A Million Tesla Semi Trucks can replace 3 million barrels of oil per day?

[KeyboardWarrior + 527]

4 hours ago, Jan van Eck said:

All true, but that is only part of the story.  The old machines are valuable because anybody can fix them.  Farmers tend to be resourceful, and have the skill set to fix their machinery.  Plus, lots of parts are available locally, either from after-market manufacturers or from cannibalized tractors.  The problem with the new stuff is that John Deere Corp. has savagely attacked their own customers.  The company has put these computer controls inside the machines, then buried the software code and refused to release the code to the buyers. So if your tractor conks out all you get is a "fault code" and then the entire machine has to be loaded onto a low-bed trailer and carefully hauled off to the Dealer, where it sits until one of their mechanics find the time to go repair it.  Mow if your machine has no spare machine, such as a big combine costing several hundred thousand dollars, then your harvesting  (which is done in a very narrow window) just stalls, and you risk losing some part of your crops to rotting in the field.  That infuriates the farmers.

Correct. I neglected to mention this. We've only got one machine that we'd have to call the dealer for since it's totally computerized. It's a discbine, a W235 windrower to be exact. 

[KeyboardWarrior + 527]

27 minutes ago, ronwagn said:

https://im-mining.com/2020/06/13/cat-continues-see-lng-interest-large-mining-trucks/ As I said, dual fuel is an option for much heavier trucks. These trucks are a lot heavier than 18 wheelers. 

https://www.cat.com/en_US/news/machine-press-releases/caterpillar-to-offer-dual-fuel-retrofit-kit-for-785c-mining-truck.html

Alright I'll take a look. 

[KeyboardWarrior + 527]

29 minutes ago, Jan van Eck said:

For the same displacement, a nat-gas engine will produce considerably less horsepower.  To increase the power output, the builder would have to go with a larger displacement engine.  The typical line truck today runs about 13 liters  (the most popular engine, until Daimler bought the company and scrapped the motor, was the Detroit Diesel Series 60, 12.7 liter, with various ratings up to 600 hp). 

If you went with say a 16-liter engine, it should get you 450 hp.  But then you likely could not run an automatic transmission.  There are limits to what the input shafts can handle, so typically engines are down-rated to 400 hp to ensure long life of the transmission. 

You could go with smaller displacement by increasing the compression ratio right? Nat gas is capable of handling gasoline engine compression, but I'm certain it couldn't handle diesel compression. If there were a way to thicken it somehow... 

[Jan van Eck + 7,558]

3 minutes ago, KeyboardWarrior said:

Correct. I neglected to mention this. We've only got one machine that we'd have to call the dealer for since it's totally computerized. It's a discbine, a W235 windrower to be exact. 

I remain surprised that you bought it in the first place.  I would flatly refuse to buy anything that cannot be fixed "in the field."  After my experience with my BMW 7, that is it for me.  My next car will be a Dacia from Romania.  I will go there, buy it, drive it to Rotterdam, and load it onto the boat.  Keep the Romanian plates on it, that should be good for confusing those automatic plate-reader infernal machines!

[ronwagn + 6,290]

4 minutes ago, Jan van Eck said:

I remain surprised that you bought it in the first place.  I would flatly refuse to buy anything that cannot be fixed "in the field."  After my experience with my BMW 7, that is it for me.  My next car will be a Dacia from Romania.  I will go there, buy it, drive it to Rotterdam, and load it onto the boat.  Keep the Romanian plates on it, that should be good for confusing those automatic plate-reader infernal machines!

You might have the CIA checking you out. 

[Jan van Eck + 7,558]

1 minute ago, KeyboardWarrior said:

You could go with smaller displacement by increasing the compression ratio right? Nat gas is capable of handling gasoline engine compression, but I'm certain it couldn't handle diesel compression. If there were a way to thicken it somehow... 

In a spark-ignition engine you would have to stay within spark-ignition parameters.  In a diesel, which are typically built between 16:1 and 24.5:1, the way that is don is to have a scavenging charge injected at the top end of the power stroke which will then ignite and start the burn of the natural gas.  So it uses a thimble-ful of diesel fuel on each cycle. Just enough to fire the gas charge.  You can burn the entire gas charge at that elevated compression, the diesel can handle it, but you likely will have to adjust at what point in the power stroke the burning starts.  

To go to a pure nat-gas engine, you would have to modify the "head" of the motor by installing a spark plug, and also install either a distributor or magneto or some form of crankcase sensor and processor to time the spark.  So it becomes a different motor.  Can you use the same "short block"?  Well, that depends on whether or not you install spacers where the head gasket goes.  I have seen amateur conversions where they mill up a spacer, then install it with two head gaskets, one above and one underneath, and that lowers the compression ratio.  Then you can run a gasoline engine on kerosine!    Lots of tricks out there for the innovative.  Cheers. 

