Something about engines, horsepower, and emissions.

[nevermind1534]

We have curbside recycling now, but it's contracted through Waste Management so we follow their rules. Basically they gave us one of those big rolling bins (you know, the '2 body max capacity' size), and everything from glass to cardboard goes in there. That way, it's just one guy driving around in that truck with the hydraulic arm on it taking the recycling, instead of having a driver and a collector, like on the trash truck. (We'd have a huge trash bin as well if it weren't for our town's dollar-a-bag 'pay as you throw' program. 1 trash bag every 2 weeks isn't too much output.)

blah blah blah the man blah blah blah

Hippie.

We have WM here, but they don't use "the claw" yet. They still have a guy driving the truck and a guy picking up here (Detroit area). There's somebody else who does a lot of the Grand rapids area, and they use it there.

[gamecube6]

We've had curbside recycling in new jersey for quite some time.

[jjhammerstein]

Same here in CT.

[Twilight Wolf]

Yep, we've got curbside recycling here in Reno, too, but I only know one or two houses on this street that actually bother with it. I mean, think about it: First you have to go through the hassle of separating and preparing each type of material, you have to pay extra for the pickup, and you get next to nothing in return. You can either do that or haul it all down to the recycling plant yourself and still get next to nothing for your effort. That's why we don't do much recycling; it all falls upon my Dad to either pay for recyclable pick-up or taking the stuff to the plant, and it's all far too big of a pain when he's got a zillion other, more important things to do.

We also have emmisions tests, but only in the two most populous counties of Nevada, ours (Washoe) being one of them. If emmisions testing is so important to the environment, why isn't it required in every other county? I'm fairly sure it's just a scheme to earn cash.

[Skyone]

I dunno, my house just takes the one second preparation to decide whether the trash is recyclable or not, then we toss it in the according bin. Takes about one minute a week of effort.

[Twilight Wolf]

Don't you also have to wash out every bottle and can? With all of the cans we go through (which we usually haul up to my Grandparents' house in California since they can get a lot more for them than we can), that'd be a humongous pain in the rear.

I'm not saying it's a good thing this neighborhood doesn't recycle, but with all of the required effort and extra you have to pay for it, I'm frankly not surprised by it.

[jleemero]

We have curbside recycling around here, but you have to pay a ridiculous amount of money to "rent" a recycling bin.
And you have to have one of these city recycling bins for them to take it.

Last I checked, it was around $115/month for a single bin; though, I have to admit, it is nice that they are mixed, you don't have to separate Metals/Plastics/Paper/etc.

For now, we don't bother, instead just separating it ourselves and taking it down to the nearest recycling center.

Shame we don't make a dime off of it. We used to get paid just a bit by the pound for cans and paper.
Now we don't make anything.
Meh, at least it doesn't cost!

[Twilight Wolf]

$115 a month for a recycling bin? You've gotta be kidding!

Damn, if it's anywhere near that expensive in Reno, I'm surprised anyone does it.

[jleemero]

$115 a month for a recycling bin? You've gotta be kidding!

I think most of the expense goes toward the fact that it's mixed.
I still think it's ridiculous.

[Skyone]

Yeah, that's really stupid. If anything, they should pay you to lug around one of those bins as an incentive.

[nevermind1534]

Here, it's a curbside bin, and everything goes into the same bin, the guy dumping the stuff in the truck sorts it into two bins that get dumped into the truck when they're full.

[Skyone]

Here, it's a curbside bin, and everything goes into the same bin, the guy dumping the stuff in the truck sorts it into two bins that get dumped into the truck when they're full.

That's what they end up doing here anyway, because people (probably including me) suck at recycling and do it wrong all the time.

[vskid]

It also limits the performance mods people can do to their cars, to a certain extent (you can just de-tune it every year when you have to get it tested).

if you suck at tuning maybe. i know volvo people who have literally doubled their horsepower over stock and can still pass emissions

Ya, it shouldn't be hard to pass if you still have the stock engine or close to the same size, but putting a v8 into something that originally had a 4 cylinder might be a different story. Though, our truck has a 460 with 230,000 miles and it passes emissions with flying colors (I think the section it did worst on was still only at 25% of what it could be). It doesn't perform that great powerwise.... (trying to convince my dad we should turbo it)

[bicostp]

Do a compression test first. If it has lousy compression, you're better off fixing it (by honing the cylinders and installing a ring kit) than slapping a turbo on it. Reminds me of an old Mitsubishi mini-pickup we used to have. WOT on the highway got you to about 70 MPH because it was so worn out. Not even that Restore stuff helped. (Are you using Restore? It's great stuff.)

If you try to put forced induction on a worn-out engine, there's a good chance you'll copulate something up.

What year/model is it? I'm guessing 90s or older Fx50?

[vskid]

Do a compression test first. If it has lousy compression, you're better off fixing it (by honing the cylinders and installing a ring kit) than slapping a turbo on it. Reminds me of an old Mitsubishi mini-pickup we used to have. WOT on the highway got you to about 70 MPH because it was so worn out. Not even that Restore stuff helped. (Are you using Restore? It's great stuff.)

What year/model is it? I'm guessing 90s or older Fx50?

Its a 1994 F-350. My dad says the timing chain needs replaced, thats probably robbing some power (my dad drove my cousin's similar truck and he said it felt more powerful). My dad wants to rebuild the engine or replace it with a remanufactured one, a performance cam, and headers. But, we live 4,000 feet above sea level, and where we go camping (truck is mainly a tow vehicle) is up to 10,000 feet, so its just wheezing like a smoker. With a turbo or two, it'd have plenty of air. The EFI system is little more than a glorified carb, replacing it with a mass-air flow computer would get some more power (costs $2k, though). Wikipedia said it had 245 hp, 395 lb·ft stock, turboing it, should be able to get 600-800 lb ft and maybe pick up a little gas mileage when not driving aggressively. Might even be able to beat some stock diesels, for less than half the cost of a new one ($6500 for truck, $2 or 3k for rebuilding tranny, $2k for lockers and lower gears, turboing and rebuilding would be probably $8-10k).