old technology

A common thread in conversations is how this or that is 50-year-old
technology or looks like it came off a bike 20 years old... Engine
layouts and turn signals are the most recent incarnations.

It's 2006, well into the middle of the first decade of the (ta-daaa!)
Twenty-First Century! and still we have sidewalks made of concrete
poured into wooden frames just as the Romans had two thousand years ago.
Towels are still fuzzy cotton like the Egyptians had 2500 years ago.
Ductile iron pipe for sewage is probably going to look like it has for
the past hundred and fifty years for at least the next 500 years.
There's no particularly good reason to do it any differently. Certain
technologies are going to be with us in pretty much the same for for a
long, long time.

Which brings me back to motorcycles with internal combustion engines. We
could burn hydrogen, methane, propane, butane, ethane, octane or
whatever and still we'd have to have some kind of tank to hold it in and
some way to make it quiet as it leaves the engine. Cylinders ... yeah,
we need those. The questions will still be these: How many, which way
goes the crankshaft, and which way go the pistons? All the combinations
have been tried. Thumpers, both ways. Twins with angles 0, less than 90,
90, more than 90, 180 degrees; with crankshafts going either way for
each angle. Triples and fours as inlines, vees, and flats. Even the
occasional sixes. Valves beside, valves above, cams beneath, beside,
above, and within. Carburettors, fuel injection; ignition systems simple
and fancy; brakes of everything from leather to unobtanium.

Turn signal: ... a light on the end of a stick. Gosh, how stylish does
that have to be? Okay, put it in the front of the rear-view mirror;
that's cool. Integrate it with the tailllight, that's cool. But there's
only so much innovation to be had with turn signals. Yet some of us can
tell immediately that some turn signal design is ... twenty years old!

You know, when you're stuck in some alien junkyard and all you can find
is hulks of spacecraft from hundreds of years ago, which were already
hundreds of years old then, you pick one, integrate your ship's systems
into it as well as you can, and then get the hell out of there. If you
survive, nobody's going to care that you did it with outdated
technology. (I wonder if anyone else reads David Brin.)

So my bike may be based on a design with roots in the 1930s. It works
.... and it works well. And the turn signals have LEDs in them, so there.

 

Nice post. Some folks on here think it's a some sort of a lame insult
to refer to my bike as "50 year old technology" but in my eyes, that's
a good thing. It means it was a *damn* good design. We live in a
buzzword society. Most people don't even know *why* they're engine
*has* those buzzwords, or ignore the fact that it's co$ts them more in
the long run...

 

The traditional piston/steam engine lasted about 150 years so it
wouldn't be all that surprising to see the internal combustion
engine last about the same.

My personal bet would be a fuel cell/storage device/electric
motor combo. In the mean time, however, I've got no complaint
about older designs with the bugs already shaken out.

 

Well, that's what design is about. Turn signals might be lights on a
stick, but there are countless ways that they can be designed. And
since esthetic preferences change over time, you can easily tell when a
design is old. It's not that weird.

While certain things don't need to change (like your example of
sidewalks and pipes), there is such a thing as progress. Holding on to
old technology just because is old is silly (unless maybe you're
Amish). Especially when it comes to motorcycles. It's beyond obvious
that modern motorcycles are better than those from 20 years ago.

-Gniewko

 

Depends on how you define "better". The original thread dealt with
reliability, and that's a case where low tech and understressed
can perform very well. 50 year old designs upgraded very, very
selectively can do better than a newer design that has attempted
to improve power to weight or drop manufacturing costs. More time
to shake out the bugs and amortize the costs doncha know.

Most reliable engine I ever saw was a stationary, cast iron,
water cooled, flathead four. Hardly what you'd call high tech,
but that sucker was running strong well over 12,000 hours.

High mileage and high tech don't go hand in hand all that often.

 

I do. I have 2 complaints. First, it is absurd to pay a premium for old
design. Second, the old designs are dirty. I like breathing clean(er) air.

