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Triumph TR6 - Fuel on Tr6

I'm going to buy a Tr6 here in Italy. The car is 1972, coupe, 66.000 miles. The engine was recovered and rebuilt in 1995. I'm going to buy it for 9000 €.
I guess how much a such car "drink" fuel: in chilometers they said me it's about 10 chilometers per liter.
Please help me, I don't want to spend my salary in fuel!!!!
Thank you.

Giuseppe. Italy
GM Muscio

Based upon my experience and converting from miles per gallon to kilometers per liter, nine to twelve kilometers per liter sounds about right for "normal" driving (mix of intown and freeway/open road). The more intown, the lower it will be, less in town and it will increase. Pure open road drivng should be in the area of about 15 kilometer per liter.
SteveP

Speaking from a metric country, the use of 'kilometres per litre' is not a standardized unit of measure for fuel economy.

The proper method is L/100km and the TR6 would get on highway use about 12/100km; and with o/d it would be around 10.5/100km

SteveP: as a note, 15km per litre would yield 57mpg US and 68.2mpg (imperial) even a Golf TDI can not acheive that!!!! Americans and metric conversion...they don't have a clue on that measurement system LOL!!!. Even your city rating of 9 to 12 would be between 34 and 45.6 miles to the US gallon. WE ALL WOULD BE THRILLED TO GET THAT EVEN IN OUR EVERY DAY CAR LET ALONE OUR LOW TECH TR!!!

Hey GM Muscio, I believe that they meant 10l / 100km not 10km per L. That would be somewhat accurate in a perfect setting under ideal conditions
steven

Steven,

I guess that's what I get for trying to flip the equations in my head that early in the morning. Seeing that you have issued a glove slap firmly across the cheek (to quote from your post "Americans and metric conversion...they don't have a clue on that measurement system LOL!!!"), on behalf of all us clueless Americans, I accept your challenge sir. We shall meet on the screen of honor, I choose the following weapons: a knowledge of the systems, a calculator at 10 paces and a tongue placed firmly in my red, swollen cheek.

In light of that, let's do it right by using some calculated conversion factors and not off the top of the head as before. We'll blow off some of the finer points of proper significant figures and accept that there is some rounding error for this little exercise............let us proceed.

1 mile = 1.609 km, 1 gallon (US) = 3.785 L. When I used my TR6 as a daily driver with a mix of stop and go and freeway I would get about 20 mpg. Now let's take those conversion factors and do the math. 20 miles per gallon * 1.609 km per mile/3.785 liters per gallon. That is 32.18 km (the miles cancel out) divided by 3.785 liters (the gallons cancel out) which works out to 8.5 km per liter. Guess what, that works out to be 12L/100Km. On the highway, at somewhat above the legal speed limits in the Texas relatively flat lands, I would bump 30 mpg. Taking the 8.5 km/L by a factor of 1.5 would get me to 12.75 km/L. So my off the top of the head answer was about 18% high for the highway and anywhere from about 5 to 41% (at the extreme high end of the range). My nominal thought was on the order of 10 km/L and that figure is about 18% high, at least those numbers were consistent. All in all, still somewhat embarassing even if it did come off the top of the head.

Then again, I guess the conversion issue works both ways, 'eh? Let's do this in reverse now. 15 km / 1.609 km/mile works out to 9.32 miles. And 1L works out to .264 gallons. So 9.32 miles on .264 gallons is 35.3 miles per gallon. That's a long way from 57 mpg. Off by just a touch more than my off the top of the head numbers. I guess it would work out that way if a mile and a km just happened to be the same distance since that factor matchs the percent error. The Golf TDI is in no danger from our crusty, er..uh..I mean trusty old cars.

At least we didn't wind up with that 10 "hour" day they carried on about when the metric system was introduced following the French revolution. That is why the metric system is for those easily confused. Every thing is based on orders of magnitude. What is a kilometer? Why it is nothing more than a meter at 3 orders of magnitude. What about a liter? Oh, well you take a meter down 2 orders of magnitude, cube it, then take it up 3 orders of magnitude. And the gram you ask? Just take that cubed centimeter, fill it it with water and you are there. Take 1000 of those and you have a kilogram, again 3 orders of magnitude. A very simple system, it all relates back to the standard unit of length. You can even take heat units and trace them back to that length unit. Not like the US inch/pound world. We have to know that it takes 3 teaspoons to make a tablesponn, but only 2 tablespoons to make a fluid ounce and 8 of those to make a cup, two of those to make a pint, 2 of those to make a quart, but then 4 of those to make a gallon. What about 12 inches to the foot, three feet to the yard and 5280 feet to the mile. Let's even not even talk about the weight units or heat units, that gets real flaky. Yea, that's right, no orders of magnitude here, no linking back to the basic unit of length measurement, just absolute disorder. To think that it was argued in the USA that the metric system was too complicated! What a joke, whenever I hear that I just have to laugh. Are we really that clueless down here? Afraid so. Don't even get me started on Imperial (except perhaps for a proper pint, the only Imperial unit that merits concern on my part). Then you start getting into the different country's standards, DIN vs. JIS for example in metric or SAE vs. USS vs. Unified vs. Whitworth in the inch/pound world. Can't we all just get along?

