Implovator Sometimes innovating gets your hands dirty

First 1500+ Miles on the Enertia

1500+ Miles on the Odometer

Mother Nature has been working against me somewhat lately. Summer's here, and it's been raining quite a bit. That means two things: I've been riding the Enertia a little less, and I've been caught in the rain a few times.

More on the Gulf Spill

I think it's remarkable that the Gulf Oil Spill was the subject of my last 500 mile installment nearly three weeks ago, and that they've just stopped the leak a few days ago it's still flowing countless barrels of oil. Everyone talks barrels of oil lately, but how does that translate to something more tangible. Media outlets are using square footage comparisons like US states and volume comparisons like gynasiums. Personally, I have a hard time understanding exactly what a barrel of oil means to me. Like any scientifically minded geek, I started researching a crunching some numbers.

So here's how much diesel I've saved by commuting on my Enertia.

1510.7 miles / 14.5 mpg = 101.9 Gallons of Diesel

Now what exactly is a barrel? Hint: it's not 55 gallons.

1 barrel = 42 US gallons

I originally thought that you could turn crude oil into any type of fuel to suit your needs. But upon reading up more on Oil Refining at HowStuffWorks.com, I discovered that refining oil isn't as much of a process of transforming crude to a particular fuel as much as it a process of separating the various hydrocarbons and using groups of those different hydrocarbons to make the fuel. Diesel is made primarily of alkanes with 12 or more carbon atoms.

Of the 42 gallons of crude in a barrel, an average of 9.21 gallons of diesel is refined. So here's the number of barrels of oil that haven't gone to diesel production for my truck because of my 1500+ miles on the Enertia.

101.9 g diesel * 1 barrel / 9.21 g diesel = 11.06 barrels of oil

This clears up a lot of my misunderstanding of the wildly fluctuating diesel prices. It's cheaper to refine diesel, but you only get so much of it per barrel of oil. Then when you account for the dramatic increase in demand (partly from the military campaigns in the Middle East), you start to understand why the price would go up more than the price of gasoline.

Barrels of Chain Lube

The next thing to figure out is how many barrels of oil have gone into lube for my chain. OK, that's mostly a joke, but I am having problems finding a light-weight chain lube that will still last and not sling off. I've been getting a lot of chain noise as well as physical knocking. This, of course, is exaggerated by the fact that the Enertia is quiet, low on vibration, and doesn't have cush drive or rubber mounts on the motor. I can actually feel when the master link goes around the super small front sprocket. I can alleviate this with a heavy application of lube, but it only lasts 1.5 days.

Brammo has been more than accommodating to my compulsion to fix this irritant, and has emailed me advice on proper adjustment and lube. They even sent me a new chain. I should have time to swap it out this weekend, so I'll comment on this thread if it makes a difference.