this post was submitted on 07 Dec 2024
118 points (96.1% liked)
Asklemmy
44147 readers
1244 users here now
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- [email protected]: a community for finding communities
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_[email protected]~
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Cars that would vapor lock when driving in the mountains.
As flatlander: I need some clarification. Why was this, why is it no longer something?
Vapor locking is an interplay between a mechanical vacuum based fuel pump and carburetors that causes the engine to get starved of gas and stall out. It’s made worse at high altitude and particularly when ascending rapidly like driving up a high altitude pass such as Wolf Creek. If you’ve even needed to pop your ears several times while driving you’ve been in a situation where it could have happened.
Back in the day, the fix when it happened was to stop the engine and wait for air pressure to equalize through the system, which generally took about 30 minutes. Of course, this was on the side of a narrow twisty mountain road and people would sometimes get impatient or not know what was going on and flood their engine in a panic.
It’s pretty rare now due to electric fuels pumps and fuel injection.
I work at a place that pumps several million pounds of liquid a day. As such, I know all about vapor locking. However, as a flatlander, I had no idea this was a thing. Thanks for the TIL.
I’ve never heard of this but I didn’t grow up near mountains. I did however grow up in the Midwest and couldn’t stand anti-lock brakes — one time I hit a car because instead of allowing me to control the sliding the car refused and just went straight into the car ahead of me.
These days I live nowhere near snow (unless I choose to drive into the mountains) so I’m not sure what the situation is with modern cars. I did go up into the mountains last years when the temperature dropped to 39°F overnight and my car freaked about tire pressure — that wasn’t a fun lesson to learn.
oh wow. I just completely forgot that was a thing