I had to fix a potato planter yesterday about 25 miles from here. Then I did a delivery to Ely last night. First time out in the countryside for a long while and the cost of diesel at the fuel stations I past was interesting. The average price was £1.27 per litre. That works out at around £6.00 per gallon.
We had fuel price protests on the A47 arround Norwich on Monday with hauliers driving around 80 trucks at 15mph.
Most of the cost per litre is tax. I'm getting rather tired of our US friends telling me that pays for our health care, We pay a seperate tax for that and have to pay private for dental care.
Thats my rant for the morning! Sorry. but I feel so much better now
Fordson Tractor Pages, now officially linked to: Fordson Tractor Club of Australia, Ford and Fordson Association and Blue Force.
Brian
Brian wrote:
Thats my rant for the morning! Sorry. but I feel so much better now
And your lookin' better for it too!
I paid $1.82 / litre for diesel here today. About 15 cents a litre dearer than the city. About US$6.44 per USGallon. or 88p / litre.
I didn't look at the petrol price but I think it was $1.64
In the morning I have to drive my cousins truck to Bathurst 150 km away to take 7 race horses to the trot meeting there. Fuel is really hurting those guys going to country tracks too.
We here in Finland (and GB) has to use from now on Diesel fuel in boats, with the same tax as for road use. I ask the price in a local boat fuel station and it was 1,40 € /Litre. Last year i paid 0,64 €/L so the cost has more than doubled over the winter.
Here in Kentucky today the price of unleaded regular is $3.96 per gallon, and Diesel is $4.39 per gallon. Just a year ago petrol was under $3.00, and Diesel was a little over $3.00. In California it is much much higher.
I wish someone could explain why the price of fuel is getting so expensive, some say it's the speculators, others say it's because of China. What gives????
It may just be that dead dinosaurs (fossil fuels) are limited commodity and the people who are pumping it out of the ground have finally cottoned on to the fact that you can make a lot more money by selling less rather than more. The last time I looked the cost of production of a barrel of crude oil was around the $15 mark. Most markets are paying over $100. Maybe I am an optimist but I can't see this going on much longer, soon it will be cheaper to make fuel out of garbage than to pay some Arab $100 a barrel. Some of us may even remember that he charged a $100 a barrel the last time and won't want to deal with him ever again. Just my rant for the day.
Regards, Frank.
P.S. A K L Bulldog tractor will quite happily run on full cream milk after it has been started. Especially useful when you are running a dairy farm and the tractor is running the irrigation pump.
Recently collected a guy, from near Detroit, at Birmingham International. As we were driving away from the airport, he saw the first garage. His initial comment was "Hey, fuels about the same price as home, I thought it was dearer".
Then he realised he was looking at Pounds not Dollars (multipy by approximately 2)
Then he realised that he was looking a Litres not Gallons (multiply by approximately 4.5)
Then he said "Jesus!" and changed the subject
The none renewal of fossile fuels is one thing.
The blatant profiteering of those controlling reserves is another.
BUT ! The continual RAPING of our pockets by the UK goverment is unforgivable
In defence of the oil producers, you can't blame them for putting up the cost of crude oil, when for many years the Greedy British and European Goverments have been making more money per barrel of crude from taxes than the producers.
The Abu Dhabi Oil Company I worked for in the nineteen nineties was producing oil for approx $3.00 per barrel! The high price of fuel in this country is a direct consequence of the duty levied by the govement, who incidentally added 5% Vat to heating oil.
As a consequence of EU policy we can no longer use Red Diesel in our boats and its use in our tractors is now under scrutiny.
Complaining on this forum will not do any good. The only way to bring the Goverment to its' senses is with our feet, as the last fuel Protest proved.
Gents,
I agree with you all, here we have an oil man and an idiot for a president. Every time he gets off his helicopter he stands for at least 30 seconds with his arms hanging down like he has two six guns on his side and he's ready to draw on some bad hombre. I'd give a guess that he does this in front of his mirror in the white house, until Lara makes him go stand in the corner.
I wish I new the answer to all this madness. Just like the day I posted that petrol was $3.96 per gallon, it only was that high for a few hours and then dropped back down to $3.79. The world has gone crazy.
Oh well, like my friends here on the board, I'll get back down from my soap box, and let another get up there for a minute or two.
These KL Bulldog are produced under license from Lanz Bulldog of Germany during/after WWII in Australia.
These so called hot bulb engines can run on almost any liquid stuff which is flammable. In germany these engines ran on crude oil, diesel, vegetable oil, petrol, parrafin, butter etc.
