Automotive Trivia Question

Dave Richards

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Alright, here you go. Can you name a car that had a single rear-entry door, seats on gimbals so they tilted in turns to keep you in your seat, a butane heater, referigerator, Ming Dynasty carpeting and 20" nitrogen-filled tires? I'll give you some hints. It was built after 1960 in the US. The designer/builder also built another car that was upholstered with Naugahyde on the outside, seated 8 or slept 3 in comfort. Both of them are cars not trucks or campers or anything else.
 
Cheated used Google couldn't help myself

Mohs Ostentatienne Opera Sedan

Bruce Baldwin Mohs of the Mohs Seaplane Corp. of Madison, Wis., also was something of an automotive coachbuilder, starting with International Harvester truck chassis. In 1968, Mohs built the Ostentatienne Opera Sedan, designed to be both luxurious – with gold-inlaid walnut instrument panel, velvet upholstery, Ming Dynasty carpeting, a 110-volt converter, refrigerator and butane heater – and safe.

Because the truck chassis had steel beams running the length of the vehicle, Mohs devised a single, rear-entry door. Hinged at the windshield header, the door incorporated a good section of the vehicle’s roof. When the door/roof was opened, a step lowered in the rear bumper to ease entry into the vehicle.

The 5700-vehicle also featured 20-inch tires filled with nitrogen and sealed-beam tail lamps.
 
Ugly son of a gun, huh?

Mohsopera.jpg


Cool trivia, Dave. :thumb: Jay, you impress me with either your
inate automotive knowledge, or your Googling skills. :D
 
Jay got it. :thumb:

Yep, it's ugly but it's comfortable inside. I had an opportunity years ago to sit in one of the seats. Not a good car to take your sweetie to a drive in theatre in. The center aisle makes it hard to get romantical.

I don't know if it's still around but there was a museum near the town where I grew up that was full of Bruce Mohs' designs. He came up with some very interesting stuff.

The car with the Naughyde upolstery on the outside was the Safari Car. Only 3 of those were built fortunately.
safari2.jpg
 
...The car with the Naughyde upolstery on the outside was the Safari Car. Only 3 of those were built fortunately.
safari2.jpg
Do you realize how many Naugas were killed to make those three cars? :rofl:

I've seen an astroturf car, and I recall seeing a velvet-flocked convertible once, too. The flocking was being sold as a 'better' replacement for worn vinyl roofs, so the local dealer flocked a whole car to demonstrate how wonderful it was. :p
 
I can't read the scanned advert, so someone enlighten me... what was the point of putting nitrogen in the tires?

(and really, the air we breath is already 80% nitrogen!)
 
I can't read the scanned advert, so someone enlighten me... what was the point of putting nitrogen in the tires?

(and really, the air we breath is already 80% nitrogen!)

I don't know for sure Art but I found this:

"Most tires are filled with compressed air, which when dry consists of about 78 percent nitrogen, 21 percent oxygen, and 1 percent other gases by volume. Water vapor (humidity) can make up as much as 5 percent of the volume of air under worst-case conditions. Filling your tires with nitrogen mainly does two things: it eliminates moisture, and it replaces skinny oxygen molecules with fat nitrogen molecules, reducing the rate at which compressed gas diffuses through porous tire walls. That means, theoretically at least, that a tire filled with nitrogen retains optimal pressure longer, leading to more uniform tire wear and better gas mileage. The commonly quoted figure is that tires inflated to 32 psi get 3 percent better mileage than at 24 psi.

Does nitrogen make any practical difference? You couldn't prove it by me. I found no scientific tests showing that nitrogen-filled tires stayed inflated longer than average under normal conditions. A car-buff buddy was sure it worked but conceded he had only anecdotal evidence that it did.

As for moisture, changes in humidity affect tire performance two ways. First, the density of humid air fluctuates more with temperature than that of dry air, so removing humidity can keep your tire pressure more consistent, especially when the temperature climbs over 100 degrees Fahrenheit. That may be a legitimate concern in Formula One racing, but it's not much of an issue if you're just tooling around town.

Humidity can also be a factor in wheel maintenance — since pure nitrogen doesn't have moisture in it, supposedly your wheels won't rust as quickly, which could lead to improved wheel performance and air sealing. The question is, how big a problem is wheel rust these days? According to a few tire and wheel shops we contacted, not very. Seriously rusted wheels are uncommon in typical steel-wheeled cars, and many high-performance cars have alloy wheels that don't rust at all. One exception is work vehicles such as dump trucks, which are exposed to a much harsher environment.

Another claim I've seen is that since nitrogen is slightly lighter than air, you'll save weight and get better performance. However, we're talking about a weight difference of less than 4 percent of the gas in the tire — in other words, a difference of less than an ounce for most vehicles. A possibly more realistic benefit is that nitrogen is largely inert chemically at low (i.e., normal) temperatures, so it won't attack the rubber in your tires like oxygen does. Oxygen attack is something both the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and Ford Research have studied, and can be a problem for tires used for a long time or in rough conditions.

More important, nitrogen doesn't support combustion, which is one reason aircraft and the space shuttle use nitrogen in their tires. The wisdom of this precaution was brought home by the crash of Mexicana Airlines flight 940 on March 31, 1986. Shortly after the Boeing 727 took off from Mexico City en route to Puerto Vallarta, an overheated landing-gear brake caused a tire improperly filled with air instead of nitrogen to overheat as well and explode, rupturing fuel and hydraulic lines. The ensuing fire and crash killed 167 passengers and crew. However, unless your driving habits are of the X-treme variety, the chances of your tires catching fire anytime soon are slim.

Overall, filling up with nitrogen won't hurt and may provide some minimal benefit. Is it worth it? If you go to some place like Costco that does it for free with new tires, sure, why not? Elsewhere, though, I've seen prices quoted as high as $10 per tire, which is way more than I'd pay. Rather than shell out for nitrogen, you'd be better off just checking and adjusting your tire pressure regularly, something the NHTSA says less than 60 percent of U.S. motorists actually do."
 
Having spent some time moonlighting as a setup guy in high performance dirt track racing, I can tell you that nitrogen is a great tool for managing the handling characteristics of race cars. Since dirt track cars spend around half of the race braking, sliding or spinning, tire temperatures change dramatically over the course of the race. Since we weren't allowed to electronically monitor the pressures during the race, nitrogen provides for more consistent tire pressures across wide temp ranges. When running tire pressures in the 8 - 15 PSI range, large changes in tire pressure due to heating give the driver fits. Unpredictable handling leads to unacceptably frequent car/wall interactions :doh: .

On the other hand, driving to get nitrogen in the grocery getter will cost more in gasoline than you would ever save from the miniscule benefits.

Oh yes! Great forum guys! :thumb: Putting the shop back together after a few years away from woodworking. Prepare for barrages of silly questions.

JB
 
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