this post was submitted on 15 Apr 2025
1685 points (99.2% liked)
Showerthoughts
33590 readers
1750 users here now
A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The most popular seem to be lighthearted clever little truths, hidden in daily life.
Here are some examples to inspire your own showerthoughts:
- Both “200” and “160” are 2 minutes in microwave math
- When you’re a kid, you don’t realize you’re also watching your mom and dad grow up.
- More dreams have been destroyed by alarm clocks than anything else
Rules
- All posts must be showerthoughts
- The entire showerthought must be in the title
- No politics
- If your topic is in a grey area, please phrase it to emphasize the fascinating aspects, not the dramatic aspects. You can do this by avoiding overly politicized terms such as "capitalism" and "communism". If you must make comparisons, you can say something is different without saying something is better/worse.
- A good place for politics is c/politicaldiscussion
- Posts must be original/unique
- Adhere to Lemmy's Code of Conduct and the TOS
If you made it this far, showerthoughts is accepting new mods. This community is generally tame so its not a lot of work, but having a few more mods would help reports get addressed a little sooner.
Whats it like to be a mod? Reports just show up as messages in your Lemmy inbox, and if a different mod has already addressed the report, the message goes away and you never worry about it.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
There were two issues. First, tetraethyl lead increased the effective octane level. That, in turn, reduced the probability of pre-ignition, e.g., the fuel-air mixture igniting before the compression cycle was completed. Higher octane allows for higher compression, which is more efficient. The other issue was the valves specifically; the lead provided a 'cushion' between the valves and the valve seats, which minimized valve wear.
The octane issue is easily solved by both better refining or by adding alcohol. It was known that you could add alcohol to gas to improve octane rating even when TEL was first added, but TEL could be patented, and alcohol couldn't. The valve issue has largely been solved by better metallurgy and manufacturing.
The one are where it hasn't been solved is small aircraft. Some small planes still use leaded gas, and it's mostly for the octane boost. TEL can give them a better octane rating than alcohol or better refinement can, which allows them to operate at much high compression. Take that away, and the engines are too underpowered to keep the plane in the air. Over 150,000 small airplanes still use leaded AvGas; thankfully, newer turboprop planes and all jet planes mostly use Jet A or Jet B fuel, which is closer to kerosene.
In theory, I think that you could convert older cars to run on unleaded fuels, but you would need new parts rather than OEM.
Thank you. All my knowledge of ICEs has been through osmosis via a friendship with a guy who used to be a mechanic; I don't care about them myself, and I appreciate the extensive added information you took the time to write. It's really the only way I learn about ICEs.
Yeah, that was ultimately my point. OEM is so important to that crowd; it's both a status and a real value factor for them. They're not just being contrarian: they do it because the cars they're driving run better on leaded.
The end result may be the same, but I think the motivation matters for stuff like this. One is based on hostility, the other on a hobby passion.
I understand it as a hobby/passion, even though the old cars are far less efficient, die sooner, and are less safe than now. The only way they were better, IMO, was that they were less complicated, and thus easier to wrench on. It's significantly harder to build hot rods or street racing cars now than the way you could in the 80s and earlier.
Unless you know how to remap a car and have a car with plenty of power reserve.
Anything turbocharged can be remapped for more power unless you're at the limit of either the turbo, or the fuelling - and when you get there, many have options for more fuel and air. Diesels in particular are magic because you take a car that does ridiculous economy figures stock, and you double its power figures just to show people you can.
E.g Bobby Singh got 600 hp out of his diesel Audi wagon. These come stock with 240ish horsepower (176 kW or 239 PS I believe). He's done engine internals upgrades to this one, but on other peoples' cars he usually does bolt-on mods and gets about 400hp-500hp depending on what mods someone is willing to shell out for. Minus the upgraded internals, you could do this at home if you wanted to.
On the gasoline side, BMW has the B58 where you can get 500-600 hp with bolt-on mods and if you build it like people used to build hot rods, 1500 hp is doable. It's considered the new 2JZ because Toyota itself put it in the Supra instead of building their own successor to the 2JZ. The 2JZ itself was a supercar killer when built properly.
On the Japanese side, I'm not sure if they're doing anything fun new and new today, but they've all historically had at least one or two ridiculously tunable engines and Nissan will still sell you the very tunable GT-R.
Yes, some of those tunable newer engines come in pretty expensive cars, but there are still plenty of 4 bangers you can mod easily too. And it's not like the hot rodders typically used small engines in the past. It was usually big ass V8s that you couldn't even buy in most of the world because they used too much fuel lol
Right, that's my point though. With my '84 Chevy Monte Carlo SS, I could drop a new engine in (started with a 305, ended with a 400 short block), do a high-flow dual carb intake, get a couple Edelbrock carbs, buy some headers, straight pipes and a glasspack muffler, and get a ton more power. (And also much, much worse fuel economy.) Now you not only need to understand wrenching, you also have to have the software and knowledge to entirely re-map the fuel, since it's all computerized.
And while you are technically correct that you can get tons more power out of a lot of mostly stock engines, that does sharply reduce your engine lifespan. Of course, that's always been the case, but it used to be that you could fairly easily get your block bored and sleeved to have larger pistons ("there's no replacement for displacement"), but generally engines are running with much less material now. Oh, and they're aluminum rather than iron, so often you're going to have to send your block off to a specialist to get the cylinder bores coated for longevity. (I think my Honda CBR600RR had alusil or nikasil plating in the cylinders? I'm not sure now.)
I'm really, really not nostalgic for those days; yeah, hot rods are kind of neat, and it's fun being able to do your own mechanical work, but cars now are so much more efficient, more powerful, and last 3-4x as long as cars from the 60s through early 80s.
Right. But with a lot of modern cars, you don't need to drop in a new engine at all, and for a lot of people changing fuel trim tables is easier than getting carb jets juuuuuust right. Not to mention there are premade stage1 remaps for stock engines that should "mostly" work. There are engines out there that will give you around a 30% without a single mod, though generally not on those premade remaps, as those try to err on the safe side. Stock intake, stock exhaust, stock everything. Just a remap. Oftentimes, they give you BETTER fuel economy because of the improved torque curve. Though the increased effect of the fun pedal often cancels this out.
I'd say you can get into modding with less knowledge and skill nowadays, because as long as you have the hardware, you can get someone to remap your car remotely so you don't even need to be able to drive it to a shop after doing whatever mods you want to do to it. True, if you want to do everything by yourself, then it's harder.