[Jan van Eck + 7,558]

2 minutes ago, ronwagn said:

You might have the CIA checking you out. 

Hey, this is America!  Catching before hanging.....

[ronwagn + 6,290]

2 minutes ago, Jan van Eck said:

In a spark-ignition engine you would have to stay within spark-ignition parameters.  In a diesel, which are typically built between 16:1 and 24.5:1, the way that is don is to have a scavenging charge injected at the top end of the power stroke which will then ignite and start the burn of the natural gas.  So it uses a thimble-ful of diesel fuel on each cycle. Just enough to fire the gas charge.  You can burn the entire gas charge at that elevated compression, the diesel can handle it, but you likely will have to adjust at what point in the power stroke the burning starts.  

To go to a pure nat-gas engine, you would have to modify the "head" of the motor by installing a spark plug, and also install either a distributor or magneto or some form of crankcase sensor and processor to time the spark.  So it becomes a different motor.  Can you use the same "short block"?  Well, that depends on whether or not you install spacers where the head gasket goes.  I have seen amateur conversions where they mill up a spacer, then install it with two head gaskets, one above and one underneath, and that lowers the compression ratio.  Then you can run a gasoline engine on kerosine!    Lots of tricks out there for the innovative.  Cheers. 

You are amazing Jan!

[Ward Smith + 6,615]

3 hours ago, Jan van Eck said:

That A-8 likely set you back six figures.   I would have sued them. 

Out of warranty is out of warranty. Got the service manager fired but that's about all. And every chance to badmouth Audi is a good day. My problem is too many vehicles and not a lot of miles per year on any of them. I've got a 20 year old German sports car that has 40k on it. They claim things break down from disuse, I'm not convinced. Belts and seals sure, but not timing chains and clutch assemblies. 

[Jan van Eck + 7,558]

5 minutes ago, Ward Smith said:

Out of warranty is out of warranty.

Maybe so, but there is a doctrine in American Law known generically as the Doctrine of fitness and Merchantability.  If those Audi guys are going to go build something that is designed to fail and to frustrate repair - as is obviously the case with that A-8 - then there is liability.  As a practical matter, were you to sue Audi  (which is a division of VW, as I recall) then they are likely to settle with you instead of risking the costs of litigation and a punitive-damages award from a jury.  

Getting past that, what Audi is, is an effort to make things complicated in some idea that a complicated machine is inherently "worth more."  Where that idea breaks down is when you look at the labor force that VW has in their factories.  Aside from BMW, those German car factories are staffed not by trained German technicians but by third-world citizens:  especially Turks.   Can a farm laborer from Turkey be successful as a builder of a complex auto in German?  That, in my view, is a dubious proposition. 

If you insist on having machinery built in a third-world country, to save some bucks on the labor bill, then you better make darn sure that the design is simple.  Otherwise, you will be building scrap. 

Another reason to like Ukrainian farm tractors. 

[Jan van Eck + 7,558]

17 minutes ago, ronwagn said:

You are amazing Jan!

You don't know the half of it.  Go back 25years and there were all these women (mostly married!) throwing themselves at me to go father their children.   Unreal.  Nobody has any shame any more, all long gone. Oh, well.  It's good to be old  (except for the aches). Cheers!

[KeyboardWarrior + 527]

35 minutes ago, Jan van Eck said:

I remain surprised that you bought it in the first place.  I would flatly refuse to buy anything that cannot be fixed "in the field."  After my experience with my BMW 7, that is it for me.  My next car will be a Dacia from Romania.  I will go there, buy it, drive it to Rotterdam, and load it onto the boat.  Keep the Romanian plates on it, that should be good for confusing those automatic plate-reader infernal machines!

We should be able to fix 90% of its problems on our own, save for serious ones or computer errors. It's been an amazing machine for cutting hay. I can do 80 acres in 5 hours. We've got a roller conditioner on it so our drying time is cut by a significant margin too. Everybody out here insisted that the rocks would destroy it (mostly out of jealousy) but they don't realize our fields are spotless. 

[KeyboardWarrior + 527]

This:

Set us back 150k but when you pencil out the feed value increase and the times it's saved hay from rain, the ROI isn't too bad. 

No this isn't ours exactly, it's from google. 

