China-made equipment...

[JSharp]

thats an interesting aspect in this discussion, back to the origin, yet i dont see the relation... could you elaborate on that ? is "china made equipment" really to blame for the poor USA economy at this moment, or is this concidental?

I'm not sure where this conclusion comes from. The US economy is is doing poorly right now relative to a few years ago. We can trace that to Federal Reserve policies though, not the Chinese even if trade policies do play a part. And in spite of what you read in the unbiased world press we're not all living in cardboard boxes over here and eating at soup kitchens.

The Europeans are certainly not in any better shape. Unless this article is total BS -

Europe looks no longer immune to U.S. economic storm - International Herald Tribune

Today things may look somewhat more rosy there, but given the size of the US economy there's no way out. When we sneeze, *everyone* catches a cold. Catching it a day later doesn't mean you won't end up as sick or even sicker that the guy that gave it to you.

Very true, Americans have to pay lotsa dollar$ to buy Euro goods, with this course. However the example you mention: a typical Porsche buyer, wouldnt care about that, would he

Even though Chrysler/Jeep/Dodge dealers over here, are running "low dollar weeks" sales programs, the demand for USA cars hasnt really grown from that...

It may seem as if German automakers have a customer base that isn't price sensitive but it's really untrue. There are plenty of 3 Series Beemers sitting in suburbia that wouldn't be there if they cost even a penny more, let alone 25%-50% more.

It's especially bad for them since most of them were purchased with borrowed money made cheap by our Fed policies. Higher prices for the product in the US thanks to the high Euro and tightening of our credit supply will not be good for European manufacturers. Just a couple of the reasons that VW recently announced it's once again going to be manufacturing in this country.

It's easy to see why Chrysler/Jeep/Dodge are having trouble there. They're having trouble here too...

 

[roccon31]

Many modern engines, are highly turbocharged, and completely give up inder 1000 rpm... this is because of the emission, most trucks these days sense the turbo pressure, and give minimum fuel when there is no turbo pressure, to prevent black smoke.

I allways thought that bi-turbo technology was the answer to this, because the small turbo gives instant response, then spools up the big turbo, but you guys say that Cat's ACERT technology was based on this, and also say it didnt work....
Can anyone tell my WHY it doesnt work ?? I'm allways eager to learn




The 3rd generation of the 12.9 liter DAF engines (van Doornes Automobiel Fabriek - Eindhoven, the Netherlands) are no longer called DAF, but Paccar.
The current Paccar MX engine is a 12.9 liter 6 cylinder, i think up to 570 hp max ?
Its a very popular engine in Europe, it is a very modern design, though it has been tried and tested for at least 10 years. DAF engines have a good name in common.

I'll expect more problems with the MB engines, which Detroit will produce for the North American market... they (MB) had some serious reliability problems with certain V8 engine series...

bi-turbo's- it does work, to eliminate black smoke, however, the trade off is heat. cat couldnt get the trucks to run cool enough in a real world use to be dependable. the c-16 (single turbo) @ 600hp was a heat monster- dual 6" exhaust was factory mandatory for heat dissipation. larger multi-core radiators also. but boy, were they fun to drive! once they went to ACERT, they backed all of the hp numbers down due to heat problems. the 550's were putting out more heat than the old 600's, drank alot more fuel and were a 40,000$ option. were talking 4 mpg instead of 6 mpg (on/off highway). thats HUGE! at that time i was in process of spec'ing a new triaxle when this happened. i never bought the new truck for this reason also.

black smoke- yep, thats exactly whats going on, fuel is limited by boost pressure now. the funny thing is, that black smoke is cleaner to breathe than most car exhaust, just looks dirty so its an easy target.

i can also tell you this. the wastegate that my turbo had on my last truck (cat c-12 @430 with computer at full fuel always, non-restricted) was slow to react to changes in throttle. i had it blocked off which did a few things for me. raised boost pressure by about 9 psi (from 23 to 32) lowered my exhaust temps by 300 degrees (yes, i was out flowing my injectors= could have used more fuel) and i gained a HUGE amount of throttle response. my fuel mileage also went up by about .5 mpg. my theory on why is this- with the increased throttle response, i could run lower rpms and not have to downshift as much, and could still pull a hill. the truck also smoked less pulling away from a stop, because the turbo spooled much faster. sort of a dog chasing his tail type thing with emissions. more emission control=less throttle response=more heat=more fuel burned due to driver wanting more power=more emissions=and so on, and so on...

thanks for the info on the paccar engines, renze good to know its not "new tech" that we should be leary of coming from paccar.

 

[Renze]

And in spite of what you read in the unbiased world press we're not all living in cardboard boxes over here and eating at soup kitchens.

