Cugel
Aye, I gathered that from his replies, but thought there might be at least one or two others who don't realise you're storing up a heap of trouble for your car doing this sort of thing regularly, as well as poisoning your neighbours - there's usually little or no wind when it's icy. So I wrote it for those with open minds.

EVs are the very opposite of the panacea some pretend but they do improve things, especially so when you read of this sort of wilful ignorance.
Pebble
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Re: Fuel prices

Post by Pebble »

Biospace wrote: 6 Aug 2022, 7:57pm
PedallingSquares wrote: 6 Aug 2022, 5:21pm Yes.
The question is are you able to explain why you think it doesn't :wink:

The longest possible time it takes an engine to warm is by idling it as there's little or no load. Excess fuel is injected until an engine is up to temperature, it doesn't all combust and with cool internal surfaces starts to remove oil from the bore walls if temperatures remain low for long, which they do if there's no load as when idling. Added to which there is less efficient mixing of fuel and air at very low engine speeds and also at lower temperatures, resulting in more unburnt fuel in the cylinders.

With diesel in particular, but petrol also, this liquid fuel leads to sooting up of injectors and valves (and spark plugs in a petrol engine). If allowed to go on for long, as when started and idled from stone cold, it runs past the pistons and rings into the sump, diluting the engine oil, causing its level to rise (which in itself can cause damage) and lubricating bearings less well. This used to plague petrol-paraffin tractors, but they had a drain tap on the sump to remove this excess oil/fuel.

Having the heater on throughout this process makes all the above even worse, as the engine remains cool even longer. Modern engines are so much more efficient than they used to be that idling often isn't enough to reach working temperature.

As a result, excess wear occurs in particular to the camshaft and the bores, but all bearings can suffer if an engine isn't subsequently worked so hard the oil reaches close to 100C (not easy) and the dissolved fuel evaporates off. Some of the liquid fuel will make its way past the exhaust and through to the catalytic converter, which are damaged by unburnt fuel, misfires from sooted-up plugs etc.

There are a host of other nasties which can result, especially with the crazy amount of complexities relating to emission control on modern engines and their very tight tolerances. I've seen the results of one such engine - it originally had a failed cat, which had already been replaced by a garage which hadn't bothered to see why it had failed. The EGR side of things was totally gummed up and had to be replaced along with the cat and an injector.

Although there were only 60-odd thousand miles showing, the engine felt as loose as one with 10 times that mileage. The owner - a cousin - was advised to sell, having paid for her (well into four figure) repair. As with almost all mechanical failure, you get away with something for a while, but then the viscious circle kicks in and things can go wrong pretty fast, without warning.
Yes, all very true, letting engines tick over is pretty disastrous all round, mainly to our health and then the environment. And on modern diesels doing so will probably soon clog up the DPF, (£500 for a forced regen, or even worse a very expensive replacement (£10k + on a wagon)) Not sure what else you can do on some winters mornings, esp if you breath starts to condense and freeze on the inside of the glass.

I remember wagons from back in the day, Gardiners and Volvos were bad for smoking when cold, fire them up, retire to the other side of the road and when your wagon reappears from the mist you knew it was ready to roll. Engines were tougher back then, I rember one gardner powered Seddon, it burnt a gallon of engine oil a day, used to buy cheap waste engine oil and pour that in, once you got them started which wasn't easy, they would run all day, 240hp pulling the best part of 40t. Without night heaters it was common just to let them tick over all night, wagon parks in the mornings were often pea soupers, how my lungs are still functioning is beyond me (esp when I also smoked 40 a day)
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Mick F
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Re: Fuel prices

Post by Mick F »

I'm off out with the petrol brushcutter shortly, and if I have enough energy left and the day doesn't get too warm, I'll get out the petrol lawnmower.

Why should landowners and gardeners pay full whack for the petrol for hand-operated machines?
Is it possible to get a tax rebate?
Somehow, I doubt it.
Mick F. Cornwall
reohn2
Posts: 45158
Joined: 26 Jun 2009, 8:21pm

Re: Fuel prices

Post by reohn2 »

Mick F wrote: 7 Aug 2022, 8:53am I'm off out with the petrol brushcutter shortly, and if I have enough energy left and the day doesn't get too warm, I'll get out the petrol lawnmower.

Why should landowners and gardeners pay full whack for the petrol for hand-operated machines?
Is it possible to get a tax rebate?
Somehow, I doubt it.
Such engines pollute just as much as cars,if they're 2strokes far more,so why shouldn't they attract the same taxes?
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W H Auden
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