It’s interesting to consider that a man can be (and many have been) criminally charged for selling a physically harmless drug such as pot that has never killed anyone to people who were never pressured to buy the pot – but the men (and women) who pushed drugs that have harmed (and killed) many people who were all-but-forced to take them have not even been charged with a crime, much less taken out of circulation.
Similarly, there is an interesting indifference – by the apparat that is pushing them – to the dangers posed by the battery-powered vehicles that are being all-but-forced on people by using “gas mileage” and gas (C02) “emissions” regulations to force alternatives to them off the market, leaving nothing available but battery-powered devices.
One danger is spontaneous combustion. As here. And elsewhere.
A battery powered vehicle can (and many have) erupted in fire while stationary. It is not necessary to hit one from behind, say – as it was necessary to do in order to cause a Ford Pinto to catch fire. This happened several times and when the vulnerability became apparent, the apparat decreed a recall of all Pintos.
But no Pinto ever caught fire while parked.
And no Pinto ever caught fire after the poorly designed gas tank filler tube the cars came with from the factory was redesigned such that the fire risk that existed if the car was rear-ended (hard, by the way; a fender bender impact would not do the trick) was mitigated.
Also, even if a Pinto (pre-recall) was struck hard from behind, it would only catch fire if there was an additional element.
A spark.
Without that, gas does not catch fire. This is why it is safe to pump gas into a tank, even if some of it spills in the process. Even though there are fumes. The gas will of course ignite if there is a spark. But so long as there isn’t, it won’t.
That is why gas is safe to handle.
Battery powered vehicles, on the other hand, are designed to burn. That is, lithium-ion batteries will burn if there is a short within them. This is something very different from a spark, which is a secondary element in all gasoline fires. The gas, itself, does not ignite without a spark.
Lithium-ion batteries can – and do – ignite without an externally-produced spark.
The fact is not disputed. It is dismissed as a “small” risk by those pushing (and defending the pushing) of battery-powered cars. This is an interesting dissonance, isn’t it? The apparat of government did not say to Ford: Well, the chance that a Pinto will be hit hard enough from behind to cause the fuel filler tube to separate it from the tank and for gas to spill and for the impact to cause a spark (as by metal-to-metal friction) that ignites the spilled gas is so slight we’ll just let it go . . . .
Yet a greater – because inherent – risk of fire that cannot be mitigated is let go.
There is no (known) way to eliminate the possibility of a lithium-ion EV battery spontaneously combusting. And there are compounding risks that increase the probability of combustion. These include impacts that can physically damage the battery’s case or internal lattice and either (and both) can trigger the short that leads to thermal runaway and a fire. Plugging an EV into a high-voltage “fast” charger – in order to be able to charge the battery in less than several hours – is another potential fire hazard. (The hazard is acknowledged, sotto voce, by the built-in safety measure of “fast” chargers only “fast” charging the EV to 80 percent – leaving the owner with 20 percent less-than-fully-charged range.)
The risk of fire increases with age and use. The older the battery, the more likely an internal fault (such as tendrils forming within the lattice, triggering a short) will trigger a fire – especially if the old battery is subjected to “fast” charging. If the battery gets wet – as from immersion on account of high water in the street – it can cause a fire. Lithium-ion batteries burn under water.
These are risks that inhere in the design of lithium ion EV batteries. Put another way, lithium-ion EV batteries cannot be fixed. They are what they are – and the risk is on you. More finely, it is being imposed on you by an apparat that is indifferent to the risks it imposes, when it suits. Here we circle back to the pushing of those drugs that were likewise known by the apparat to have serious – even fatal – risks and pushed on people nonetheless.
This tells us a lot about the intentions of the apparat.
It is not “safety” or “health” or “the environment” that motivates the apparat. These latter are just pretexts. They have the right mouth feel – to borrow a culinary term – such as to make the impositions more palatable.
But they are impositions nonetheless. And the stuff being fed to us ought by now to taste a lot like something else.
. . .
If you like what you’ve found here please consider supporting EPautos.
We depend on you to keep the wheels turning!
Our donate button is here.
If you prefer not to use PayPal, our mailing address is:
EPautos
721 Hummingbird Lane SE
Copper Hill, VA 24079
PS: Get an EPautos magnet or sticker or coaster in return for a $20 or more one-time donation or a $10 or more monthly recurring donation. (Please be sure to tell us you want a magnet or sticker or coaster – and also, provide an address, so we know where to mail the thing!)