Bottom line, it seems people that live in our inch/pound world (and we don't even do that right down here either, just try and get a "real" pint for proof, oh wait, most of the time that's the beer's fault even if they get the volume right) need fear not their SI/metric unit brethren when it comes to conversion of units from one system to other doing the LOL thing. They can't do it any better than we can. Can I take my tongue out of my cheek now? I think it has developed a cramp.

SteveP

Wow what a comeback...that was too hilarious but at least you agree that the metric system make far more sense that Imperial units of measure.

So armed with my calculator (and not one of the RPN Hewlet Packard ones of '80's fame) we square off in 10 paces. Now if my pace is 1m and yours is 1yd ...it get too confusing.

I curse the inch thing when working on my Brit car because quickly if I need a spanner that is the next size up from 5/16 I have to think or look on my wall that has the progression of sizes writen on it. If the car was metric and my 12mm did not fit then I would grab a 13 or 14mm. Or if I building something and need to add 1 3/8" + 2 11/16" + 1 3/4" without a piece paper it can't be done. This is progress?? One country in the whole world relies on this system. As a side note, metric and inch can live together in harmony...for proof take a look at the tires on your car.

So SteveP I will take the fall here because I too made a mistake...been a while since I used imperial system the 15km/l works out to 57km to a US gallon which equals 35.7miles...I am so embarassed. You can take the perverbial glove and slap me back.

steven

Stevens: Gentlemen that exchange was so much fun! Thank You. GM, another good reason for owning a 6, don't you think?
J.T. Cruz

Gentlemen - To you corners please. Wait for the bell and come out ....

In England where our TR's were "born", they have gone metric too. Except they buy "petrol" in liters and still calulate gas consumption in miles per gallon. All the road signs in "metric" England give distances in miles. GO FIGURE !

I can't put my finger on my "US History" book at the moment, but after the French revolution, I seem to recall that the US had a vote to go metric and it was voted out. They wanted to stay with the cumbersome British sytem they enjoyed, so soon after the Americans hated the British for their tax laws that led directly to the most hated conflict against these same British on US soil.

And we all love their cars too ! GO FIGURE!

Don Elliott, Original Owner, 1958 TR3A
Don Elliott

Now don't foget the best measurement of all, weight in the UK. Weight is given in "stones" in which 1 stone equals 14 lbs. So our 2000 lb. cars actually weigh 142 stone 8.6 pound! I hope they only use this weight for us humans and not their cars. It is rather good for our being noteing that I only weigh 14 stone and not 196 lbs. !!! Steve

Steve Y

All,
Just to stir the pot a little.
I recently wrote an article about using GRP. Hardener to resin is usually 2-4%, and I wanted to explain how much to add. In metric it is so easy - say 300 mls resin plus 6-12mls hardener. But how to express it in American? I asked US E-friends how you measure quantities smaller than a quart - apparently in CUPS! How you measure very small volumes, GOK. I gave up - expressed it as per cent and left it to you!

Personally, apart from standard spanner sizes etc, I use metric whenever I'm building something. It's 7 5/16" wide and I need to add 2 1/4"? Forget it. 186mm + 57mm =243mm. I can do that in my head, nearly.

Lastly, need I wisper "NASA" and "Mars"?

Yours, to a mm
John
JohnD

What always brings a smile to me is how proud Americans are of imperial system and shun the metric system but all their domestic car engines are expressed in litres.

What is more American than baseball, apple pie and a 5.0 Mustang...need I mention that the Vette has a 5.7L engine? And what about the 1 and 2L bottle of Coke????

And further to confuse matters, how come they use fractions for measure but when you do precision measure you use thousands of an inch and that is a decimal??

steven

Within the systems, there are some units that I like, others that I tolerate, and some I dislike My personal favorite SI units is the erg. The erg is a unit of work and that seems appropriate. How many times have you picked up an item, tugged on a rope, pulled at a wrench and said "erg?" Then there is my least favorite SI unit, the Pascal. Defined as a Newton per meter squared, I have a difficult time relating to the unit. To have any kind of pressure, you have to talk mega-Pascals. One day many years ago at work we were discussing this over lunch and decided that we would try to envision the Pascal. Perhaps if we could visualize it, we might not hate it so much. One of the guys had an apple weighing about 1/3 lb and we were sitting at a table that was about 33" square (1089 square inches or about .70 square meter for the metric folks). Taking the weight of that apple, we determined that if that apple could be sliced sufficiently thin that we could evenly cover the entire surface of that table with the apple slices, we would have a pressure of about one Pascal. Didn't work, I still hate the Pascal, give me psi any day. Now to more practical matters.

