My comment was simply that BMW and Mercedes have been building I6s for a long time, have plenty of skill in that area, and could easily build another one if they were so inclined, or update the rambler engine.
It's a Jeep, so the intent is for it to suddenly be 1943...
Car and Driver and the other such magazines will never even test six cylinder versions of the GC. In fact, most of them will test it only with the "hemi" and not the 4.7.
Suddenly its an American-looking car again....
(You KNEW I'd pipe up in support of red taillamps, didn't you?) :-)
Agreed on that one. The 4.0 is the second best OHV inline six ever built, right behind the slant-six. And it has a lot of features that are frankly better than the slanty. But I still like the old L-heads best, and not even Car and Driver could claim that any v6 is smoother than an old Plymouth, Dodge, or DeSoto L-head. More powerful, yeah. Smoother, never in a million years. :-)
And I, speaking for myself, agree with the maketeer idiots in this case.
My '69 has 3 lamps per side, actually. Built-in redundancy. Problem solved.
Now THAT system (and the one currently in use the most) is absolutely hatefully stupid.
Halfassedly.
"If it fails, you lose all functions on that side" problem solved.
"Can give only one signal at a time" problem UNsolved. If all a surrounding driver can see is one side or the other, and you are stepping on the brakes AND signalling for a turn or lanechange in the direction of the only rear lamp he can see, all he sees is your blinker, NOT your brake light.Half the problem solved. And if you're being indecisive or stopping on a slick road (pumping the brakes or simply getting on and off them) it looks just like a turn signal. And if you're signalling for a turn or lanechange AND getting on and off the brakes...
Uglee? You ever owned a yankie-land FC-170 that was eat up with rust? That thing looked like home-made sin. Plus, everytime my wife would ride in it just when we got as far from home as we were planning to go that day something would break - starter would fall off, carb would come un-bolted or the float would drop, point gap mysteriously jump from 20 to 100 thousanths...
But it was pretty easy to patch back up, and in the mud or snow it was king. Plus, she would haul 13 people, all their tubes, *AND* a keg of beer down to Wildcat Creek. That was a Jeep to be proud of.
Or else their trying to save a few bucks. "Hey, we just saved a few dollars by not putting full gauges on our new Grand. We can save a few more cents by only using one color plastic for the lenses.
One wonders if you can get a replacement amber/red lens designed for non-US markets. If I ever had to buy a new Grand (which I have absolutely no plans ever to do), I'd try.
I can't either. Combining the brake and turn lamps takes away from brake lamp functionality, but makes the turn signal stand out more at long distances. Using seperate bulbs with both doubling as tail lights, like Krysler likes to do in their large vehicles, causes the turn signal to tend to blend into the brake lights at long distances, but doesn't reduce brake light effectiveness at short distances.
And so how should one respond differently to a blinker or a brake? Either one means "this car is slowing down" so its pretty much a moot point, especially since both rear lamps (and the CHMSL) are going to be simultaneously visible 99% of the time.
OTOH, seeing amber in limited visibility conditions implies "approaching vehicle" which is flat-out false in the case of amber rear turn signals. Meaning you have to rely on simultaneously seeing headlamps or taillamps to resolve THAT ambiguity. You're just trading one ambiguity for another, and I'd argue that the "signal or brake" ambiguity isn't particularly dangerous since you should assume that the car is slowing to a near-stop (at least) under either condition. The fact of the matter is that BOTH systems work perfectly well, both have done so for over 50 years, and I think you'd be hard-pressed to find a statistically different number of collisions based on the color of the rear turn signals, except for the "duelling reds" design you mentioned before. (That's your open invitation to prove me wrong.) :-)
My mileage varies. Here in Connecticut a blinker means "I've nearly finished turning". A brake light means "My right foot is bored."
4-way flashers mean "I really shouldn't have access to car keys and/or I'm about to do something really really stupid".
International agreements, (yes the USA signed and ratified it) mandates that amber just be used for flashing lights, front and rear and side. If the USA followed that treaty requirement there would be no issue of having to guess if a yellow light in the fog was the front or rear of a vehicle, it would unambiguously tell you that a vehicle is either flashing a turn or if both are flashing, that the vehicle is either very slow or parked. Instead, the USA lets the car makers do whatever they want.
Has anyone done a study to show that our assumptions about amber being safer is valid?
Richard.
Front fogs are white, rear fogs are red (in an offset position) and amber is for turning -- Europe.
There used to be yellow fog lights but very different to amber.
France used to have yellow headlights.
All standardised.
The only thing that isn't is whether headlights should be on during daylight.
DAS
They didn't build a good one until the early sixties. The flathead with its three exhaust ports for four exhaust valves on the other side of the head was a piece of shit, very pure and simple. That's why Bernie Pietenpol, who took the A/B flathead four to its greatest heights...literally...never looked at the piece of shit flathead Ford eight. When he went back to building backyard flyers in the mid-60s he used Corvair power, believing rightly it was the best Detroit had to offer then.
Zora Arkus-Duntov built the predecesssor to the Chrysler Hemi as the Ardun head. It went on the Ford block,and the Novi V8s were distantly based on it as well. Never the less it was a overheating, bore warping, three main bearing piece of shit.
BMW builds excellent engines...if you don't mind their higher-than-a-smallblock-Chevy weight to displacement ratio even with extensive aluminum. The big six with the proper cam and firmware would do fine in a Jeep. However, BMW doesn't own Jeep. DCX, thankfully for us, does.
I really, really want to see the OM 617 in TJs and YJs.....although the YJ is of dubious worth with its Brass Era leaf springs.
Red for STOP, amber for TURN, white for REVERSE....no, that's too complicated.
Well, the rest of the world has it all figured out, but yeah, it does seem too complicated for America.
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