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" Q: I live in Wyoming and have a 1999 Ford F450 dually with a 460 engine. Every summer as soon as the temp gets above 80 degrees, I cannot drive this truck because of vapor locking. I have determined that the gas is getting hot from the engine and outside temp. As the fuel goes to the tank, in the return lines, and then is pumped back to the engine it eventually gets to the stage of vaporizing . This is all a factory installed engine and I have done nothing in changes. Its very frustrating the first time the engine quits, each hot season. After sitting with the hood open for an hour or so the engine will restart on the reserve tank. Eventually with enough driving, and heat, both tanks get hot and the engine stalls again. A quart of diesel fuel mixed with 20 gal of gas has helped sometimes, but not always. Any suggestions? A: I had one like this once. I started by insulating the fuel rail and all the underhood fuel lines, which helped, some. Use insulation intended for underhood\u2014the stuff for a/c lines is good, but even a couple or three layers of aluminum foil will help. Start by checking the fuel rail pressure, to be sure it&amp;#039;s in spec. Lower pressure=lower boiling point. But what ultimately tamed it for was to add a couple of feet to the fuel return line to the tank, and wrap that around the a/c line. Pick the colder line from the evaporator, unwrap the insulation parallel the fuel line and a/c line for a foot or two, and reinsulate carefully.  This works out well, because the fuel only gets cooled when the a/c is on, which is when it&amp;#039;s hottest. Skip the diesel fuel, it lowers your octane a bunch. Q: I have a 1992 Suburban with a 454 engine with 145,000 miles. The truck receives regular maintenance. Over the past 6 months, I have noticed that the oil pressure is slowly falling. When I start the engine on a typical 50 degree day the pressure is about 30 pounds (factory gauge). I let it warm for a minute and proceed to drive. After about ten miles, the oil pressure goes down to about 15 pounds. I just changed the oil and added a product called &amp;quot;Engine Restore&amp;quot; instead of one quart of oil to top it off. It has not made a difference. I am thinking that the oil pump is probably not functioning and needs replaced. Do you have a comment on the symptoms? I have grown attached to the old truck and I really like the payments (zilch). I would like to keep it going for a while yet. A: I&amp;#039;d start by confirming the low oil pressure with a mechanical gauge hooked directly up to the engine. I usually just tape it to the windshield for a short test drive. Ok, back from the test drive? Oil pressure back to normal? Replace the electrical sender. Still low? The problem is probably more than just the oil pump. It&amp;#039;s probably a worn-out engine. Pull a rocker cover, look to see if it&amp;#039;s all sludged up. If there&amp;#039;s more than a quarter-inch of sludge, I&amp;#039;d just pull the engine out and rebuild it.  Too ambitious? Okay, go ahead and replace the oil pump. Of course, you&amp;#039;ll have to remove the oil pan from the bottom of the engine, which might involve removing a lot of other parts, like the engine subframe and a lot of 4wd parts (You didn&amp;#039;t mention, but I&amp;#039;m guessing a Suburban that lives in Alaska is probably a 4x4). And if I went to all that trouble, then I&amp;#039;d at least pull a couple of rod and main caps and check the bearing clearances. And if I were going to do that\u2014I&amp;#039;d just go ahead and replace all the bearings. And if I were going to go to all that trouble, then I&amp;#039;d just rebuild the whole engine, which I believe I suggested a couple of paragraphs ago. Q: My car horn recently stopped working. Naturally I checked the fuse, which turned out it was blown. However, when I went to replace the fuse, it blew as soon as it connected to the circuit. Any ideas what could be sending more power through this fuse? A: Either the horn or the wiring it is shorted to ground. By the way, there are probably two horns. Try unplugging the connector to each horn, one at a time to see if it&amp;#039;s the horn(s) or the wiring. Q: You advocate changing oil more often then the manufacturer recommends. Think of the oil that could be saved if the recommendations were followed. I ran a large fleet operation and had oil tested regularly. There were no problems with 7500-mile intervals. We need to cut oil consumption, not follow Jiffy Lube practice. A: I agree with you\u2014except the the average consumer&amp;#039;s vehicle sees much more severe service than most fleets. And you&amp;#039;ve established that your fleet can survive on 7500-mile service by sampling the oil regularly. The average consumer has no such assurance.  