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Comment by gregpilling | Hacker News Reader

GM stopped putting carburetors in vehicles in 1985 for the US market, which is 30 years ago. When can we let go of old tech?

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People will always use "old tech".

"Old tech" often just works. Flawlessly. I have a dumper truck I borrow from next door. Crank handle, diesel. It just works. Starts every time. No battery, no crap to go wrong.

"new tech" is often designed to last 5 or 10 years maximum. After that is anyones guess as to whether it'll work.

I was going to moan at you about how an old car would produce much more pollution than a newer car. But then I looked it up:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/motoring/green-motoring/11187483/...

I bought a new Honda in 1990. I just now passed it on to my son, and bought a two year old Toyota.

Think of all those cars that didn't get built because I drove the same car for 25 years. I thought about that often.

The only time it didn't pass emissions test is the gas cap didn't seal properly. Bought a five dollar cap and was good to go.

And it gets 35 mph in daily commuting.

My first car was a 1974 VW Beetle (this was late 90's) - it got 65-70 MPG.

I loved that thing. If you turned on the original heating system, you'd die of carbon monoxide poisoning, but I loved it.

You've a bit of survivor bias. Old tech that is still running is likely to last a while more. But all of the old tech that was designed with planned obsolescence in mind doesn't work any more, so you don't think of it. That is, "old tech" was once "new tech." There's also the old tech that wasn't designed to last long, like adobe mud walls.

Some old tech doesn't work flawlessly. Steam power vehicles, like locomotives, cars, and tractors, require more maintenance than their new tech replacements.

Look at sewing machines though. They used to be made of cast iron and wood. They were built properly, and it shows. They still work 50 or 60 years later. Modern day sewing machines are made of cheap plastic and flimsy metal. They last 5 years.

Yeah there's some survivor bias, but the materials used to make things in the olden days was just better material. On the down side, sewing machines used to cost a months wages or something.

Some materials in "the olden days" were indeed better. We don't have the old growth timber to make cheap, high-quality wood like we did.

But not all materials are better. Celluloid is the first thermoplastic, and the first material used for movie films, but it's highly flammable and has been replaced by acetate film. Celluloid was also used to replace ivory in billiard balls, which was better than the clay and wood balls used earlier. All of those materials are worse for professional play than modern billiard balls made from composite plastics.

You brought up sewing machine. Sewing machines were made in the hundreds of millions. What you see are the ones that weren't trash and were maintained. Here's a page complaining about people complaining about people selling old sewing machines that mostly useful as "boat anchors" http://runningstitches-mkb.blogspot.se/2012/08/open-letter-t... . Quoting one example, "I'm not impressed when you tell me your 1950 Singer has "only been used twice to sew on patches" (note: I am not making this up!) If this machine has been sitting unused in an attic for half a century, it is most likely frozen or seized up."

Quite clearly a lot of old sewing machines do not "still work 50 or 60 years later."

A Singer 201, which is widely considered the classic sewing machine, cost 6 months wages, not the 1 month you think it was. See http://www.sewalot.com/singer_201k_sewalot.htm . (Also, Singer switched from cast iron to aluminum a bit over 60 years ago, so your timeline is a bit off.) There are a lot of crappy modern sewing machines in the <1 week's salary range. But that's hardly a fair comparison, is it? Plus, how many of those have an original motor that's been in use for 60+ years without wearing out?

My Mom has a cast iron Singer 201. Which she loves even though it only does straight stitches. She also has several other sewing machines. She still uses her Bernina from the 1980s. So at least some modern (less that 50 years old) machines can and do last longer than 5 years.

Finally, there are plenty of sewing machines on eBay from the 1950s and early, for cheap. What is the reason that they aren't scooped up if they are of significantly higher quality than modern machines?

No battery, no crap to go wrong.

Incidentally, mechanical diesels are also immune to EMP. All they need is fuel and air. Not true of newer electronically controlled ones, which is done mainly to reduce emissions.

The compression-ignition characteristic also means diesels have this rather spectacular failure mode: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diesel_engine_runaway

Speaking of old diesel tech that just works and will be here forever, if you're in the U.S., it's still possible to pick up an M35A2 on the cheap (like ~$2000 cheap), and they'll run just about any fuel (multi-fuel Hercules diesel FTW), and are almost indestructible by normal means. They are also far less temperamental than many older trucks. You just need anchor arms to steer it and the ability to drive stick shift.

To add to your last statement, it seems like cars are engineered for the length of a typical lease. Afterwards, nondeterministic electric gremlins start showing themselves.

There are many readers of HN who aren't in the US and plenty of older cars around. In some countries carburetors were going into new cars after 2000.

Even if all carburetors disappear from the face of the earth, it's still good to know they once existed, what purpose they served, and when and how they started being replaced.

Extreme example: I once read a fascinating article about middle aged technology, where they commented on, among many things, how a high-quality cart wheel would have a hard, dense wood on the axis, another kind of wood in the spokes that was flexible, and a border made of a very stiff wood. I'm searching for it but I don't seem to be able to find it, alas.

