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Stay Home, Spend Less, Live Better!
Back in the day, if you tried siphoning gas with a hose, you had to be careful or you'd get a mouthful of fuel. I remember stores selling a siphoning kit back in the 1970s. I bet it was popular with a lot of fuel crooks!
They still make those things. My uncle bought one awhile back. I'd usually alternate between keeping my '67 Catalina or '57 DeSoto over there, and my uncle said he preferred the Catalina, because it was easier to siphon! Its fuel filler is mounted really low, under the license plate in the bumper. The DeSoto's is mounted much higher, more akin to a modern car.
At least, my uncle would tell me when he siphoned some fuel out, so I wouldn't run out of gas prematurely. He'd just siphon it to use for the tractor, lawnmower, tiller, or whatever, so at least he wasn't swiping a whole tank at a time!
These days, many cars have doors over the fuel caps that release only from the inside of the car. But a lot of base-model pickups and SUVs have no locking mechanisms, and they have the biggest fuel tanks -- most lucrative to siphoners.
A few decades of $1 gasoline obviated the fear of anyone stealing it. But now, who knows?
It'll be interesting to watch the trend here.
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highlights
Gas in the US is still cheap relative to other developed countries.
Low price makes us more sensitive to increases.
Lifestyle choices such as larger cars, more cars, and longer commutes, have left us more exposed to price increases and less inclined to invest in public transportation.
Later, I learned that he was doing this with the permission of the car's owner. The priest needed the fuel to get to another wedding 60 miles away. At that time (February of '74, IIRC), it was nearly impossible to buy gas on weekends.
It is sold at one third of the price of the Prius in Europe and the toyota UK web site claims 61 MPG combined(Imperial gallons)
http://www.toyota.co.uk/cgi-bin/toyota/bv/vsroom/main1024.jsp
I guess it would not be that difficult to import the gasoline version at least.
Yes, 0-62 is in 14 secs. this is a real econobox, but fair enough for commuting.
I used to siphon all the time for my mower gas. I'd put a hose in the tank and cover up the tank opening around the hose with a plastic bag and blow into the tank. After a little pressurizing of the tank, you could take your mouth off the hose and the gas would then flow out with little fuss.
Nowadays, if you could get a hose past the baffles, you'd trigger your check engine light with that trick since you'd be blowing vapors into the recovery system and probably overloading it.
In the news, ExxonMobil Disappoints. (CNBC)
"But analysts had expected that, given record oil prices, the company would surpass its own record of an $11.7 billion profit earned in the fourth quarter of 2007.
The culprit, it seems, was margins at the company's refining operations. The jump in prices of refined products such as gasoline, while a menace to consumers, failed to keep pace with the rapid increase in crude prices."
Again, it's not the banks responsibility. It's the borrowers responsibility to balance their households budget. No one elses. They chose to take on the responsibility by signing the papers. If that ends bad, it was their fault and theirs alone. The lender is not at fault. But everyone wants to blame someone else. That's all we keep hearing and it's pretty sad that we've become a society of "blamers" rather than taking responsibility for our own actions.
Sorry, but if the lender is stupid enough to lend money to somebody who's likely to default, and, God forbid, the unthinkable happens and they default, then the lender has to take part of the blame. If you're dumb enough to lend money to someone who's questionable and then you don't get it back, that's on you. You should have known better!
Now I'm not saying the borrowers are all innocent victims and the lenders are all evil, greedy, money-hungry monsters, because there's enough blame to go around. It's not entirely the fault of one party or the other.
But we're getting a bit far off the topic, unless you have plans to refi your home to be able to afford buying some gas futures.
I really got lucky buying my place before all this nonsense took place. My mortgage payment/taxes/homeowners insurance is less than $1,000. No, I don't live in a ghetto.
We've seen this before. Banks did pretty much the same thing at the end of the 80s boom only to find religion & tighten up again in the early 90s.