Q: I have a question about your answer in last week&amp;#039;s column on HHO. You are correct. Energy can neither be created nor destroyed - that is entropy. And yes, the law does apply to the production of HHO utilizing the electrical generator in the car. The HHO generator puts a load on the generator which in turn puts a load on the engine which then consumes more fuel in order to support the additional load. But, if I were to utlize solar panels (12V/25W) to solely provide the necessary energy to create the HHO which is then combusted in the engine, then there is no additional load on the engine. The solar panels weight approx. 2.8lbs and are .03in thick - minimal wind drag and additional weight on the car. Using this configuration, then yes, you will see a significant increase in fuel economy - correct?  A: Sigh. A significant increase in fuel economy? No. Let&amp;#039;s do the math... Okay. You&amp;#039;ve postulated a 25 watt solar cell, park this in the sun for a generous 23 hrs per day, stipulating that we live on the equator. The cells are not oriented directly to the sun full-time, so we&amp;#039;ll stipulate the cell&amp;#039;s output is 25x12 watt-hours x 0.5, roughly 150 watt-hours/day. That&amp;#039;s enough energy into the battery to provide roughly 10 amps at 12.6 volts for one hour to run our HHO generator. Suppose, instead we just put that electricity into the battery pack of a hybrid car instead of generating HHO. The Chevy Volt has a projected range of 40 miles that should deplete the battery by 16 kwh battery pack by 8,000 watt-hours. So, out solar cells will take 53 days to recharge the battery pack enough to drive 40 miles. That&amp;#039;s a little over a mile per day. A sunny day, not a cloudy one. Now let&amp;#039;s use that same electricity to make HHO. Some of the electricity turns into heat in the gas generator. Some is lost in heat to the wires to the generator\u2014but we&amp;#039;ll simply ignore those losses. If our gas generator uses 10 amps to electrolyze water into hydrogen and oxygen, that&amp;#039;s roughly 120 watts, for one hour, until we&amp;#039;ve consumed the electricity the solar cells have added to the battery. One horsepower is 746 watts. So we&amp;#039;re pumping roughly 1/6 of a horsepower into the intake manifold in the form of HHO. It takes on the order of 5-10 horsepower to make a car run 60 mph. Multiply the 1/6 hp by the efficiency of the internal combustion engine burning gasoline or diesel fuel, and I&amp;#039;ll stipulate a generous 30% for that, and you get roughly 0.5%. Consequently, the HHO is contributing a potential one-half of one percent to the vehicle&amp;#039;s fuel economy. Probably less. And remember, that&amp;#039;s a 100+ mpg Chevy Volt that doesn&amp;#039;t exist yet. Adding and HHO generator to your 14 mpg pickup will have so little effect it couldn&amp;#039;t be measured. I defy anyone without access to a major, lab-grade engine dynamometer to even find that 1/2%. And that&amp;#039;s with the &amp;quot;free energy&amp;quot; we&amp;#039;re getting from the solar cells. If we have to burn fuel to run the alternator, we get less than nothing, because he IC engine only recovers at most 30% of the energy we put into the intake as hydrogen. It sure ain&amp;#039;t the 3-100% improvement the websites are claiming.  Q: I own an Audi 2001- 2.7T Quattro and I had 4 Michelin Plus tires on all four wheels and a brand new spare, a Michelin Pilot that I used on the passenger side rear wheel when I had a flat. Since the Michelin Plus are discontinued, can I buy one Michelin Pilot and put it on the other rear wheel, or because the car is a 4wd will I have to buy four new tires of one kind. The dealers I asked recommend that I buy four new tires or risk damaging the transmission. But one Audi dealer told me it doesn&amp;#039;t matter as long as the tread is same and the tires within 1/10th inch of the tread depth. The treads on the three tires is around 60%. What is the safe and economical solution? A: You really need to have at least both tires on the same axle match, regardless of whether the car is 2wd or 4wd. What really matters on 4wd is that the tires have the same diameter\u2014specifically, the revolutions per mile must be the same. If not, then the center differential will be slipping constantly. How important is this? Putting two new tires on the rear (which is where they always should go) and leaving tires with 50% tread wear on the front is asking for trouble. That&amp;#039;s why I like to rotate tires regularly\u2014even though some car manufacturers don&amp;#039;t recommend rotating tires on 4wd vehicles. The Michelin dealer can give you a specific number for the revs/mile for those tires from his product data. Then you can measure the tread depth for all of those tires and pick the two that are closest. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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