Edited July 18, 2020 by KeyboardWarrior

[Jan van Eck + 7,558]

7 minutes ago, KeyboardWarrior said:

This:

Ouch!  That thing just drips money!   Way over my pay scale, that's for sure.

On a serious note, this machine  (I assume it is a John Deere, from the paint) is so productive due to its American design.  And that productivity justifies the high price tag, and the high service bills, assuming it is durable and has excellent up-time.  That is what is the essence of American machinery.  

Still, any manufacturer that proceeds to go urinate on their own customers and infuriate them is a business run by morons.  The engineers are likely great guys; the head office, ready for firing.  Look at American Airlines.  The "executives" spent an astonishing 98% of their free cash flow on stock share buy-backs, basically incinerating billions upon billions - money they desperately need today, to survive the collapse of their product sales.  Where is that cash?  All gone.  So they line up at the public trough and beg for taxpayer cash.  And that is wrong.  the Company should be allowed to fail, and wipe out the shareholders.  If they are going to allow management to spend their cash on bybacks, leaving nothing in the pot for running the company, why should the taxpayers foot the bill?  Especially when the product is so utterly piss-poor that nobody wants it anyway.  

Edited July 18, 2020 by Jan van Eck

[ronwagn + 6,290]

9 minutes ago, KeyboardWarrior said:

This:

Set us back 150k but when you pencil out the feed value increase and the times it's saved hay from rain, the ROI isn't too bad. 

No this isn't ours exactly, it's from google. 

My neighbor across the street grows a little alfalfa and gives me some for my granddaughter's bunny. I can see how important drying is. His buyer does all the work. 

Edited July 18, 2020 by ronwagn
punctuation

[KeyboardWarrior + 527]

44 minutes ago, ronwagn said:

the way that is don is to have a scavenging charge injected at the top end of the power stroke which will then ignite and start the burn of the natural gas. 

Is a special injector required for gas charges? Since diesel injectors are lubricated by the fuel, how is a gas injector lubricated? Furthermore, I'm realizing that one advantage gas might have over diesel is the even spray pattern you could achieve. Companies have been attempting to improve injector technology ever since we went away from the comet chamber, and I suspect that working with a gas could make it significantly easier to improve efficiency this way. 

Edited July 18, 2020 by KeyboardWarrior

[KeyboardWarrior + 527]

3 minutes ago, ronwagn said:

My neighbor across the street grows a little alfalfa and gives me some for my granddaughter's bunny. I can see how important drying is. His buyer does all the work. 

Indeed, very important. A rainfall can remove 25% of dry matter from hay if it's been cut, depending on when it rains. Since the conditioner speeds up the process, we can get hay put up in between spouts of rain during wet years. 

[KeyboardWarrior + 527]

@ronwagn

Not to mention, rain will wash out trace nutrients from the hay. At least those end up back in the dirt, but it gives the feed quality a good slash. 

[Jan van Eck + 7,558]

2 minutes ago, KeyboardWarrior said:

Is a special injector required for gas charges? Since diesel injectors are lubricated by the fuel, how is a gas injector lubricated? Furthermore, I'm realizing that one advantage gas might have over diesel is the even spray pattern you could achieve. Companies have been attempting to improve injector technology every since we went away from the comet chamber, and I suspect that working with a gas could make it significantly easier to improve efficiency this way. 

That technology keeps changing as more customers become interested in being Buyers.  In the original concept, the gas is allowed to enter into the airstream flowing past the intake valves. So the nat-gas and the air for combustion are already together and then the starting-charge of diesel is injected via a standard diesel injector to ignite on compression and set the whole thing off.  If you look at that Freightliner pictogram of their truck you will see the notation "spark-ignition engine," which is basically what a gasoline engine is.  So their concept is to dispense with the little squirt of diesel and go to a spark-plug, but then you would be running at a lower compression level  (and, likely, retarded spark).  I have not kept up with the latest advances, so no doubt the clever engineers in this field have come up with more ingenious approaches.  Technology always marches onwards, especially in America. 

[ronwagn + 6,290]

https://naturalgasnow.org/new-holland-develops-ngt-natural-gas-tractor/ 2017 story. 

http://www.ngvglobal.com/blog/__trashed-1031#more-112892

Edited July 18, 2020 by ronwagn
added reference

[Ward Smith + 6,615]

21 hours ago, Jan van Eck said:

You don't know the half of it.  Go back 25years and there were all these women (mostly married!) throwing themselves at me to go father their children.   Unreal.  Nobody has any shame any more, all long gone. Oh, well.  It's good to be old  (except for the aches). Cheers!

Same thing happened to me! I didn't have the heart to tell them I'd had a vasectomy a decade before.  

