What if gasoline was no longer available?

Whe I bought my first car, a '66 Olds Starfire (10.25:1 compression), it was 1980, and finding leaded gasoline was hard to find, and premium anything was tough, by '82, the last place I could still get it phased it out.

Hypothetically, what if someday, you can no longer buy fuel that will work in old engines?

We already have to buy special, hard to find oil and additives (with zinc) to keep out flat tappets alive... There's 10% ethanol in the gas we buy now, which is eating away at our rubber fuel lines and carb seals and parts.

What if new formulations of gasoline make it impossible to run in an old engine... Making the cars we love, basically just garage art that takes up a lot of space... Would you keep your hot rod/custom? get out of the hobby? Sell it to a museum? Repower it?

This disease isn't going away form me, and I'm 47, so... 20 years? 30 years? 40 years? I'll be 67, 77 and 87 years old.

Who am I kidding, I like bacon cheeseburgers too much, I'll be lucky to see 67.

But you younger and healthier guys...

?

 

You can make your own moonshine legally and instead of drinking it, you run your car on it. You MUST add poison to it to make it non-potable, or else the "revenooers" are going to come for you! Your very own still in your shop. And, you can make ethanol from nearly ANY organic source; i.e. grasses, crap, etc.

Obviously, you'll have to run ethanol-friendly fuel system parts, so all of the lines, filters, pumps, and carb(s) will have to be changed out or modded to accept 100% corn-squeezins'.

 

I'm kind of hoping Obama's plan to make fuel out of Alge works out. Then I won't have to clean my pool so often...

 

Propane !!

 

fear not...we will find a way...

 

A few years back I saw a '46 Ford truck on EBay that had a propane conversion on the flathead that looked like it dated back to the 50's.
I would look into propane.

 

In WWII when gasoline was not available, people used wood gas. It is the gas that comes from burning wood. It is flammable and burns in car engines. They towed trailers with firewood and the wood gas contraption.

 

my neighbor asked me how my lawn was so green this year. I told him the only thing I could think of was the pool going to crap last year before I replaced the filter involved me dirty-pumping that algae to the front lawn. I don't think he believes me. But growing one's own algae with the result of fertilizer and cheap gas sounds good to me.

 

I don't give a crap if I have to put an electric motor in my car, I'm still going to be cruising. Fuk government!

 

make wiskey and run my car off of it. care a less if its legal or not.

one for me
one for the car
one for me
one for the car
two for me
one for the car
etc
etc

 

Hey chicken little, the sky is falling

 

Just stock up now

 

Horse and Buggy, the real old school way. Think about it, we have been using automobiles as a means of transportation for about 100 years. Whereas, for thousands and thousands of years, there were no automobiles and people got along just fine.

 

biogas

 

steam

 

I will walk.

 

It'll never happen, so I ain't gonna even waste my time trying to think of a "what if". As long as there is Corporate greed, there will be gasoline. "Big Oil" will make sure we always have a need for it, and they'll keep pumping it and reselling it to us at a huge profit. There's a better chance of the old steel we love running out before gasoline will.

 

im in the oil and gas industry bite your tongue

 

Pumping gas at the Exxon on the corner of Fifth and Main doesn't count... lol

 

Hog poop. Worked on Thunderdome. They had some TRICK rides eh?

Er do wat I did as kid to fuel the mini-bike. Siphon from Big Brothers vehicles.

 

ragtop you disresepct an old man shame on you

 

Ill drive off a cliff with the last drops of gas i would have

 

No disrespect intended. I simply forgot to put a at the end.

Besides, since you work for big oil and gas, if your feelings were hurt you could just go cry yourself to sleep on that giant pile of money you keep at the foot of your bed! LOLOLOL (I'll remember to add it this time...)

 

Propane is good, I run my truck on it. But, unfortunately it is mostly a by product of refining oil to get the gasoline in the first place. So, that isn't likely going to be a viable option if lack of oil is the reason gasoline is no longer available.

But, a lot of engines could be converted to run several different kinds of fuels easy enough as mentioned. Alcohols could easily be home brewed. Methane from cow crap and landfills. Veggie oils, etc. All kinds of stuff really. Never fear, there will always be something to burn somehow or another.