Mot sure how you regard European, or worldwide press, but there are some good newspapers in my country, that sketch an unbiased view to the USA - Unlike the TV journals, which are mostly biased left-wing politically, which means anti-Bush. I was never anti-Bush but during the past year, i really wonder if he ever knew what he started there: As soon as the oppression of Sadaam is relieved, the different groups of people start fighting very old vendettas... originating from far before Sadaam...
some biographers say that Bush Sr. didnt invade Iraq in 1991 because his advsors warned for this: However George W. just had to finish where his father left, despite the same advice of arabists...
Dont know if this is exactly how it happened, but this is the story that goes...

The Europeans are certainly not in any better shape. Unless this article is total BS -

Right now, we still are in better shape... However the tide is changeing... not as bad as America yet, though.
They say that employment agencies feel it first: For me personally, i just changed jobs, could choose of 3, was called by 35 employment agencies, and will get a LOT !! more salary at the new job i'll start per September 1st...
The papers say that employment agencies start complaining, though i didnt notice anything personally, because engineers are scarce, they say.

Today things may look somewhat more rosy there, but given the size of the US economy there's no way out. When we sneeze, *everyone* catches a cold. Catching it a day later doesn't mean you won't end up as sick or even sicker that the guy that gave it to you.

I think the dark clouds will loose a lot of rain, before they are on our side of the Pond... the war on terror also has an effect on the US economy, though i dont know where it leads to: ****** got his economy going with war production: Tax payers money was invested in war production, but this government money was payd to companies, and then employers, which could spend their money in that economy at companies that didnt have anything to do with war production... In 1938 it worked, but I just dont know if the US war production is beneficial to the economy or not, anno 2008.

It may seem as if German automakers have a customer base that isn't price sensitive but it's really untrue. There are plenty of 3 Series Beemers sitting in suburbia that wouldn't be there if they cost even a penny more, let alone 25%-50% more.

Thats very true, the low course of the dollar may seem beneficial to Europe, because you guys pay more Euros for our ware... But in a free market, you guys will be less eager to buy our ware if its that expensive... So there's the downside.

But is still a disadvantage to the USA when buying raw materials: You'll need raw materials anyways to feed your own automobile factories.

And no matter how big your economy is: the monetary market is also a supply & demand driven market, so the rest of the smaller economies in the world will together decide on a free market, how many euros, yen, rand, rupi, they want in exchange for your dollars...

And lets not forget how the oil price makes our money worth less, all over the world, also in China and Europe.

 

[Renze]

once they went to ACERT, they backed all of the hp numbers down due to heat problems. the 550's were putting out more heat than the old 600's, drank alot more fuel and were a 40,000$ option. were talking 4 mpg instead of 6 mpg (on/off highway). thats HUGE! at that time i was in process of spec'ing a new triaxle when this happened. i never bought the new truck for this reason also.

Hmm... Are you sure that this is only to blame to the ACERT bi-turbo technology ?
A lot of TIER 3 engines use a lot more fuel than their TIER 2 predecessors: Early JD 20 series tractors were notorious for their fuel consumption, as well as Volkswagen's latest 2.5 TDI engines in the Transporter and Crafter vans and light trucks. There are a lot more examples of higher fuel consumption in TIER 3 engines, but i cant remember them all.

To lower the NoX emissions, they change the injection, to get lower combustion peak temperatures, though it means that more heat leaves through the exhaust: more energy being wasted in heat, means less energy comes out at the crankshaft: less fuel efficiency.

thanks for the info on the paccar engines, renze good to know its not "new tech" that we should be leary of coming from paccar.

take a look at DAF Trucks N.V.

click on "components"

In europe, only bus makers let customers choose engines and transmissions, alike US truck makers: All European truckmakers use their own engines and their own transmission, or a ZF transmission: You cant choose your taste between Cummins, CAT, Detroit in the same truck model though, like Americans can.

did you guys know, that International, used to have a 30% share in DAF in the 70's ????

http://www.daf.com/userdata/corporate/photos XF105/hires/paccar MX engine.jpg

 

[JSharp]

Mot sure how you regard European, or worldwide press, but there are some good newspapers in my country, that sketch an unbiased view to the USA - Unlike the TV journals, which are mostly biased left-wing politically, which means anti-Bush. I was never anti-Bush but during the past year, i really wonder if he ever knew what he started there: As soon as the oppression of Sadaam is relieved, the different groups of people start fighting very old vendettas... originating from far before Sadaam...
some biographers say that Bush Sr. didnt invade Iraq in 1991 because his advsors warned for this: However George W. just had to finish where his father left, despite the same advice of arabists...
Dont know if this is exactly how it happened, but this is the story that goes...

