MG MGB and MGB GT Tech Talk
This is related to MGs only as they are addicted to it....interesting...
http://gasbuddy.com/
I know that when ever I make a run to Georgia I will wait until South Carolina to fill up the truck in both directions. There is always a huge difference in cost. Sometimes in the neighborhood of thirty cents a gallon, almost all of it because of the tax difference.
Jack
Be glad we don't run diesel in an MGB. We use a diesel Dodge sprinter van for our business trips and right now we are in Orlando and diesel here is 4.00 per. I saw it for 4.26 in WV a couple of weeks ago, that was on the trip out. On the way home the same stations had dropped to 4.06. Go figure. I too try to fill up in SC or VA when we travel as I think that NC has the highest gas tax in the southeast. Anybody got a spare fusion reactor?????
Which obviously brings up the subject of trucks and delivery costs.
In an earlier life I had a side business of leasing some Kenworths that I owned to various trucking companies and got burned pretty badly by the dream, so even today I notice things about the industry and feel badly for those guys out there doing the driving.
For the life of me I can't understand why the trucking companies haven't folded their tents. Owner/operators are especially vulnerable to fuel price increases as they can't just tack on a surcharge when ever they trip lease. They might be more attentive to the costs of fuel and adjust their driving styles to get the maximum for the minimum but the company drivers have no impetus to do so. As a result you see more black smoke spewing from a Roadway or Estes tractor than one with some guy's name on the side.
As far as Diesel cars are concerned, I know where there is a nearly perfect 123 Chassis 300 Turbo Diesel that I could pick up for a song, but why bother? I am not into the bio-diesel thing and if Diesel costs more than gasoline it doesn't make sense except for the safety factor. Sad!
I am already seeing some resistance from my clients in the "delivered" costs department. A typical crate that cost fifty bucks to get to where it was going this time last year now costs seventy to seventy five. The freight charges are getting to be too high of a percentage of the product costs. Remember the old saying...If you have it, it was delivered by a truck". Well, if the trucks stop rolling then you aren't going to have it.
Jack
For some reason SC gas is much cheaper than other states around us. I think it's the taxes.
Some fool in Michigan proposed adding another $0.50/per gallon tax on gas. We're already at $3.36/gal. Some people just need to be shot.
SC is cheaper for who-knows-why. NC's tax is 13.4 cents higher than SC's and Georgia's tax is 9.2 cents higher than SC's. I have wondered about that myself when traveling thru the neighboring states. You get to the NC line and it goes up a few cents in stations very close, but then about 4-5 miles into NC will be 30 cents higher. Been that way for a long time. Maybe because SC's average incomes have sunk to about 3rd lowest in the country this year ( hasn't been much higher than that since the Civil War).
http://www.taxfoundation.org/taxdata/show/245.html
Why don't we go ahead and name that fool. It was Sen Carl Levin (D).
how about starting a pool ,, supply the date when fuel goes over 5 $ a gallon aaverage cost and you win a tank, wow,, at 5 ducks the G my ford straight six with the long range tanks gets 240 dolla of fuel when its dry.
I bet # 2 fuel goes over 5 next fall.. or sooner.
That guy is an absolute idiot Peter. If they added that much tax or even half of that in one step the world economic system would stop dead in it's tracks and there would be food riots within twenty four hours.
When I hear of such proposals I just pray to the LORD that he keep the fools away from the levers of power.
Jack
i think you'd have better luck praying to a SHIEK for better gas prices...
then again- a whopping tax increase would hurt gas-guzzlers more... and really- anything to get more SUVs off the road? I could support that.
of course, i'd be more supportive of a $1k/yr SUV tax. world would be better if people could stop driving deathboxes and just admit they're insecure and that's the only reason they're not driving a station wagon.
Put a federal tax on tags for the SUV's and gas guzzlers unless they work in a profession that requires them. Offer an income tax credit for anyone who downsizes in that tax year. Take every lawmaker who supports ethanol from corn out and shoot them. Going from South Alabama to South Carolina, the lowest gas prices are in Georgia just north of the Florida line. After that they go up as you go north.
Frank
Not to start a food fight here Matt but you might consider what a "gas guzzler" is.
In my case it is a 2000 Chevy four wheel drive pickup truck with a five liter engine. It weighs about six thousand pounds and the motor will haul 16,660 pounds at legal speeds from the mountains of NC to Denver or Manhattan or Atlanta. When it is "at home" it enables me to pick up materials and deliver completed goods to the UPS terminal. It also makes it possible for me to move my daughter and her family or my friends business equipment to new locations. Without it I would be in the bread line sucking up the fruits of every one elses tax payments. I have a '98 Subaru Legacy sedan that I use for as many local trips as possible. It doesn't get the thirty plus miles per gallon that the new twenty five thousand dollar Civics do, but at 22 to 28 MPG I am satisfied, especially when the snow is a foot deep.