But reality is electric cars and trucks are likely the long term future. Just needs a serious breakthrough or 2 on battery technology and the internal combustion motors will be left mostly to museums and curiosity exhibits. Either that or a truly functional and cheap enough hydrogen fuel cell unit. Likely just a matte of when, not if.

 

One of the regulars that comes in for work at the shop I work on my cars at drives a Benz that smells like french fries. Sumbitch makes me hungry every time he shows up. Point is, I guess veggie oil would work. It'll get you point A to point B. Be a bunch of fat motherf***ers running around if we all got the urge to hit McD's every time we had to run to the Post Office though...

 

I've thought about this a lot. And, have been thinking of downsizing because of it. According to the experts, we have passed peak oil (another way of saying used up over half of the petroleum in the earth). Because pump prices are pegged against availability and demand, given that more vehicles are being bought worldwide by developing nations like China and India, everyone can expect to pay more as it gets harder to find, develop, and exploit the earth's ever dwindling resources of crude. At some point, we will wake up to find rationing and exorbitantly high prices. But, don't despair, the first internal combustion engines ran on alcohol. And, the first diesels ran on vegetable oil. So using these alternative fuels will simply be a return to 'traditional' fuels, a good thing for those who are able to make the change. Just keep in mind that dinosaurs didn't adapt and became extinct, and the same will happen to 'rodders' who cannot, or will not make the leap. I won't go into what my idea of future rods will be, since this thread is not about that, but someone should start one. Just think about this: high octane gasoline didn't exist for people who drove flat heads before WWII --- another reason why they had such low compression off the assembly line. Only because the more powerful airplane engines developed for war needed it, was it developed. And, of course, afterwards you could buy 'Ethyl'. And, the auto makers were able to build engines to exploit it for more more power and, or course, sell more cars. As far as using propane and natural gas, they have an upside and a downside, one of them being the hardware and danger. The same goes for hydrogen. Alcohol depends on a source material. Corn prices are going through the roof because of the drought. Brazil uses cane to make alcohol. Whatever source, it takes infrastructure to create stability in production and so far we're tied to Congress, along with the Department of Energy and the Department of Agriculture, and that other one we all love to hate, who regulate and invest tax money in the future of it. But, my money is on alcohol, and hybrid autos that utilize a little of this, and a little of that to stretch out mileage, an aspect of performance often overlooked by those who grew up eating, sleeping and dreaming about high octane, high compression, high horsepower bombs built for short bursts and the intense buzz of speed. A little of that is going to survive but most of what we grew up with is going to turn into myth as guys in the future, still willing to mess with old cars, are confronted with problems none of us dreamed about. For them, it will be a different set of rules and the buzz may just be getting to drive at all.

 

I know if I had shit tons of oil I'd want all your fuckers to panic and think its running out.....and then I'd jack up the prices.....

 

YUUUUUUPPPPPPPP! (Hit the nail right on the head.) I think we need to drill Alaska and be self-supporting. Let the rest of the world fight over the oil in the lands filled with people who hate us. The caribou will eventually learn to duck...

 

Trust me the earth will be uninhabitable from pollution before we run out of oil to pump up and refine. You would not believe the technology we utilize to pull the stuff up, goes from primitive to extremely complex. Alot of alternative fuels out there.

Model A(s) will run on just about anything flammable. I have read stories about people having little gas in WWII and starting their bangers on gasoline then running them on Kerosene blend. Never tried it but would be an interesting experiment. Another thing old timers here in the oilpatch told me was how they used to have buckets under the flowlines to catch "drip gas" and they ran cars on that.

We have pumping units that run on gas produced from the well they are pumping oil and gas from go figure eh... Some of the most remote isolated places here in California have pumps pulling oil up and some of the most obvious places do also. There are wells in Beverly Hills!!! Ever been to Magic mountain? Surrounded by wells. Its not just california anymore, the methods and technology advancements in recovery of valuable oil and gas deposits is quite amazing nowdays. Rant over don't worry about the lack fossil fuel talk.

 

Well since I'm 13 and don't have a car my means of transportation is to walk or ride my bike so I would go back to that.