IMO The world press is the press in general with a bit more left spin outside of the US. Most of the press is to the left, some is to the right, and a small part is in the middle.

None of it is very accurate however either because of sloth and the lack of due diligence or because the truth is counter to whatever political leanings they might have. The number of things we've seen of late that were completely fabricated tells us there's plenty of the latter.

If you read enough things from enough sources you can mostly figure things out. Most of the time anyway... Iraq is a good example. I know any number of people who have been there on the ground. What plays in the press is often much removed from reality.

It's still a problem though. The county was always an artificial construct. Like much of Southern Asia and most all of Africa it's a product of the end of colonialism. I suppose it could be said that sooner or later someone was going to need to finish cleaning up the mess made many decades ago. OTOH, any diddling runs the risk of seeing it fall into it's elemental parts.

I have the same theory about a lot of places in the world - It's hard to teach a pig to sing. It's doomed from the start, wastes your energy, and infuriates the pig. With the added thought that if they wanted to be talking pigs, they'd be that already. <shrug>

Right now, we still are in better shape... However the tide is changeing... not as bad as America yet, though.
They say that employment agencies feel it first: For me personally, i just changed jobs, could choose of 3, was called by 35 employment agencies, and will get a LOT !! more salary at the new job i'll start per September 1st...
The papers say that employment agencies start complaining, though i didnt notice anything personally, because engineers are scarce, they say.

Engineers, especially good ones and people with backgrounds in hard sciences can find jobs here or anywhere else. Lots of grumbling in the US after all of the dot.com "software engineers" lost their $100K per year html coding jobs in '99-'00. But what did they expect really? No other jobs skills and unrealistic expectations = hard to find work.

I think the dark clouds will loose a lot of rain, before they are on our side of the Pond... the war on terror also has an effect on the US economy, though i dont know where it leads to: ****** got his economy going with war production: Tax payers money was invested in war production, but this government money was payd to companies, and then employers, which could spend their money in that economy at companies that didnt have anything to do with war production... In 1938 it worked, but I just dont know if the US war production is beneficial to the economy or not, anno 2008.

The military costs here are high but they always are, even in peace time. All of the numbers we see thrown around are the totals, much of which we'd be spending if we weren't in the middle east. I consider it all to be an expense though.

I don't buy that the money poured into the military will always help grow the economy. A $ sent to government doesn't often generate as many $$ in the future as one held by industry and the taxpayers. Thankfully ******'s 1000 years was much truncated so we really didn't get to see how it would work out economically.

Thats very true, the low course of the dollar may seem beneficial to Europe, because you guys pay more Euros for our ware... But in a free market, you guys will be less eager to buy our ware if its that expensive... So there's the downside.

But is still a disadvantage to the USA when buying raw materials: You'll need raw materials anyways to feed your own automobile factories.

And no matter how big your economy is: the monetary market is also a supply & demand driven market, so the rest of the smaller economies in the world will together decide on a free market, how many euros, yen, rand, rupi, they want in exchange for your dollars...

And lets not forget how the oil price makes our money worth less, all over the world, also in China and Europe.

Or monetary policy has been absurd, the last few years in particular. It's not rocket science to assume that printing lots of dollars, far more than needed to allow the economy to truly grow, and then making them easy for everyone to get, will devalue them while inflating the costs of everything. Econ 101, which Greenspan and Bernanke must have failed.

Now we need to dig out from the damage done and I doubt it will be quick. Especially since things grew to such a degree that we're in "prop up mode" for large financial institutions, just to keep the house of cards from falling completely.

Again, <shrug> Not much one guy or even one small group can do to make it different. Ultimately we'll need to grow our way out of it so to speak and we will. Once we get the direction changed to the positive that is. We can only hope that the latest plan to save all plans doesn't prolong the problems...

Nice talking with you...

 

[JoeinTX]

Higher transportation costs and a low dollar will see some manufacturing start to move back here although "here" will likely mean North America, south of the US border.

Incentives and what not can help but it's prudent to beware of unintended consequences. Farm subsidies in general and ethanol in particular are recent examples of how a dollar spent to benefit one group can cost other groups or society as a whole even more dollars.

Consumer product manufacturing is a race to the bottom. There's no way to compete with a 3rd world peasant working for a dollar a day and willing to live in what we'd label a SuperFund site short of becoming just like them.

Best to let that sort of manufacturing go and concentrate on higher value, more technologically advanced products. The US excels at those things already. Better to build something that only we can build versus something that just about anyone can build...

Very acute.