There was Steven's comment regarding wrench sizes. No problemo, just be flexible. We have a mixed bag in the shop where we play with the race cars. We have DIN metric, JIS metric, unified/SAE, often in mixed setups. One example, the GT-4 Nissan is a tube frame car with lots of aircraft hardware for the suspension bits. A significant amount of aircraft hardware is produced in inch units because a large percentage of it is used by the military. The USA military machine is firmly entrenched in the inch/pound world and if Uncle Sam is paying the bills, you do what Uncle Sam wants. The Nissan engine is mostly JIS (with a few exceptions for some of the racy bits), the transmission is modified Alfa so it matches up to DIN (pretty much adopted by EU) and then inch unit driveshaft and rear axle assembly. Or the 914 with all the custom made bits, again lots of aircraft hardware in inch, plus all the DIN stuff everywhere else. This has led us to freely interchange between the systems and to rename some wrench sizes around the shop. Examples follow:

5/16" (.3125") interchanges well with 8 mm (.3149") no nickname, yet

7/16" (.4375") interchanges well with 11mm (.4331") called a 7-11

1/2" (.5000") interchanges well with 13 mm (.5118") called a half millimeter, a favorite everywhere since it is the DIN callout for 8 mm bolt and SAE for 5/16" bolt

3/4" (.7500") interchanges well with 19 mm (.7480') no nickname, yet

BTW, the resin mix could have easily been calculated from my previous post since the relationship between quarts, cups, fluid ounces, tablespoons and teaspoons was provided. So keep it handy in the event that you have to deal with those troublesome Americans and their modifed Imperial system again. You might even blow their socks off by knowing more about their system than they do. You're looking at 10 fl oz of resin and 2 teaspoons of catalyst (a slight round off included) for the 300 ml to 10 ml mix. Rather than a percent, it might be better to just callout a ratio of 30:1. It works in any system and lets the user determine the volume they wish to mix in the units of their choice.

Yes, the system is cumbersome. The real problem is that many of those burdened by it don't understand the relationship between the units. Ironically enough, it seems that those most ignorant of the system were also the ones that argued the loudest for the US not to go metric back in the seventies and early eighties. As for myself, I can take it or leave it, I am used to moving in and out of each world. I see advantages in going metric, but also understand (at least in my business) the cost of a forced changeover, duplication of inventory, forced obsolescence of long life items, etc. The truth is that reality dictates that no matter what system you use, you had best know how to use it or you are hosed indeed.
SteveP

Thus endeth the 13th epistle of the holy Imperial / Metric lesson.
Don Elliott

Does anyone use lead additive with there petrol? Or is this an unnecessary expence?

Bryn
Bryn

Bryn
Not sure why u posted the question here but my answer is yes. Now this subject can be debated to death
Rick C
P.S. I dare not tell u how I calculate the amount to put in:)
Rick Crawford

I have used lead additives, but they have become very difficult to find and were rather expensive even when they were easily found. It has only gotten worse over the years. I finally determined that it would cost less to just forget about the lead and accept the fact that down the road I would have my head rebuilt to accept unleaded fuel. Overall it added about one dollar US to the cost of a gallon of gas about 10 years ago. See above crapola if you want to get into the conversion thing and figure that you get to factor in a moving target (exchange rates) to complicate the matter. No, it is not metric money, it just looks that way.

A friend of mine built his TR250 a bit too hot for the street. His compression ration is such he cannot run on pump gas and must either run an octane booster or run racing fuel (recent purchase at Road Atlanta during SCCA National race ~$4.75/gallon USD). So as long as your compression is not too high that you can't run pump gas, my suggestion is to just run the pump stuff and check your compression when you perform normal upkeep. If you don't drive it that much, it will take a long time for it to have any real impact. If you drive it a bunch, set aside the money you save not buying lead additives (very expensive) or lead substitutes (not as expensive, but not as effective either) to pay for rebuilding the head to be compatible with our current fuels.
SteveP

Steve
There is an article on the net ( I think at one of the LBCs sites) that was written by a GM ( I think) top engineer. Bottom line to his story was u would have to do a lot of driving to ware out the valve seats. There was wear in the no lead comparison but minimal. It costs me about $.30 for the ADDITIVE per tank full.....nothing! Interestingly when I had the head rebuilt I was told do not bother with the more costly valves, guides and seats as the wear on the OE stuff was not worth the very high extra cost. At a cost of 30 cents, I will continue to use it. I look at it this way...the engine was designed to run on a leaded fuel. I am for sure not doing any harm adding it to my fuel.
Rick C
Rick Crawford

This thread was discussed between 26/05/2002 and 16/06/2002

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