So the bottom line is that modern engines are cleaner, burn less fuel and
produce more HP and cost less. Why on earth would I want to buy old
technology, except for the fact any monkey can work on it. (See any episode
of OCC or Build or Bust.)

Bryan

BTW, I own 2 old air cooled VWs, I just don't drive them much, for the above
reasons.

 

At first glance you seem to contradict my post, but actually you support
it. For instance, the BMW oilheads are based on "old technology" -- the
70-year-old flat-twin design -- but have fun new stuff like four valves,
EFI, and catalytic converters so they run clean and make good power.

 

While performing an interpretive dance to Enya's Carribean Blue,
Timberwoof exclaimed:


What's wrong with semaphore turn signals?

 

Interesting verb choice though...

ab

 

Very simple, Bryan, your ignoring the additional pollution with the shift
from
reusable products to disposable products.

An older, simpler design has less to break, and as you say can be fixed by
any
monkey. As a result the product using it is more likely to be repaired
rather than
replaced if there's a problem with it. As we have shifted more and more to
complex designs, the ability to repair them cost-effectively gets lower and
lower.
Thus the usable lifespan of the product becomes shorter and shorter, and
they
will have to be replaced more often.

Let me illustrate this with a little math

Suppose you have a stable population of a million people and 1000 of them
are
motorcyclists, who start riding at age 20 and stop at age 70, that is each
person
rides 50 years.

Lets say that this population buys old, simple bike designs that are easy to
repair.
Every time the bike breaks down it costs 2% of the new purchase price to
repair, so the average age of each bike is 25 years. (of course, some
individual bikes
will last longer, some shorter)

Thus, given this population, they will consume 2000 motorcycles over their
riding lifespan, or 40 bikes a year. I'll assume all riders are experts and
never
have an accident.

Now you come along and say "these old bikes are dirty and I have this great
new complex design that makes the air cleaner."

The new bikes now are so complex that every time they are repaired it costs
10%
of the new purchase price of the bike. As they get older they depreciate,
and
the owners are more inclined to dump them when the cost to repair is
equivalent to book value, so the average age of the bike now goes to 7
years.

Over the 50 years, this population will now consume 7,100 motorcycles, or
142 bikes a year.

So, our newer and cleaner bikes are now requiring an increase of production
of 102 motorcycles, every year.

This production itself generates air pollution. So, what you end up with is
the
pollution that is reduced by the new bikes, is made up by the factories
producing
the disposable bikes. So you have no net gain of clean air. Plus you have
an
increased disposal problem, and it also puts a lot of small independent
repair shops
out of business in favor of a slight increase in profits to the big
factories.

We have already seen this happening with autos. What has happened is the
foreign import manufacturers have gotten rich out of putting the small
independent
garages out of business, pretty much. Now, part of the problem there is
that
the domestic manufacturers let that happen because they are morons, but
the end result is that in SmallTown USA 40 years ago we had a corner
gas station and car repair place that paid a couple family men living wages
they
could use to buy a few rooms and a bath and put their kids through college,
whereas in SmallTown USA today we have a corner AMPM minimart that
pays a working poor single mother minimum wage. And right next to that is a
bank that
helps people to finance all those new cars they are now buying every couple
of years
by rolling home equity loans, which drives the house prices through the
ceiling.
Not that the corner minimum wage single mother could afford a house
because of this anyway. And I won't even bring up down the street the city
council is trying to find the money to open a new dump since the old
landfill
filled up 30 years earlier than originally projected.

One of the biggest problems people have with technology, and I'm speaking
as someone who makes a pretty good living off supporting some very cutting
edge and advanced technology, is in knowing when to quit

It is extremely and very appropriate to inject brand new technology into
something
like a heart pacemaker, when that technology makes the pacemaker better,
stronger, and more reliable.

It is extremely and very appropriate to inject brand new fiber optic
technology
into a phone network that is mostly copper, when the lifespan of the fiber
is
over 50 years a strand, compared to a 10 year average lifespan on a copper
trunk.

But it is extremely inappropriate to inject new technology into a machine
that
is already perfectly reliable, espically when such injection serves to make
the
machine -less- reliable than before.