If you like items like the Keeeeeeev T shirt pictured below, you can find that and more at the EPautos store!
If your lithium fire bomb battery EV doesn’t catch fire maybe the solar panels or wind turbines that contribute 4.9% of the dirty energy electricity to all EV’s will….lol
Solar panels catch fire….
solar panels are 90% chinese made, low quality, catch fire.
Amazon temporarily shuts down solar rooftops at all US facilities due to fires
https://thepostmillennial.com/amazon-temporarily-took-all-rooftop-solar-energy-systems-offline-in-2021-due-to-fires
Wind Turbines catch fire…..
Dependable safe power plants are being shut down and replaced by expensive, dangerous, unreliable, wind turbines, the grid is already over loaded, soon there won’t be electricity to charge your EV.
The wind farm in Mt. Pulaski has been running for 3 1/2 years. They have been replacing the generators in all the wind towers. There are 100 of them in this wind farm. So evidently the life span on the generators on these things is about 3 to 4 years. It takes 12 semi trucks and trailers, A 9 axle 500,000 pound crane, A 100,000 pound crane and 12 pick up trucks to change each generator. That is a huge amount of diesel fuel being used to maintain these wind towers. And the “Green Groups” would like You to believe they are all fueled by magic fairy dust.
These wind turbines are dangerous and damaging to the environment, they catch fire just like the lithium fire bomb batteries in EV’s, most wind turbine electronic parts are made in china.
Assuming an average wind turbine costs $1 million per megawatt of generating capacity, offshore wind turbines ranging from 3 to 10 MW can cost up to $10 million, which would need to be paid up-front if out of warranty. Additionally, once a fire starts, the project must be shut down and taken off grid for a period of time as a safety precaution, resulting in lost revenue.
Turbine fires can have costs beyond the wind farm. A fire can spread down the tower to land surrounding the project if not carefully managed. This can potentially result in wildfires, causing extensive damage to the wider area and ultimately leading to significant reputational damage not only for the individual site but for the industry as a whole.
Based on research conducted by CWIF, since 2000 there have been 385 documented wind turbine fires. A number of these fires where not only a total loss of the turbine but had devastating consequences. In June 2012, the View Fire, which burned 367 acres in Riverside County, California, was caused by a wind turbine fire.
Nearby residences were evacuated, and over 100 firefighters fought the wildfire to get it contained. A little over a year later, a tragedy that the wind industry had not yet experienced occurred. In October 2013, two young mechanics became trapped on top of a burning wind turbine and died as a result at the Piet de Wit Wind Farm. Because of the height of turbines, a specialized team of firefighters was called to battle the fire and recover the victims.
More recently, in the US, two wildfires were sparked from wind turbine fires
Watch the wind turbines catch fire.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nemy4TD4I3A
You can donate 10 percent to EP Autos, that is 28 dollars per hour.
28 x 24 x 365 equals 245,280 dollars each year.
Please feel free to donate your fair share, should you choose to do so.
I do donate what I can when I can. So can you!
Hi Drump,
This “Julia” (also”Anne”) spambot is extremely aggressive. I cannot figure out how to keep it out without keeping everyone else out, too… sigh!
Anyone who might have insight/know how to keep “her” out please chime in!
“There is no (known) way to eliminate the possibility of a lithium-ion EV battery spontaneously combusting.”
Well, there IS, but it means changing the battery’s chemistry. I sit everyday a few feet from a 15kWh battery pack with no fear it will spontaneously ignite. That’s because those are LiFePO4 batteries, and their employment includes no such risks.
I’m really not sure why these EV manufacturers don’t use these, save for their energy density being slightly less. As an additional benefit, no cobalt or manganese is required, and LiFePO4 batteries are less expensive.
(Upon a little research, Tesla began using LiFePO4 batteries in their “Model 3” in 2022:
https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a38414682/tesla-new-cheaper-battery/)
Still better battery chemistries/designs are forthcoming, I’m certain. I’m still forecasting an appearance by aluminum-air. This would mitigate all of the fire danger and both increase range and decrease weight dramatically.
The difficulties in charging, however, would still remain. The energy would still require generation as well.
Note that the point of the article does not escape me. Such double-standards are far from unprecedented.