Back then, though, banks kept most mortgages on their books. That made it easy to identify bad loans & troubled banks. This time around, though, many of these loans have been sold. We don't yet know how many bad loans are out there or who owns 'em.
Forget futures: at this rate we'll have to refi to fill our tanks soon.
This was a dumb move on the Fed's part. It will do little or nothing for those of us with fixed interest rate costs but it will hurt older folks who depend on interest income to help meet living expenses. They'll pay more for gas but get less when their CDs come up for renewal.
My only debt is a fixed-rate mortgage. Last year, my interest income exceeded my interest expense. Thanks to the Fed, that probably won't happen again this year.
LOL...well on Saturday when I met up with Lemko and Grbeck for Spring Carlisle in PA, when Lemko saw I had driven my '79 NYer, the first thing out of his mouth was how big of a mortgage did I have to take out to gas that thing! :P
Oh, as for the Fed's 1/4 percent rate cut, I guess if nothing else, that saves me about $21 monthly on my HELOC. More like $14-15 once you figure the tax ramifications. So now I can afford to buy an extra four gallons of gas per month! Yay!
Luckily, I was smart enough NOT to take the whole $240K they offered me, and now the home is worth only about $70K more than I paid for it. I would be about $25K in the hole right now had I taken the whole amount they wanted to loan me.
So I think it can be blamed partially on the lenders and partially on the borrowers who saw Cha-Ching in their eyes and took every dollar offered them.
As far as what I do to avoid high commute prices, I ride a hybrid electric bike to work. Allows me to still burn 600 calories a day and not be a sweating pig when I get finished with each leg of the ride.
You are lucky that you can do that. I was thinking of that, or a scooter or something.
But I am about to move way out of the ways of doing something like that.
A tourist in Orlando was robbed at gunpoint and his vehicle hijacked. When the perps were caught their reason 'We needed his vehicle, ours was out of gas.'
In Mass there has been a rash of 'fuel tank drillings.' The inside release gas cap solved a lot of the 70's problems of siphoning. What these new thieves are doing is drilling a hole in the bottom the gas tanks of trucks and SUVs. The owner comes out and it's bone dry. Trucks and SUVs sit up higher.
This is slightly off of the thread but related to the topic here. The owner of a national storefront quickie loan chain was on WLW radio explaining how they're being mistreated by legislation to reduce the amount of money they take. He explained over and over how ruthless the banks were compared to the PayDay loan types. I almost feel like I need to take a bath after listening to the sleezy explanation.
They even had people call in to explain that with gas prices going up, they need to be able to borrow at 300% interest or whatever the total fees end up being. Odd, if you can't afford the gas now, how can you afford to borrow $100 and pay back $200 in fees over a few months. Somehow I think the callers were plants.
2014 Malibu 2LT, 2015 Cruze 2LT,
not much
the oil industry is pretty good at creeping prices up and then having them fall back, only to surge the following year. This strategy keeps us believing the price might go back to where it was and has us trained to adjust our income to just deal with it.
Who am I to complain about gas prices? Americans consume too much of everything. The main reason the Chinese are consuming so much energy is to feed our insatiable appetite for products made with their cheap labor.
I do ride my bike more, bike the kids to school more. But I'm not going to cancel the summer road trip - no way.
Just say NO to ethonal!
Good point.
The Chinese are drilling for oil in the Gulf off of Florida because the Floridians voted to not allow offshore drilling. The Chinese bought the rights from Cuba to drill for the same oil we could be getting under the Gulf. Somehow there's something wrong with this picture. Our gas prices go up and Floridians vote to not allow drilling.
2014 Malibu 2LT, 2015 Cruze 2LT,
Anyone know for sure?
It was called the Nucleon...
Seems kinda crazy and makes me think of Doc Brown and the Delorean, but who knows... Maybe it would have been the most awesome technology for the ordinary consumer, or maybe people would grow extra arms and legs after a crash.
You be the judge.
