Locate an Auto Repair Shop in Menlo, Washington

Interesting - technology I have not heard of before now: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/31/business/energy-environment/31ENGINE.html?_r=3- - &ref=businessspecial2&pagewanted=all IN this city where Toyota Priuses clog the roads and battery-powered Tesla Roadsters and Chevrolet Volts can be spotted at the organic farmers market, the engine factory in a gritty industrial neighborhood near San Francisco Bay is a throwback to the automotive past. Or a harbinger of the future. In the middle of a metal building, stacked with hulking racecar engines from the internal combustion engine’s golden age, sits a small contraption hooked to a forest of red, white and green wires and tubes that hang from the ceiling and snake around the floor. In a control room at Hasselgren Engineering, a technician flips a switch and the device roars to life as a large computer screen displays the performance of this new type of engine, which its developer, Pinnacle Engines, says will be up to 50 percent more efficient than today’s power plants. As the first mass-produced electric cars hit the streets, Pinnacle is just one of several start-ups backed by prominent Silicon Valley venture capitalists aiming to reinvent the century-old internal combustion engine. The big promise: vast improvements in fuel economy and reduced greenhouse gas emissions at a lower cost. “While the buzz is all about electrics, the people who will actually adopt electrics are not a majority of the market,” said Monty Cleeves, who has kept Pinnacle under wraps since he founded the company in 2007. “The impact we will have over the next 15 to 20 years will be much larger than the impact of the electrics.” Not long ago, the idea that entrepreneurs could attract tens of millions of dollars in venture capital to develop a new kind of engine would have seemed ludicrous. The big automakers have kept engine development to themselves, steadily improving the performance of a profitable technology that has served them well for more than a 100 years. “Our engines are built into the DNA of our vehicles,” said Brett Hinds, engine design manager for Ford in Dearborn, Mich. “We at Ford are still committed to thinking of engines as part of our fundamentals.” But the upheaval in the global car industry, new fuel efficiency standards for commercial vehicles, climate change concerns and the rise of China and India as automotive markets have opened the door to start-ups like Pinnacle “Many automotive houses don’t buy engines from outside, but in the truck market people do,” said Rohini Chakravarthy, a partner at NEA, a venture capital firm in Menlo Park, Calif., that has invested in Pinnacle. “In Asia, there’s tremendous demand, and you’re not going up against the same level of incumbents.” All three companies are developing variations on an opposed piston engine, a technology used in airplanes and ships in the mid-20th century, but long considered too expensive and unworkable for automobiles. Opposed piston engines eliminate the cylinder head, which serves as the combustion chamber for a conventional engine. Instead, two pistons face each other and the space between them forms the combustion chamber where fuel is ignited. Discarding the heavy cylinder head allows opposed piston engines to be lighter and cheaper to make. Typically, two-thirds of the energy generated by a conventional engine is wasted as heat; an opposed piston design is able to tap more energy to propel a vehicle.

Several Washington engineer experts highly respect Dr Gilbert's work and still do to my knowledge. Toyota was one that did the live public broadcast with their for hire Exponent engineers to damage Dr Gilbert's findings to the public. These attempts to damage Dr Gilbert was discussed at length at an oversight meeting. Seems Toyota also had developed an auto owner survey saying Sean Kane and Dr Gilbert were only just working for attorneys and attempted to damage their reputation. Toyota also strong armed University of Illinois regarding Dr Gilbert. Managed to stop Dr Gilbert from doing further research and attempted to get him fired. As I posted earlier AP had requested information from University under the Freedom of Public Information Act. AP finally got documents as requested, and did article this past weekend reporting this pressure and attempts to have Dr Gilbert fired. But since Toyota problems are now old news no other news outlets followed up. AP has University document information to back up their report. Must remember Toyota had claimed they would work with Dr Gilbert to the oversight committee. This is definitely not what actually happened. This last AP news report just reconfirmed what I had heard earlier. Exponent does this biased work and this is type of firm they are. Exponent is hired to write only reports that support their clients. Exponent is also used by Toyota to give/write reports for law suits. They do a good job, but it is what testimony they provide or what reports they write that are biased or many times not true. Top University of California medical researchers had many derogatory comments about their biased based false work. Kaiser researchers said same. I was personally at this particular meeting about three years ago. And also have several bookmarked sites regarding their work from my research on them three years ago. Dr David Michaels called out the Menlo Park, California defense-litigation firm in his 2008 book Doubt is Their Product: How Industry’s Assault on Science Threatens Your Health. Dr Michaels is present Director of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). Washington oversight committee is not happy with Exponent at present. Where the findings mentioned above lead - am not sure. Dr Gilbert had stated his findings were only a beginning. Guess we all wait to see how it unfolds and develops. Auto technology schools always introduce computer problems into lab autos for teaching their students. Yes, engineers still need to prove how it relates to reality. Will they?? Don't know. Just not sure how thorough and extensive tests will actually be. Cost will be big factor. And then we all wait to see if it is watered down. If something is found, then heavy pressure will be applied to only release least damaging findings. This is just the way it all works. Dr Gilbert's work is in no way comparable to that Audi "60 Minutes" segment. Dr Gilbert testified and only presented his research papers to oversight committee as only the beginning of the investigation. He said more investigation needed to be done. Verdict regarding Dr Gilbert's work according to oversight committee is still out, and wonder if we will find out. Don't forget another big University professor, researcher and expert in auto electronics field also duplicated and verified Dr Gilbert's findings. He also found fail safe system did not pick up many types of other errors. He just gave testimony to the Academy of Sciences who NHTSA assigned to do investigation on SUA. the end of June. Must remember both NHTSA and Toyota are in the hot seat and being investigated by Oversight Committee. Present NHTSA administration is now dealing with all the problems of their prior administration.