[footeab@yahoo.com + 2,190]

Just an aside about Heavy Equipment and why battery powered Heavy Equip is a BAD idea.... I have 55 year old tractor and 70 year old grader and a 43 year old dozer.  If they were battery powered?  They would have all been scrapped long ago.  Why?  Batteries(ones with high energy density) all lose capacity every single year whether you use the machines or not.  There is no way to get around this aspect.  None.  The heavy equipment I bought old, retains its usefulness and VALUE no matter if I use them 5 times a year or 50 times a year. Cost of ownership of old equipment stays the same(assuming you can get it under cover).  Battery powered equipment... this is NOT true.  Battery equipment, the less you use it the MORE expensive it gets as half its cost IS THE BATTERY which DIES a little EVERY year whether you use it 1 time or 2000 times a year. 

Yes, the new lithium based batteries are getting better, but they will still ALL be dead in 20 years whether you use them or not. Already one of the biggest expenses to having old equipment is the starter battery...  Half the time you are switching those 4D batteries between equipment so you only have to buy 1 of them every 8 years or so.  This is true of all these farmers around the world who have all this specialized equipment  and use them rarely, but MUST have said equipment to run their farm. 

Now logistically, SOMEONE *** should *** make a line of equipment powered via a trailer or some such with plug(n)play giant universal battery bank.  OF course said giant universal battery bank still dies and still cannot be used all day long without dying, as most things farming require you to use it 18 hours a day during planting/harvesting if not 24 hours a day for 2 or 3 days in a row if not 2 weeks.  No way will current batteries do this job economically compared to a couple hundred bucks of Diesel.  

[Enthalpic + 1,496]

1 hour ago, footeab@yahoo.com said:

 I have 55 year old tractor and 70 year old grader and a 43 year old dozer. 

That's great, but is not how new business will work. 

Automation and advanced recovery machines will improve profits by cutting labour and improving yields.

[footeab@yahoo.com + 2,190]

1 hour ago, Enthalpic said:

That's great, but is not how new business will work. 

Automation and advanced recovery machines will improve profits by cutting labour and improving yields.

Way to prove you have never run a small business.  A small business(vast majority of businesses) run off of discarded junk which is effectively FREE to use/modify(Sweat Equity to make run)  No one is going to use old machines if the first thing you have to do is buy a $10,000 battery... along with all the other maintenance items.  This will just massively increase barrier to entry for startup businesses as transportation, or machine rental/buying is generally speaking one of the biggest expenses of any business. 

Why FREE?  Dead engines usually.  With SWEAT EQUITY and some cheap parts and cheap fuel, or just general knowledge, you can turn trucks, tractors, dozers, etc that would have been sold to the scrapper, into valuable tools.  There is no amount of SWEAT EQUITY that will ever bring an electric battery back to life.  NONE. 

Heavy machinery that does not have locomotion = scrap metal at best and usually you have to PAY someone to take it off your hands.  That is what 100% of every electric Vehicle will be after 20 years when its battery dies due to age and not use.  Why TESLA's "million mile" battery is a meaningless slogan unless you are a taxi cab driver.  No one else other than a multi state sales rep will ever approach that number of miles in ~20 year on a car before the battery dies of old age. 

Edited July 20, 2020 by footeab@yahoo.com

[Enthalpic + 1,496]

21 hours ago, footeab@yahoo.com said:

Way to prove you have never run a small business.  A small business(vast majority of businesses) run off of discarded junk which is effectively FREE to use/modify(Sweat Equity to make run)  No one is going to use old machines if the first thing you have to do is buy a $10,000 battery... along with all the other maintenance items.  This will just massively increase barrier to entry for startup businesses as transportation, or machine rental/buying is generally speaking one of the biggest expenses of any business. 

Why FREE?  Dead engines usually.  With SWEAT EQUITY and some cheap parts and cheap fuel, or just general knowledge, you can turn trucks, tractors, dozers, etc that would have been sold to the scrapper, into valuable tools.  There is no amount of SWEAT EQUITY that will ever bring an electric battery back to life.  NONE. 

Heavy machinery that does not have locomotion = scrap metal at best and usually you have to PAY someone to take it off your hands.  That is what 100% of every electric Vehicle will be after 20 years when its battery dies due to age and not use.  Why TESLA's "million mile" battery is a meaningless slogan unless you are a taxi cab driver.  No one else other than a multi state sales rep will ever approach that number of miles in ~20 year on a car before the battery dies of old age. 

Calling sweat equity free means you do not value your time.

 

Edited July 21, 2020 by Enthalpic
was rude