About 25 years ago,I read this item in Autoweek mag. A engineer for a major oil company stated that all U.S. oil companys were looking to increase the price of gas to about $2.00 gal. in the next 10 years and then level off. They missed a little on the timing ,but close enough. This same engineer also stated ,If the U.S. folks wanted to protest the increase in fuel cost , all they would have to do is not start one internal combustion engine, including lawn mowers, for one day a week(excluding police etc.). This he said would just about ruin the oil companies in a week or so.I don`t recall how many barrels of oil a day the U.S. was using at that time, But I think I saw somewhere that the U.S. was using about 35 million barrels today while only producing about 25-27 million barrels. I think those figures are right.Correct me if I`m wrong here. I don`t think the American public in general would ever consider doing this. This would be asking way to much to park that Hummer. What do you think ? :angry:

I saw a news ticker on our closed circuit tv system at work last week that in 1983 the US imported 28% or it's petrolium products.  Today we import 63%.

I don't know about these new computer controled cars, but old gas engines can easily be converted to run alcohol.  Alcohol can be made out in the back yard pretty cheaply.  Back in the early 80s I read a lot of articles in "The Mother Earth News" about making alcohol fuel and other alternative fuels.  I saw a pickup truck once that was converted to run on "wood gas" . . . it had a wood burning furnace in the bed that created a combustable gas that was fed into the engine's intake.  I never understood exactly how that worked, but I understand the Germans ran some VWs on that type of system near the end of WWII.  Vegetable oil can be brewed into "bio-diesel" for about 70 cents per gallon.  Bio-diesel will supposedly work about as well as regular diesel with no modifications whatsoever to the diesel engine.  As we speak, one of our members is converting a Vanagonagon to run on waste vegetable oil.

When it comes to the big oil companies, you have three choices.

Take what they dish out.

Try to get everyone in the US to band together and force them to lower their prices.

Make your own fuel from renewable resources and laugh in their faces.

I'm looking for an old diesel powered VW (prefferably a rabbit pickup).  The waste vegetable oil route sounds pretty fesible.  So what if it smells like French Fries!

Oh but  they did have fuel oil back in the mid 1800`s. They called it Coal oil. It was a by-product of oil refining. They use to dump it because they had no use for it. Later somebody said Hey! Lets put some of this stuff in a lamp and see what happens. What do you know! It made Light and was a whole lot cheaper than whale oil. A bit of smoke though. They ended up calling this stuff Kerosine. Now enter the engines. The first practical OIL engine was developed by a company in New York city called  Mietz-Wiess in 1890`s They didn`t call them Diesels as Dr.Diesel wasn`t on the scene as yet. Diesel was still trying to fiqure out how to make a engine run much less start on compression Ing. only. High compression was unheard due to the tech. of that time. Every engineer of that time knew of Dr.Diesel work and the name got tagged on every OIL engine. They were called Semi-Diesels. The best way to explane the Semi-Diesel Ing. is to look at the way that Glo-plug model airplane engines run. the glo-plug stays lit up between power strokes. You put a blow torch under the head of a Semi-Diesel. get her head hot, spin her over and off you go.  I had one of these Mietz-Wiess made in 1908 a few years ago and the original manual stated the fuel you could use was Kerosine, and other Distillants, but no mention of veg. oils. It wasn`t until the early 1900`s that Dr.Diesel got it
right. Pick up a copy of Lyle Cummings book:  Internal Fire  and this will explane the whole thing in much greater detail

Zen, Are you sure you want a Rabbit PU ?  I owned one for a week and that was enough for me. I`m tall and part of me is skinny. my knees were under my chin while driving. I felt like I was sitting in a church pew with no way out. I know you are shorter than me but you are bigger around than I am. I didn`t drive it very far because I couldn`t wait to get out of the thing. I belive the cab was built for a 5 foot Jap. If you haven`t  driven one yet ,you better check it out unless you have a"Jones" about be punished while you drive

Belive it or not , I use to own a  Corvair. 1965 140 . The dang thing would fly. It had a 4 speed and positraction.  Somebody had taken the 2 carbs off and installed the Eico co. 4 barrel kit. This was one of the few "vairs" that didn`t leak oil all over the place. Did you know that the 6cly. Porche engine was originaly designed by Porche for the Corvair ? G.M made Porche sign a contract that they would not install this engine in their soon to come 900 series car. So when the 912 came out it had the Type 4 engine we all love so well. Well ,GM got the engine back to the U.S.A. and desided that a  DOHC 6 cly. engine was a tad to much for the US drivers to deal with,so they went about to ruin it and they did it. Porche got wind of this and their Lawyers voided the contract and VOILA!! Enter the 911. I have often wondered what a Corvair would have been like with that engine.I read this somewhere.