Had a happy experience with Internet Managers at Menlo Mazda. Picked up 2010 MX-5 Grand Touring, manual transmission, power hardtop, with Premium package and Suspension Package. Car (with destination but before docs and taxes) came to $26,393. Out the door price: Selling Price: $26393 Dmv & Fees: $429 Tax (9.5%) : $2512.56 TOTAL OTD: $29334.56 They gave a reasonable price on my trade-in, too, so my final outlay was reduced. No surprises at all at the dealership; everything we'd emailed about was honored with no hassles at all. I had expected at least some unpleasant aspect, but there wasn't one. What did surprise me was that I could get actual price quotes from only 3 of the 6 Mazda dealers I contacted. And Menlo was by far the lowest. I love my Copper Red Mica roadster --- and the heated seats will pay off big time here in Northern California. :)

I got mine from menlo mazda at redwood city. I can not post the salesperson's name due to forum rule, but the key is internet sales. Basicly, I got the price via email and phone alone with the internet sales manager. It will be hard to get the same price if you just walk in to an dealership and start bargin there.

Here is one for Larsb: NIMBYism arises among people of all kinds when they don't want a big new public project placed near them. Until fairly recently, the rich did far better than the poor at fighting off LULUs (Locally Unwanted Land Uses). But high-speed rail is the single planned project that brings out the most NIMBYs, primarily because it is a LULU in the most places. This rail line ultimately would stretch from San Diego to San Francisco, with branches running to Las Vegas and - perhaps - Sacramento. For anyone who has ridden bullet trains in Spain, France, Great Britain and Japan, it's enticing to think of riding from Los Angeles to the Bay Area in less than three hours without leaving the ground. Plenty of voters loved the idea in November 2008, when a high-speed rail bond issue passed by a 52-48 percent vote. But some are now beginning to feel bait-and-switched, as they learn the project's pricing and ridership might not be as advertised and as they discover more about the routes. NIMBYism over the rail project is active in Los Angeles, the San Joaquin Valley and Orange County, but strongest on the San Francisco Peninsula, where bullet trains of the future might zip from San Jose to San Francisco at about 200 mph using either the current Caltrain right of way or something adjacent. That's a region where the $45 billion bullet train proposition won 60 percent approval. Now activists urge tunneling under much of the Peninsula for fear of noise, collisions with cars or trucks and worries about two-level stacks of train tracks splitting their communities. The cities of Atherton and Menlo Park would like the route off the Peninsula altogether. They prefer it to run through East Bay cities like Oakland and Livermore, reaching San Francisco through a new underwater tube. Some activists have even suggested slowing trains to 5 mph for one stretch. Some bullet. One legitimate question for the NIMBYs in these cases: If renewable energy development can't go into some of California's most deserted, desolate places, how can the renewable mandate ever be met? http://www.presstelegram.com/opinions/ci_14137661 In many cases, the Kennedy's come to mind, it is the very people in government screaming the loudest for alternatives that block progress in that direction. You cannot have it both ways folks. Hopefully the High Speed Rail is a dead Monkey, before they waste a lot more valuable resources. By the time the LULUs and NIMBYs get done with it, we will have a 5 MPH snake weaving its way around every fat cat in the state. Better to expand the airports and make air travel more efficient and safe.