I suppose that what I am saying is that not everyone lives in an urban environment that precludes the need for something other than a very small car, and owning and using a "gas guzzler" is not always a choice, but rather a necessity.
I certainly admit that my daughter's friend who inherited a HUGE Excursion from her father, should not have been using that thing for daily transport, but when she recently traded it in on one of those Honda Element box things I cringed thinking about how she would fare in a collision with anything other than another little box.
I also only partly agree with the idea that the Saudi clan is at fault for the present prices. Some of it is their fault, but I lay most of the blame at the feet of all of those good old American day traders and specifically the futures market whiz kids. There isn't any truly valuable investment going on in either tee-pee. Only a great deal of legal but otherwise immoral greed implemented by our wonderful electronic communications systems.
Jack
random thoughts, pardon numbering... they're not in order and numbering isn't meaningful outside my head...
1) if the excursion->element person only worries you being in an element, I'm relieved she's not behind the wheel of an excursion. people get too used to thinking of SUVs as safe zones when they're death traps for everyone else.
2) true work trucks guzzle gas, sure. I'm really only peeved about passenger gas guzzlers, of which there are many. My '92 accord got 20/30mg (city/hwy) til the day I sold it a few months back. That $1750 (what i sold it for) car gets better mileage and handles better than most anything on the road made within the last 8 years. (not counting sports cars, obviously).
3) americans need lighter, smaller cars- across the board. our cars are huge because we've had to engineer our tiny cars to ATTEMPT to stand up to getting into an accident with a 3 ton excursion. They'll still fail, but it means our tiny cars are getting nowhere near the mileage the Geo Metro or Honda CRX did 20 years ago. (my uncle's CRX got just a hair under 50mpg on the highway, and, yes, could out-handle most other standard "passenger" vehicles). I'll gracefully ignore the bit about "if we reduced passenger weight 100 lbs, we'd shave another mile or two off the mpg" thing.
4) re: the saudis- or it has more to do with the fact that our economy/dollar is tanking and that the rest of the world finally hates us just enough to stop giving us such amazing discounts on oil. In short, your "LORD", or rather, the political party that can't stop mentioning him every six seconds isn't really the best for business when dealing with countries where that's typically grounds for beheading.
anyway- better stop this now before it turns into a political discussion, which is just never productive.
I do know, as much as we can guess and accuse for the whys and hows, that gas prices have quadrupled since I was in high school. I'm 26.
Jack,
I just wanted to let you know that I have been commuting almost 500 miles per week in my 85 300d turbo diesel. I have been getting 28 mpg (mostly highway). I have found this is just enough to make up for the higher cost of diesel. It certainly is not any advantage. BTW, The 123 chassis mercs (from what I read on the mercedes boards) are very popular for WVO conversions. They seem to take it well.
Anthony
I serviced HUNDREDS of Benz cars in my time and the five cylinder diesels were great engines. Mercedes did indeed make the very finest automotive machinery on the planet. I have now idea what they are like these days, since I left the business nearly twenty years ago now, but in my time there wasn't anything that came close to them. Rolls/Bentley were an anachronism. Ferrari and ALFA were short fuse exciting toys. LBCs were the perfect hobbyist/enthusiast cars. Volvo was in a class all to its own. Porsche was an extremely well built car with huge basic design flaws that tested the limits of both the machine itself and the wallets of their owners. Mercedes just did everything right as far as I could tell.
My last Benz was a 116 chassis 300 Turbo Diesel and I loved it, but to tell you the truth I always liked the 123 chassis version better. The only real problems with them were the stupid seat padding/structure/material and the climate control systems that they copied from AMC. The rest of the car was as bulletproof as could be.
My real, all time, common man, favorite car for anything except really long distance high speed travel was the 2.3 liter gas four banger in the 123 chassis. Peppy as all get out and good for just about anything below a hundred miles an hour. I also liked the Euro edition of the 126 chassis with the M110 motor and manual five speed. They were only delivered in Europe as the American market preferred automatic transmissions in their high line sedans, but if you ever had an opportunity to drive one you wouldn't soon forget it.
Anyway, I digress...Sorry for the reminiscence ! LOL I think that I'll scrape up some dough and go buy that blue car for no other reason than to test JDWs acetone thread above.
Jack