Regarding someone arresting from doing or selling pot or other drugs, I thought the other day, whatever happened to CTE, or Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy? Anyone remember the Will Smith movie “Concussion”? Is football yet illegal? (I’m not making a point that it should be.)
https://www.science.org/content/article/even-if-you-don-t-play-contact-sports-you-could-develop-signs-traumatic-brain-injury
According to the above study, for example: “The highest rate of CTE was in football players who participated beyond high school: Ten of 15 collegiate and professional players showed either some features of CTE or definitive diagnoses. The likelihood of developing CTE was 2.6 times as high for football players as for nonathletes, the researchers found, but more than 13 times as high for football players who continued beyond the high school level, compared with nonathletes.”
Yet college and NFL football is as popular as ever, and people still regularly put their kids in football programs. Just as popular with the “Left” as with the “Right”. Imagine the reaction to parents who had their kids smoke reefer or do other psychedelics…
The difficulties in charging, however, would still remain.
So it’s a cul-de-sac, then.
Stufo,
I ponder on it for the sake of engineering, but can only conclude that truly fast charging is probably an insurmountable obstacle for the electric car.
Just with the simple and stupid math: Say your Tesla has a 60 kWh battery. Even if you have whatever magic batteries can take the necessary current, charging the battery in 5 minutes (0.0833 hours) means (neglecting inefficiencies, etc.):
60 kWh/0.0833 hours = 720 kW
Might as well be 1.21 Gigawatts. I can’t figure on how to do that. A huge bank of ultracapacitors, maybe?
For the purpose of storing energy to be used for propulsion of a vehicle, lithium batteries (and, it seems, batteries in general) are simply unfit for purpose. The abysmal charging performance in and of itself would be a sufficient reason to draw this conclusion, let alone all the other problems mentioned in this article.
There’s no reason to let EV automakers off the hook, though. Any automotive engineer worth the title would have discarded the idea of using batteries already at the design stage if these problems were unsolvable, so the fact that this didn’t happen should allow us to infer that EV automakers know something we don’t, and will be able to overcome all the current obstacles in the very near future. Otherwise, they would be incompetent for repeating the same mistakes that led to EVs ending up on the scrapheap of automotive history a century ago, and EV automakers cannot possibly be that incompetent… can they? If so, I’d like them to come out and admit it themselves. Until that happens, I will refuse to listen to their excuses, and as a car buyer I’ll stubbornly continue to demand that they deliver 300+ miles of range in a five-minute charge in EVs ASAP, without any fire risk. It’s an extremely modest expectation that most real cars have been able to meet for decades, so I’m hardly being unreasonable.
Hi Stufo,
In re: “…the fact that this didn’t happen should allow us to infer that EV automakers know something we don’t, and will be able to overcome all the current obstacles in the very near future.”
I think they know something, alright. It is that car ownership is to be winnowed down to the relative handful of Elect who can afford these devices and that driving is to be cut two-thirds of more. The car (as opposed to these devices) has been the bete noir of the managerial technocrat-Marxist class for 50-plus years.
I think you’re right, the question is whether they’ll ultimately succeed. I guess we’ll know post-WWIII…
A possibility is that they know there may be a solution to the battery problem but still allow them to use the full chassis of the current “devices”. I presume the current chassis is less expensive to build than an ICU powered one, they have that in-house already, and would prefer to stay with the electric propulsion.
I have posted on another thread that it will be a simple solution (yeah, right) as outlined by a friend who produces carbon fiber products to support the conversion to hydrogen fuel cells. The manufacturers will only have to design out the battery compartment and design in the fuel cell at about 1/3 to 1/4 the weight. Connect the wires and you have the same device, powered differently. Fueling will be about as fast as with gasoline.
Infrastructure is the problem. Same song, different verse. But the conversion to hydrogen will likely be easier and less costly to support.
The other day I noticed The Response from some mainstream outlet answering the question no one asked. Headline read something like “No, EVs don’t burn up more often than gasoline vehicles.” Article went on to say how dangerous gasoline can be, blah blah blah.
Reality is we’re all conditioned by Hollywood to anticipate explosions. Pyrotechnics are a stable of any action film, and it is true that most of the flash comes from ignition of gasoline vapor, but there’s a lot that goes into making that fireball happen. Fact is if the world were that explosive none of us would be here.
Once I was assigned a work truck with a fuel line leak. It had been passed around as a spare so no one ever did any maintenance on it. When running the heater the fuel smell was overwhelming. Source of the leak was easily found and repaired in a few hours. Never came back.
