High MPG

[Dave Williams]

-> Yes, I agree. In fact, I think that if as much time, effort, and
-> money was put into the development of a turbine engine (like the
-> Chrysler one) as has been put into the engines we currently run, the
-> "200 MPG carb" type idea would be a case of "so what!" In the case of
-> the Chrysler turbine, it had a

 Chrysler spent tens of millions of dollars on their turbine, and two
generations of Chrysler engineers tried to make it workable in a car.
Rover, General Motors, and Fiat also poured pounds, dollars, and lira
down the turbine drain.

 There are three problems with turbines.  One is scale; smaller car-size
turbines are less efficient than truck-size or airplane-size turbines.
Another problem is problem is output; the turbine has a high
speed output shaft with a relatively narrow RPM band.  Various schemes
of variable pitch blades, hydraulic couplings, and whatnot were used by
the prototypes.  The third problem is the turbine runs essentially wide
open all the time.  For a 200hp motor the efficiency would be
acceptable; but throttling a turbine back to 25hp for cruise resulted in
dramatic loss of efficiency compared to a conventional engine.

 Chrysler and Rover built driveable prototypes, but throttle response
and fuel consumption were unacceptable.  None of the advances in
computer-aided design, metallurgy, or exotic materials have been enough
to overcome the turbines' problems.

 Fiat and GM built turbine powered trucks for a while, but even scaled
up to that size they were not able to beat the Diesels' lower cost.

==dave.williams at chaos.lrk.ar.us======================================
I've got a secret / I've been hiding / under my skin / | Who are you?
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