Thus, a thing like a catalyatic converter on a car, that is a good thing.
Your going
from uncatalyzed output that is very dirty, to a catalyzed output that is
90%
better.

But, a thing like a 3 stage catalyatic converter replacing a prior 2 stage
design,
that is far more questionable. Your replacing a simpler, more rugged design
of a converter,
with a much more expensive, fragile and complex design, for maybe 2%
improvement,
if that.

Now, I realize Bryan, that this is a very intellectual argument for you and
I wouldn't
blame you if you had tuned out by now, or don't understand it. But the
thing of
it is that when your looking at upgrading technology, just upgrading it for
the
sake of upgrading it, without having a specific benefit your wanting to get,
is a
very stupid thing to do.

THAT is the REAL bottom line.

Ted

 

Glomming onto new technology just because it's new is just as silly,
ask anyone who purchased a copy of Windows ME.

For certain applications, like racing for instance, very true. For other
applications, like just riding down the road and looking at the scenery,
not really true.

Ted

 

Gosh, at first I thought all you guys were lurking on ba.motss, but
this thread is oddly crossposted for some reason.

One design I could never figure out is parking lights on cars. In most
jurisdictions it's illegal to use them for driving. Using them for
parking is silly. Having them at all makes the headlamp switch design
unnecessarily complicated.

Has any manufacturer gotten rid of parking lights?

 

Hehe, your argument is not all that intellectual and I do I understand it,
sheesh.

I just don't believe that newer technology is mutually exclusive from
simple, reliable, and reusable.

I am well aware of the total ecological footprint of building new (car,
house, bike, whatever) vs re-using or repairing an existing one.

Bryan

 

If you ever get a chance, catch "The Best" episode of Penn & Teller Bullshit.

 

That was my fault. I made an oops. Apologies to all.

It's illegal to use them alone: you have to also have the headlights on.

There are times when it's useful to have them.

Well, if you're approaching a campground at night, it's polite to turn
off the headlights so you don't blind everyone who's already there. And
once in Colorado I experienced very thick but light and fluffy snow
coming from a thin cloud layer illuminated by a full moon. The snow was
so thick that turning the headlights on would blind you, but with the
moonlight it was bright enough to see the highway. So everyone turned
off their headlights and had only the running lights on. Yeah, that's a
once-in-a-lifetime experience...

 

Yeah, but low-tech and understressed isn't really fun. The most
reliable engines are large diesels, but you wouldn't really want one in
your motorcycle. Beyond a certain minimum threshold of reliablity,
there are other things that become much more important for motorcycles.

High mileage and high tech do go hand in hand. But you have to compare
apples to apples. Modern, water-cooled, OHC engines are very reliable,
but they have a hard life. If Harley engines were revved hard to the
redline as often as modern sportbike engines are, they'd fall apart
very quickly. Conversely, modern engines that are treated better
(GoldWings, ST1100/1300, etc.) are indeed very reliable.

-Gniewko

 

Nah. The reel bottom lion is if your trying too insult somewon's
intelluhginse on usednet, you shud rilly make shur you're owned
grammer &c speling our write, furst.

 

Supposition. Personal experience suggests otherwise. I regularly
revved my T509 Speed Triple engine to redline for 27,000 miles with no
failures. I (even MORE) regularly revved my 2004 Harley Road Glide
engine to redline for 27,000 miles with no failures.

Otoh, my 2007 Ducati Testastretta engine made it 242 miles without ever
seeing redline before its first failure....

DOH!

 

Yeah it is. Even if you're just riding down the road, having a stiffer
frame, better brakes, more power, more reliability, better suspension,
are all good things. Those have all improved greatly in the last 20
years.

-Gniewko

 

The real problem is that I am trying to fill the void left by Bob Nixon
since his postings are way down.

I just don't have the energy to get all long winded the way Bob can. The
way some people react you'd think we were talking religion or something.

I do enjoy the ad hominem attacks, I just wish people would get more
creative though.

Bryan