An EV fire will have an origin in something simple. A single cell might develop a slightly high resistance, causing a little more heat when charging and discharging under high current. Not a big problem if the BMS catches it. But it might require removal of the entire pack to reach it, taking hours. Indeed, some Tesla owners are reporting days-long service costing thousands of dollars for battery issues, and that’s not completely replacing the battery, just following up on BMS codes. Tesla owners report much higher maintenance and repair costs than most ICE automobiles, probably due to the fact that they need to be taken to Tesla repair facilities and because diagnosis takes longer, but also because the problem might be deep inside the battery pack and hard to access.
When it comes to all things environmental, health, and safety, EVs are merely replacing one set of problems (which are, for the most part, able to be addressed with cheap and simple solutions) with another set of problems (which CANNOT be addressed with cheap and simple solutions, if they can be addressed at all).
Where gasoline is a rugged man, lithium batteries are soy boys. Can’t be too hot or too cold, require care & feeding even when sedentary, and are prone to violent outbursts.
The Jimmy Dore Show reported on a hail storm in Nebraska that destroyed a large solar farm.
https://youtu.be/zvOF_n_tnz4?si=94cE3Va2NQVHyUDi
Yeah,,, They’re putting them in NE Florida,,, hundreds of acres of solar panels. Waiting for our next hurricane. There will be free solar panels in every persons yard!
I read this week that there are very few people who even want to buy a used EV, which I can’t say I’m surprised about considering the problems that we KNOW exist with EVs & that automobile dealerships that sell new cars can’t even sell NEW EVs since people DON’T want one. Will the Biden Thing try to make it MANDATORY for people who want to drive an automobile to get an EV? The Biden Thing already tried to FORCE millions of Americans who have a job to take an experimental pharma product that the Thing, Big Pharma, the medical-industrial complex, and establishment media blatantly LIED about until the Supreme Court (thankfully) struck down that COVID jab mandate.
https://mishtalk.com/economics/the-ev-graveyard-reckoning-hardly-anyone-wants-to-buy-a-used-one/
Hi John,
“Will the Biden Thing try to make it MANDATORY for people who want to drive an automobile to get an EV? ”
I think the answer is yes – if the Thing is re-selected. It is a good reason to support the Orange Man. Just as it was better to support Franco than the communist alternative.
Hi Eric,
I find it astounding how there are actually people who say we “Have to reelect Joe Biden” to save democracy, stop fascism, stop white supremacy, stop racism, stop creeping authoritarianism, or whatever other bull crap claim they come up with. It’s almost as if they’ve become useful idiots for the Klaus Schwab types.
“But Brawndo’s got what plants crave.” -Idiocracy
The brain-dead masses just bleat out whatever the propaganda tells them. It’s so very depressing.
Hi ML,
It’s kind of like those people who thought that mass vaccination in the middle of the COVID “pandemic” was a brilliant idea, and that the only people who were dying were the unvaxxed.
OK ML!!
So you want to drink to drink water from the toilet? 😉
Plus Brawndo has electrolytes!!!
Brought to you by Carl’s Junior…
ML I Object!
You upset me by posting just before a new episode of “Ow my Balls”!
Love that movie!!
It simply displays where the Amerikant empire is headed.
The secretary of Defense Dude is Waaaaay to sharp for what infests the White House environs with respect to DIPLOMACY? And War Dept strategy… hang on for the new year BullShit Folks!
Wow EP..
Spanish Civil War reference!!!
That was, ONE NASTY CONFLICT….
Hope that’s not presaging something……..Yikes.
Hi expat,
Me either. I think most of us agree that a fratricidal conflict is the last thing we want. But what of the Left? For them, it is as it has always been> Peace – if you obey. A point comes when we (who are desirous of peace) may have to choose.
Just like a fireworks display, this should be enjoyable to watch – from a safe distance.
These things are even catching fire before they leave the R&D facilities and factories.
There was a reporte fire last week at GM’s Factory Zero (even the name is creepy and sounds like a place named by the Khmer Rouge.)
And Stellantis also was ablaze last month….
https://www.carscoops.com/2023/12/chrysler-tech-center-fire-was-caused-by-secret-electric-prototype/
GM’s Factory Zero (even the name is creepy and sounds like a place named by the Khmer Rouge.)
Well, the Factory Zero is Government Motors’s “First Fully Dedicated EV Assembly Plant”, so with this plant GM is arguably doing the biddings of the Khmer Vert.