The last carburetors in the US were in 1994 ISUZU trucks. [1] Some motorcycles still use them for simplicity and the last NASCAR season with carburetors was 2011.

And anyway, why are we still teaching people how a CPU without branch prediction works? When will we let go of old technologies?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carburetor#History_and_develop...

> And anyway, why are we still teaching people how a CPU without branch prediction works? When will we let go of old technologies?

Fuel injection systems have replaced carburators. Branch predictors haven't replaced anything, if you want to compare them with any engine that would be turbo chargers (i.e. they're optional).

I'm not sure comparing CPUs with engines makes a lot of sense though.

Hi, I'm Maciek, I work on compilers. I would love to know how branch prediction in modern CPUs work, sadly they won't tell me (trade secrets).

You should really improve your metaphors.

Just search ACM for branch prediction papers at ASPLOS or similar conferences and look for corporate affiliation. IBM, Intel, and others routinely publish this stuff. It's usually patented first, so you can also check the USPTO.

You can find them in the inboard motors on many not-so-old boats. My 10 year old Mercruiser uses one (although I think the newer Mercruisers have all shifted to EFI). I found the site to be very instructive. I'm always interested in learning more about how the engine in my boat works in case there's anything I can repair at home instead of taking it to the shop. I think a lot of the information on the site is transferable seeing as how mine is essentially a GM produced 'car-engine' mounted in a hull (minus a transmission and some other things).

There is other countries which are using cars other than the United States (shocking I know !) and I have a car which has one.

Good for you! I will never understand the mostly American tradition of buying a new car every few years? Cars that are so complicated; the owner is forced to bring it to the shop for every hiccup. A lot of cars/and trucks from the late 80's to around 2008, are pretty easy to work on, and with the proper maintence can last 300,000 miles. And if your not afraid of getting your hands dirty--you will never have to pay a mechanic $120/hr to work on your vechicle. These newer vehicles are so complicated--a lot of shops do a lot of learning on your dime. (I have a Toyota with a 22R engine. It has one 350,000 miles and it's never seen a mechanic--except for smog checks, and never failed once. Actually it did fail once, but it was due to an error in a Motor Emmission publication. If you have an older car, and need a Smog check; make sure your smog shop has access to Mitchell manuals online(OnDemand5). They are highly accurate!

My dad gave me some good advice years ago. He told me to buy a year specific service manual for every automobile you ever buy.

It's due to the perceived wisdom that every car suddenly becomes a lemon after hitting 100k miles. The "low social status" attributed to driving an older car is also at play.

Here in Europe, it's not uncommon to see cars in good shape which have over 400k miles on the clock. If you think about it, a European or Japanese mid 90's car with no rust and a rebuilt engine will give you more trouble-free miles, for a fraction of the money.

mostly American tradition of buying a new car every few years

The average car on US roads is 11.4 years old: http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-ihs-automotiv...

The average car on EU roads is 8.6 years old. In fact, in the EU only Estonia and Finland keep their cars longer than the US on average. http://www.acea.be/statistics/tag/category/average-vehicle-a...

would be interesting to see vehicle age by geography. I suspect all the rural farmers are the ones skewing the average (it's not unusual to have a 20-30yr old truck out on the farm.. You can fix them with the same tools as your tractors).

And 6.6 years in Japan, in 2011: http://blogs.wsj.com/drivers-seat/2011/12/02/are-cars-losing... Americans do a lot of silly things but selling cars too quickly isn't one of them (relatively speaking, at least).

For all those who have not liked my post: I rebuilt my first carb about 40 years ago, sitting on my fathers lap (age 5). He was a mechanic, I was a mechanic until I was 20. After that I spent the next 10 years selling tools and diagnostic equipment, as well as fixing a lot of cars - especially problem cars.

I have worked on thousands of carburetors. I can re-jet the 2 carbs in my race bike in about 5 minutes (main jets only). Carburetors are indeed in use on millions of engines. I understand Bernoulli's principle, and I also understand that a carburetor is lousy at part throttle metering. What does that mean to you?

Part throttle is anything that is not full throttle. Some people have a hard time believing that a fuel injected engine offers no full throttle advantage in total horsepower - it is the barely open part that matters. Fuel injection is massively more efficient and clean than carbs at part throttle. The part throttle issues cause all the emissions problems, cause all the pollution, cause all the smell when following behind a carb'd car.

The electronic carbs of the 80's were a real nightmare. Take a mechanical device, put some dozen vacuum lines on it, each controlled by a solenoid, give it a dumb computer that you can't talk to, and no tech information anywhere. Not even at the dealer. Caveman tech, dressed up with bunch of patches and cruft. It was done to save a buck, not because the better way wasn't known. And the systems are horrible and should be sent to the crusher. It is fuel metering in the worst way; adding miles and wear just makes all the problems even worse,

The EEC-IV systems used by Ford from 87-95 only had a 60 pin connector on them, the same number of pins that a Beagle Bone Black has. I have be thinking about how to use that as a basis to replace existing systems with an open source system that would be better and cheaper.

But carburetors need to die. They are not great new, and get worse with age.

GM is not the world. Just FYI

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