The design has become outdated due to the fact that regular diesel became cheaper and easier to handle, and available everywhere where needed.
In answer to your question regarding why would you run the tractor on milk when it is the same price as diesel. That is only true at the retail level. If you have a dairy farm and are producing milk, the price you actually get paid is only a small fraction of the retail price and it makes good sense to run your tractor on it if you can. The tractor in question ran the irrigation pumps 24 hours 7 days a week during the summer. The fuel costs would have been enormous if they were running it on diesel. I can still remember the thump thump thump sound it used to make even though it was a couple of miles away on the neighbors farm, you could always hear it. It was just one of the sounds that you grew up with like the sound of the cows.
I'd like to see one on these engines while it's running on milk. I'm 53 years old, and you all must be a little older than me, because I can't remember any thing like that. They may not have had those in Kentucky. I don't know. We had a dairy in town back before my time, I'll ask some of the old timers I go to church with tomorrow, and see what they say.
Thanks for all the information, it was interesting.
It may be that Bulldogs never got to the states. They are a very popular tractor to restore in Australia. They have a huge exhaust pipe and when they are under full load they can blow perfect smoke rings. They are a single cylinder two stroke diesel and have been known to stall and start running backwards up steep hills. Reverse was a very low ratio compared to first gear so you could simply stop select reverse and continue up the hill forwards with the engine running in reverse. When they are running they shake like you would not believe. They are real heavy tractor that in spite of low horsepower do very well in vintage tractor pulls. They are the only machine that will beat a P6 powerd E27N on a regular basis. The last one I went to did a full pull on a seven ton sled with no problems.
Regards, Frank.
P.S. I only have a few years to catch up on you. It might just be that the States moved into new technology a little earlier than us Aussies.
Don't want to keep going on about this but things are getting serious now. Diesel is up to £1.29 to £1.32 per litre. That makes a British gallon £6.19 to £6,34 per gallon. It is nearly better for me to hop on the ferry and fill up in Holland
Perhaps that is not a bad idea after all! Just seen some fantastic flowers from Dutch growers from Northern Holland on the Chelsea Flower Show coverage on the BBC.
Fordson Tractor Pages, now officially linked to: Fordson Tractor Club of Australia, Ford and Fordson Association and Blue Force.
Brian
I saw on the news yesterday that petrol was over $8.00 a gallon in the UK, and in the Netherlands it was almost $10.00. I feel for you all with them kinds of prices. I thought it was high here until I saw that. They also said in Saudi Arabia it was 0.45 cents. There's a lot of folks getting rich over this. There taking the world in to a very bad place.
Just my two cents worth.
Personally I don't see any point of quoting prices any more. The price one day becomes a comparatve bargain a week later!
Apparently one of the factors driving up prices now is the bl#@dy Speculators in the market.
According to today's news here, we have the fourth cheapest fuel in the developed world. BUT we are also going to be paying over and above the market prices when the National Carbon Tax is implemented.
( I can't bear the thought of another War being brought on .... **cynical**)
I just run one of my Trader engines on turnip rape oil and I could not hear a differnce in sound or rews. Only the smell was like at Mac Donald´s. I shut it off when the bottle was empty and I am going to try start it tomorrow again with the rapeoil remaining in the fuel system and then connect the normal fuel pipe.
Running on vegetable oils is in theory not a big problem.
I've been told, and have seen, people driving 1970's and 1980 mercedes diesel cars on vegetable oils with no problem. What they do is quite easy. Nothing at all, and then the cars perform a little less then on diesel. After a 1000 to 2000 km the engine won't start easily anymore and runs bad. This is caused by a to "clean" engine. The valves have to be readjusted then. And everything is perfect again.
Because vegetable oils are thicker then diesel, some people adjust the injector pressure from 125 bar to 140 or 150. To improve the vapourisation of the injector. To compensate for the then minimally retarded injection, they set the pump one to two degrees earlier. This effects in better pulling force, better running and better fuel economy.
These mercedes engines are equipped with pre combustion chamber, but I think, a direct injected engine as in the Fordon engine will even give less trouble.
Bottleneck with vegetable oils is usually the thickness of the fuel in cold conditions and the wear in the injection pump. Old style Bosch pumps can stand the extra load, rotary pumps can usually not.
What I wanted to tell is that vegetable oils are an alternative to diesel, if you like the extra work and the extra garbage of the bottles. If your tractor engine smokes white, you should check whether there might be to much water dispensed in the fuel or that your injectors are not in a very good shape.
Just seen some fantastic flowers from Dutch growers from Northern Holland on the Chelsea Flower Show coverage on the BBC.