‘[Lithium-ion batteries] are what they are – and the risk is on you.’ — eric
And the risk is on you in multiple ways — not just fire risk.
Three-year residual values of EeeVees are running at about 60%, versus about 70% for ICE vehicles. A major reason is because the condition of an EeeVee’s giant battery can’t be reliably determined. Was it abused by too much ‘fast’ charging, or too deep a discharge, or temperature extremes [fried in Phoenix; frozen in Minnesota]?
A ten percent hit on depreciation is $6,000, if you paid $60,000 for your EeeVee. Which totally blows away all the claimed savings from electricity being cheaper than gasoline.
EeeVee Fever was a collective mental illness. Already it has mostly disappeared, like covid masks did. But in the precincts of Big Gov — the last people on earth to get a clue that they blew it big time — EeeVee Fever trundles on, in the same manner that CDC’s Mandy Cohen still implores us to get our boooooooosters.
Repealing the outrageous, offensive $7,500 EeeVee tax credit is Job #1 in 2025. This crap has got to go.
Oh, Mandy
Well, you came and you gave without taking
But I sent you away
Oh, Mandy
Well, you vaxxed me and set me to shaking
And I need help today
Oh, Mandy
— Barry Manilow, Mandy
Hidden – China’s Flagship EVs are Exploding in Huge Numbers
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yOA7qKMcjcE
WTSP Ch. 10 Tampa. That’s TENGA, effectively state-run media under USA Today unless the ownership has changed significantly.
Meanwhile, about 250k Americans die from medical error every year. More than from gun violence and illegal drugs combined. Not to mention from side effects of medications that Pharma bought FDA approval for. The state will approve, and promote, anything if there’s enough money in it, or it manages to impose the state’s preferences which grow its power.
Indeed, John. Though in point of fact it is AT LEAST 250,000 Americans killed every year by licensed medicine and correctly administered pharmaceuticals. The estimates I’ve seen range consistently from 250k to 750k. But it’s ok because they’re licensed by the communist gov.
Medicare and Medicaid…
If it was a free market for health care it would be cheap and have far better results….
The government gave a monopoly to one type of doctor…through regulations, licencing and funding…..allopathic doctors….. all the other doctors practicing alternate competing types of medical care were banned……if it was a free and open market there wouldn’t be a shortage of doctors……and health care would be very inexpensive….
Snake oil fake cures…..
Our rockefeller monopoly allopathic medical system, big pharma, used worldwide thanks to john rockefeller, is no better than medievel witch craft. it is more like astrology, there is no science involved…..they always reference science, but it is a huge lie there is no science behind it
Does the allopathic medical system work?
The medical industry causes 440k deaths a yr in America alone due to “medical errors” (partially defined as an unintended outcome even under correctly administered care)
over 100k annual deaths due to legal drugs….
ATTENTION: The death toll from ILLEGAL drugs stands at 10,000.
Each one of the four allopathic medicine producers “is a convicted serial felon: Glaxo, Sanofi, Pfizer, Merck.”
“In the past 10 years, just in the last decade, those companies have paid 35 billion dollars in criminal penalties, damages, fines, for lying to doctors, for defrauding science, for falsifying science, for killing hundreds of thousands of Americans knowingly.”
Allopathic medicine was created by Paracelsus…a satanist….william rockefeller was an allopathic medicine salesman….selling allopathic snake oil remedies from town to town….he was also a horse thief and rapist…..his son got the monopoly for allopathic medicine in the western world….
why would you take poisonous drugs from a snake oil salesman?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0yvIuZbWWzo
Love the picture. Every tesla should have that sign – with the first sentence edited saying “keep away!”
Thanks, Pug!
PS: I’d actually love to have a Pinto. They were simple, fixable, viable little cars. Unlike any EeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeVeeeeeeeeeeeee!
You don’t want a Pinto. My father was a Ford lifer and owned one for 12 years before he gave up on the vehicle after replacing the water pump for the third time along with other issues.
Typical early 70s Ford product with the added burden of being a pet project of Iacocca who insisted on an 18 month design cycle for the car. The Pinto was a Frankenstein of US and European components which *mostly* worked.
Of course they sold. Chairman Lee was a master, as he demonstrated again at Chrysler after Henry II fired him not totally without cause.
Hi Roscoe,
I had a buddy in college who owned a Pinto wagon; it was a fun party vehicle!
