The shape of things...

[Jim Warman]

...to come.

 

Back in about 1985, I wondered aloud "what will a pick up truck look like in 25 years?". While I did expect the smoother looking aerodynamics of the 02ish/03ish F150, I don't think my flights of fancy took me to overhead cams and variable valve timing. and now this "FORD TO EXPAND FUEL-SAVING START-STOP TECHNOLOGY FROM HYBRIDS TO CONVENTIONAL CARS, CROSSOVERS

Ford’s popular fuel-saving technology that automatically shuts off the engine when the vehicle comes to a stop – a feature found today on the Ford Fusion Hybrid and Ford Escape Hybrid and some Ford cars in Europe – will soon be added to conventional cars, crossovers and SUVs in North America"

 

I certainly never envisioned working on "My Mother, The Car" ( a cheesy reference to a talking car ).

[Keith Browning]

I think they call it progress Jim. I am sure it is beneficial in some ways though probably annoying to many. I guess is we will have no choice but to watch this play out.

[Jim Warman]

Progress indeed. By the time I got into this business, the switch to 14 volt electrics had already been made. Twice, I helped my journeyman switch cars from 6 volt starting to 12 volt starting. I saw tube type radios disappear in favour of transistor radios, the disappearance of both DC generators and breaker point ignitions.

 

Todays exotic new development will become tomorrows mundane standard feature.... but beyond that, if we look at automotive history closely, we can extrapolate where the car will be in the future... not so much to any timetable - but to an eventual state of technology.

 

Materials and assembly techniques... stuff some already take for granted.... Let's look at head bolts... used to be a head bolt was a big, fat bolt that was somewhat re-useable and simply bolted the head to the block deck. Now - head bolts are long and nearly graceful.... they clamp the head to the block deck by being screwed, in a torque to yield fashion, directly into the main bearing web. "Exotic" materials and designs - road draft tubes, slipper skirt pistons. Bed plates (racers would fab up a main bearing stud girdle to stiff the engine assembly)...

 

20 years from now - highly skilled, knowledgeable techs will be almost a thing of the past. The OBD system will handle most of the diag process. We first saw bit-mapped DTCs in restraints control systems - now we are seeing them in powertrain control situations. How long before you and I are replaced by trained monkeys?

 

We have cars with foward looking radar... we have cars with side looking radar.... we have cars with nav systems accurate to a few feet... How long before the right lane is for "auto-drive" car and the left lane is for "self-drive" cars....

 

A neglected 302 would be lucky to make it 150,000 kms before cold starts and harsh weather turned it into a mosquito abatement device... today, we see 5.4s with 500,000 kms on them and they still run good - even though the hood latch is damned near rusted shut (maybe an overstatement - but you get the picture).

 

Not long before AMC (American Motors Corp) finally bit the big green wiener, they proposed a car with a "sealed hood". You would bring it in once every X months or XX miles and the appropriate maintenance would be performed. Hmmm.... now we have the IOLM system that may let you go a year without an oil change (and who can forget the coolant monitor on the 6.7).

 

Progress? Yes... but I think we can already see where it is going.

 

Some time ago, engineers decided that a 4.00 inch cylinder bore was about the limit for efficient flame propogation in the infernal (sic) combustion engine.The new 6.2 has a bore of 4.015" and dual spark plugs.... (has anyone noticed the minimum oil pressure spec?)... How long before we see a redesign that will turn this into a DI engine?

 

Will blow down turbos ever be economically feasible?