As you say, the race for classic consumer "manufacturing" jobs is a dead-end in this environment. I'm sure we all have a family member who worked in a radio or toy or textile or some such factory in the 1940/50/60/70s when the nation's who have now taken over these industries today were just dank pits. Try to compete with a moderately good Vietnamese shirt maker in the U.S. in today's marketplace and you will lose your butt. They can do it cheaper and as good as you can.

Thus, the cost of transport comes into play. If the price of fuel holds at current levels then the clothing brand contracting with that Vietnamese factory will begin to look closer to home to reduce the costs of transporting the finished product to the buyer. And, that closer location may be Mexico or Nicaraugua or Belize, but there are still some benefits to this if doing so gives the people of these lands a chance at job opportunities that they don't have today which is driving them north to the U.S. and Canada in the search of some form of appreciable income. More jobs south of the border isn't necessarily a bad thing since there are many issues at play here.


Back to fuel prices...........at $2.00/gallon many foreign car companies were finding it more economical to move production to the U.S. rather than import. Now, at $3.75 or more, that move makes all the more sense. If this bump in fuel costs is sustained and becomes the accepted market norm, well, you could see other industries begin to make similar moves closer to the marketplace that they are attempting to sell to. TVs? Consumer electronics? Who knows.

While the price of gas is a huge drag on the average consumer the macroeconomic effect of higher fuels costs can become a benefit to that same individual as economic realities play themselves out.

 

[ddivinia]

thats an interesting aspect in this discussion, back to the origin, yet i dont see the relation... could you elaborate on that ? is "china made equipment" really to blame for the poor USA economy at this moment, or is this concidental?




Very true, Americans have to pay lotsa dollar$ to buy Euro goods, with this course. However the example you mention: a typical Porsche buyer, wouldnt care about that, would he

Even though Chrysler/Jeep/Dodge dealers over here, are running "low dollar weeks" sales programs, the demand for USA cars hasnt really grown from that...

Actually Porsche buyers in the US do care what they cost. This same stuff happened in the 80s and Porsche sales went in the toilet for a number of reasons. I have had a number of Porsches. They are great cars when they aren't in the shop.

Also, it is quite obvious you are not an economics scholar.

Renze,
Nobody can have a conversation with you - regardless of the topic

Go out and play with your worn out Zetor tractor,
D.


D.

 

[Renze]

Renze,
Nobody can have a conversation with you - regardless of the topic

Disrespecting people for NOT sharing YOUR opinion, is called either ignorance or fascism, depending on severity...

Sorry to hear that you dont wish to join this discussion and learn from each other.

 

[ddivinia]

Disrespecting people for NOT sharing YOUR opinion, is called either ignorance or fascism, depending on severity...

Sorry to hear that you dont wish to join this discussion and learn from each other.

There ya go again. I have tried conversing with you before on other topics and it is a painful situation. What you are stating and protecting in many cases are not opinions.

Depending upon the view one might think that my "opinions" are ignorance, but in no way it is fascism. Where did that come from anyway?

Geez, I stand by my other response,
D.

 

[Renze]

Now we need to dig out from the damage done and I doubt it will be quick. Especially since things grew to such a degree that we're in "prop up mode" for large financial institutions, just to keep the house of cards from falling completely.

Again, <shrug> Not much one guy or even one small group can do to make it different. Ultimately we'll need to grow our way out of it so to speak and we will. Once we get the direction changed to the positive that is. We can only hope that the latest plan to save all plans doesn't prolong the problems...

Nice talking with you...

I read an article in a paper, that said that despite the fact that Obama is gaining popularity in Europe (there were a lot of people, when he spoke in Berlin last week) it would be still doubtfull if Obama could really make this "change" : Clinton left the job, leaving the states with more income than debts: In all 8 years of Bush, the states spent more than they got from taxes, while promising tax reductions.

The writer's opinion was, that with the baby boomers that will stop working in the coming years, the states will need even more tax, from less working people. However allmost every US president, promised tax reductions in election time. Bush sr. said "read my lips:No more taxes !" But he felt he had to rise tax during his elected time, and wasnt elected for another year.

Our country has risen its taxes quite a bit, the past years. It might endanger the competitive position of our country, but we need the tax to pay for all our elderly people of the baby boom of the 50's that stop working these years, and need medical care, elderly homes, government pensions, etcetera.

The government started a campaign, rising taxes, under the motto "first comes the bitter, then comes the sweet" to prepare the country for the depression, whilst preparing for the upcoming changes in the working population. We didnt have much problems, compared to the rest of Europe though.

In America, i assume the situation wont be much different because the same trend takes place in your country: the babyboom generation quits working and gets old, needing more medical attention, which also means that a smaller young generation of healthy working people have to pay the tax to finance the care for the bigger older generation ??