I always thought the Pinto wagon looked COOL! I always wanted one.
I knew a guy in high school who had a hot rodded Pinto. It was pretty cool.
My father drove the Pinto cross country in “Cannonball” time by himself down I-10 when we moved to Florida from California in the early 70s. He liked the car but hated the work involved maintaining it as it got beyond 10 years old.
Even though it was a “small” car, I remember five people fitting in the hatchback without a problem.
I also remember the Pinto being a nice little fun car. By design it was a cheap car, but it was still better then the aluminum block Vega.
What was really out there that was better, even from the Japanese? Datsun 510’s, tiny Honda’s or Subaru’s? Maybe the Corolla. The Mazda paint would oxidize and the rotary engine was an unmitigated disaster that led to Ford buying a controlling stake. The later Pinto wagons had optional shagadelic side dome windows and stripes.
Pintos were a Swiss watch compared to the same era Chevy Vegas, we had “Vagrants” in the rental fleet where I worked out of high school, Vega what a POS vehicle. Everything cheap in those cars, then the aluminum cylinders/coated piston debacle finished them off.
hmm, i didn’t know they had coated alum. bores. Thx.
They’re doing it again. I think Ford’s 5.0, and the new Hurricane engine. Likely others. Gone are the days of ‘boring’ them for a re-fresh, but you can ‘re-coat’ them. Likely not worth the effort though, when repair labor is way more than a robot building something.
I’ve been running single cylinder ‘nikasil ‘ coated alum cylinders on dirtbikes for well over 10-15 years with good success. Where lightness is king, and fixing it isn’t too difficult. They last about 2-3 piston changes if you’re nice to them.
They used a high-silicon alloy for the block and polished/etched the aluminum out of it to make the bore “glass”. Worked fine until the first time you overheated. Took one on vacation one hot, southern summer. Hauling two adults, two teens and all our stuff. Oil consumption was fine pre-trip. Was using a quart every 150 miles after the trip. Rebuilding with sleeves solved the problem.
Chevy thought they’d cut a fat hog with an unsleeved aluminum block and iron coated pistons, till the iron started coming off the pistons and ruined the bores. Too little too late, a steel sleeved block / aluminum pistons was the redesign but too late to save the POS Vega. Buddy had a Chevy Monza which came from the factory with a sleeved motor, he put over 200k on that car with one clutch replacement (and I helped!)
Harley had the good sense to steel sleeve the all aluminum EVO (Evolution) motors which replaced the aluminum/iron Shovelhead motor in the mid 80s. With proper care EVOs and the later gen Twin Cam and M8 designs will easily go 100k miles plus.
I sleeved two Vega engines. One had the minor design problem with the circulation of water in the head. Back then, both were easy solutions and any compentent machine shop could do it, inexpensively. One of those Vegas went another 200,000 on the rebuild. Over 350,000 total. Only engine I ever owned where you could pull two plug wires at random and the darned thing would keep running.
The only other chronic mechanical problem with Vegas that I know of was the tendency to put the tranmission in two gears at once, effectively locking the box. Tired spring washers in the shifter was the cause. The temporary solution was to reach under the car and put the levers back into neutral. Taught my wife and two teenaged daughters to grab the blanket out of the back, get on the ground and make the fix.
I had 2 running cars, 2 parts cars, which helped, of course. Headers and hot cams on both when I rebuilt, a Weber on one. They moved very smartly. Would have put a Weber on the second but for some reason the Lira jumped way ahead of the dollar when I was ready to do it.
Wow what a set of keepers! A Commander and daughters willing to climb under the car to avoid a tow!
A coworker just out of college (Perdue engineering grad) needed a cheap car. He was a smart motor head so he found a $100 Vega with a sour motor. Went to the local junk yard, talked the owner to letting him sift thru the pile of Vega motors. Found his sleeved block, two more engines for extras, between the four engines he made one by trial and error piston fit by hand, best crank and bearings by sight, voila the perfect Vega motor. It even idled smooth, I was shocked. Said he didn’t measure anything did it all by feel and visual evaluation. Ran a glaze buster in the good block everything seated fine. All said I don’t think he was into this for more than $300. Drove it for over a year while he saved up for something better.
Funny thing I discovered about Fords. I had a 82,1/2 Escort. Apparently a Friday car. Changing same parts out like mad. I started buying genuine Ford parts and had no problems. Just my observation….
This was a reply to Roscoe……