rogersgto

It seems the auto makers need some sort of signal to build lighter big cars and trucks. I'm not sure that $3 gas is high enough to do that, and people get too caught up in the emotion of buying vehicles to think ahead about the likely costs through the life of their vehicle. The argument that people feel safer in the big ones keeps many from buying smaller ones when it only means an additional $500 per year to operate. Some of that argument might go away if big and little were closer in weight. Any market for an aluminum-bodied Suburban? On the other hand, if people are satisfied that $500 a year is not too much to pay for the perceived comfort of the big ones, then why do we hear such a fuss when the price goes up for gas? Is it just the media? Do you hear the same stories about the rising price of other commodities like electricity, steel, copper, gold? What about the price of car parts - now there's a necessity where gouging should be looked into, especially on those that can only come from a dealer!!!

Dave, do you have any facts or do you just make these things up? Your own graph shows world production rising out to 2010, and shows nothing of oil reserves that could be tapped. And the Canadian tar sands projects are expanding rapidly. Why would they do this if they weren't making money at it? They are not government projects. Why is Chavez talking about nationalizing or more heavily taxing his heavy oil extraction plants if Venezuela isn't the source for profitable future oil production? Most fuels take energy to make them into more useful forms. But check out how much energy it takes to make the biofuels relative to how much energy they contain, and then decide whether the energy expended was really in a less useful form to begin with. I think you might be surprised by how much more efficient it is to rely on the vast sunlight that fell on the earth many thousands of years ago (resulting in petroleum, gas and coal) than what falls on it today. How much fertilizer pollution are you willing to tolerate down the Mississippi and other rivers for the sake of renewable fuels?

Seems there are a lot of theories and guesses going around. I work with some in the refining business and live in Dallas, so I think I keep up with the current situation pretty well, but still have questions. The major pipelines running from the Gulf to the East Coast are not accepting reformulated gasoline with ethanol because the ethanol seeks and separates with any water. I believe this leaves the gasoline components with lower octane. So the distributors are mixing the ethanol from the Midwest with a pre-ethanol blendstock from the refineries at the local storage tanks prior to shipment to the stations. Problems we have had here in Dallas are due to the fact that the decision to remove MTBE by May 5 was made late, due to the liability protection for the companies being removed from the final Energy Bill in 2005. MTBE found in the water table can bring lawsuits after that date (even though the American Lung Association favored MTBE over not using it when it was introduced, and ethanol has its own emissions problems which seem to have been overlooked by the politicians who always want to win in Iowa). In Dallas, some of the distributors did not get their plans in order and are having to truck in ethanol and perhaps build a rail unloading site. This is tying up trucks that normally deliver other blends or blendstocks. I suspect the East Coast may be facing similar problems getting the ethanol to the blending sites. This should only be a problem in those reformulated gasoline locations new to ethanol blending. California switched a few years back. Most of the country will still have gasoline without ethanol unless their local politicians have opted to mandate it, like in the Midwest. My question is about older cars with high octane requirements, if the ethanol and water settle out with time, does this in fact reduce the octane of the remaining gasoline that goes to the engine? Is there a solution short of buying gasoline outside the reformulated area? Are some octane boosters better or worse with ethanol blends? Does topping up after every infrequent drive keep the water and ethanol flowing through the system rather than pooling in the bottom of the tank? I agree that it would keep the amount of water to just that which came from the service station, since as I recall Cessna pilots are told to keep their tanks full to keep condensation out of the gasoline. The mileage situation is another under-reported fact. It doesn't support the argument that was made by the ethanol lobby, nor does the energy required to raise the extra corn in the Midwest and then transport the ethanol to the Coastal States, all the while the taxpayer is subsidizing every bit of US ethanol and taxing any cheaper imports from Brazil. Perhaps the price-gouging committee needs to look at those making ethanol and selling it for $2.60 a gallon when it was only $1.50 at this time last year.

Many thanks to all that have viewed and those that have written. I don't know why the divergence of division paint sales codes happened in 1970-1972, but it did for Buick and Pontiac at least. Autocolorlibrary is great for checking names, color swatches, and Ditzler numbers but doesn't have the sales codes used by the divisions. Someone has suggested writing or calling PPG, which I haven't done yet. Thanks to Atlanta Buick Performance for organizing the Buick info so well; I hope to do the same for Pontiac. Glad to get an email address for you, too.

After looking at buicks.net and buickperformance website with a 1972 GS order form, I'm convinced that Buick went down a different route for choosing paint letter codes than did Pontiac. Guess it was just a sales department decision, since it seems Fisher was using number codes exclusively by that time.

As a GTO owner, I am trying to put together tables of paint codes for Pontiacs similar to the ones for Buick at atlantabuick.com. Unfortunately, I see some potential discrepancies described below. Atlanta Buick Performance does not list a contact address, so can someone put me in touch with anyone in your club about the following and maybe get back to Atlanta Buick if they still exist: I am surprised that some of the color code letters are different between Buick and Pontiac, but only in the 1970-72 years. The info I have from a few Pontiac sources shows 1970 Pontiac code 26 as F but Atlanta Buick shows a B. All the other 1970 colors that overlap are the same letter codes for both. For 1971, Pontiac 16 is V versus Buick L, 26 is F versus B, 39 is K versus I, 42 is H versus K, 43 is L versus H, 53 is Y versus O, 61 is B versus W, 67 is S versus U. Is Atlantabuick wrong? 1972 is even worse. Pontiac 14 is N versus Buick V, 18 is P versus W, 24 is D versus T, 26 is F versus B, 28 is U versus E, 36 is K versus H, 43 is L versus F, 48 is M versus I, 50 is G versus J, 53 is E versus Q, 54 is W versus S, 57 is J versus U, 62 is V versus L, 63 is S versus M and 69 is T versus N. It seems odd that all the other years they are in general agreement, and I doubt Fisher Body would have used different codes for the same color, although by 1970 they may have been using the numbers exclusively on the firewall plate. Were letters just for order forms? I have tried emailing your tech contact for those years (Carl Rychlik) but it was returned. I would prefer a return email as I don't know how quickly to expect a response to this forum. rogersgto@sbcglobal.net