"The Nucleon would be able to travel 8000 km (5,000 miles) or more, depending on the size of the core, without recharging."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Nucleon">link title
It was called the Nucleon...
Which brings up the question that if we develop a great energy source can we allow it in the hands of individuals. I mean this would make a great car-bomb, right? It would even spread radioactivity, and pollute a substantial area. So you must really consider not just whether technology is good for its designed purpose, but what happens if someone wants to misuse it.
Where's Mr. Fusion when you really need it?
I guess, but so is a truck filled with fertilizer and diesel fuel...
I don't like the idea of either of them.
In the U.S., meanwhile, oil use is up 21% over the same period, although the country has added more people and seen its economy grow slightly faster."
U.S. gas: So cheap it hurts (CNN)
I don't like the idea of either of them.
Yes but buying that much diesel and fertilizer brings about suspiscion. In talking about a nuclear car or battery you're giving everyone one - big difference to accessibility.
Also when a truck or car bomb goes off the damage can be cleaned up easily. Any sort of dirty-bomb is going to contaminate blocks, contaminate the firemen and police and people in the area, and probably all the ambulances, hospitals, and morgues these people would be taken to. You would have people avoiding the area for months at least until they felt secure it was cleaned well.
Again think about whether we would really want people to have easily accessed large amounts of energy.
They do. It's called "gasoline."
But don't the Honda's have a locking fuel filler door? Why would you need a locking gas cap?
Obviously, that will pretty much correlate with oil consumption in the case of CO2 emissions, and if we can achieve it we may yet get the oil companies by their bal....l.....s.......never mind.
2014 Mini Cooper (stick shift of course), 2016 Camry hybrid, 2009 Outback Sport 5-spd (keeping the stick alive)
Who said no one was building new refineries?
Just make sure that oil you hit isn't your heating oil tank...
What do you drive that carries enough gasoline to go 5,000 miles? a tanker truck?
And seeing that nuclear energy is very compact - a nuclear battery capable of driving a car 5,000 miles would be no bigger than a D-battery. So you really couldn't have these in the hands of consumers! It wouldn't be too hard to get a few, throw them in a bag and plant a very nasty weapon. Instead of worrying about a distraught kid showing up at a school with a gun (power), you'd have a much more serious potential problem. Nuclear power will remain centralized in large plants with security and doled out as electricity to the consumer.
So it is very unlikely you'd ever see a vehicle with a nuclear fuel aboard for propulsion.
Right?
I mean, when the price jumped from $100 to $120, the price of gas shot up immediately. That's because, even though it was still the same gas from the same oil and all, the refiners had to RAISE the price right away to buy the MORE EXPENSIVE oil to turn into gasoline.
So now they can LOWER the price right away, since they can buy LESS EXPENSIVE oil.
Right?
Don't the rules work the same way in both directions? Oil goes up, gas goes up. Oil comes down, gas ..... well ..... this is when the oil market gets "complicated." Yeah, that's the word -- "complicated."
You see, it's all relative to the replacement and distributions costs, which have a correlation with production levels that directly affect futures prices, mainly driven by demand in China and other developing countries. Then you have to factor in the price of other commodities, plus the fluctuating value of the dollar relative to foreign currencies. And, of course, any political influences, along with the occasional threat of terrorism, worker strikes, bad weather, upcoming holidays, etc.
It's the "free market" at work.
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There is no extortion. These foreign countries did not make us buy the vehicles we own. We had the freedom to buy whatever we wanted, and now people are whining because the Arabs won't support our gas guzzling lifestyle with cheap gasoline. That is rich!
"I don't believe that I have a personal obligation to change my life just because oil producers, refiners, and traders work in collusion to inflate the price of that commodity."
This has nothing to do with obligations. You can either buy the gasoline at $3.50 per gallon or not. This is all about supply and demand. Complaining will not change reality. Cheap oil is gone.
And for all those people that got themselves stuck in a lifestyle where they consume 100 or more gallons of petrol a month - that's a bummer Dude.