Mechanical gas-pumps choking on $4/gal gas
Richard sez, "Apparently there are still places in the US where people are still using the old-fashioned analog gear driven pumps to meter gas instead of the common digital ones. The old pumps will need new gears to go past $3.99/gallon for gas and those parts are getting harder to come by. It is strangely like having a Babbage Difference Engine run the gas pump. Gear driven gas pumps are another unexpected but sad victim of rising gas prices. No more clicks and bells." Link (Thanks, Richard!)
(Image: Tracy A. Woodward -- The Washington Post))
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We had a similar problem in the UK when petrol rose above £1 per litre. All the pumps had to add an extra digit at the start to accommodate it.
I heard a piece on this problem as well, but with diesel fuel. Vendors started pricing and pumping the fuel by the *half gallon*. The issue was that sellers had to very, very blatently display they were doing so to avoid pump shock.
This happened to diesel first - Washington state had a solution - allow these businesses to sell gas by the half-gallon:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=89990579
There was a similar problem in the US back in the late 1970s, when gasoline first went over $1 per gallon. Since Carter had already started a transition to the metric system, many stations responded by switching to liters.
But then Reagan took office and killed the metric conversion, which is why Americans still use barbaric units of measurement today, so the pumps all added extra digits.
Yeah, so did we, went gas went over a dollar for the first time, THIRTY FIVE YEARS AGO. Since then, they've had to add a 2, add a 3 -- oh, my god, you're right, this is a crisis! It's like we have to totally reinvent the wheel every couple of years!
Those pumps in the photo are also going to have a digit problem soon with the amount due -- your giant SUVs with 26-gallon tanks are going to go over $100 soon.
Boo friggin' hoo.
I find a more common annoyance is that many gas stations still have their digital pumps set to cut off at a maximum $50.00 purchase.
Lets do the math... My 455 V8 Suburban had a 40 gallon tank and got 6 - 7 MPG around town. That would be up to $160 to fill it and maybe 280 miles of driving max. 57 cents/mile. man, I'm glad I sold that when gas was $1.60/gal. I'd have to PAY someone to take that off my hands today.
The answer is to move the decimal point over.
If gas goes to $4.159, then set the price on the machine to $.415. Move the decimal point on the exterior of the machine back was space. So it shows what the price actually is.
Then they don't have to change the gear until the price gets over $400...
FTW
se7a7n7
you beat me to the post I agree totally.
I had a similar experience with a digital system.
A few years ago my wife and I went back to Vietnam to get married. It was her first time back since she was 18 months old. A family friend owned a modern gas station in Saigon.
The day before we left our friend asked me if I would try to fix his gas station. I was doubtful. The terminal would not activate the pumps. It had not worked in a year or so. He said he had alreay flown in guys from Tokhiem, the manufacturer, in the Philippines to fix it. They could not figure it out.
It was an fully electronic system with an single line LCD screen. After dinking around with it forever I finally realized that at the current price of gas in Vietnameese Dong and the maximum number of liters allowed per transaction, the sale price was a bit over 1,000,000 Dong. I looked at the LCD screen. Six digits only. That was it.
Those analog machines are so retro. I’ll bet they don’t even have a card reader (forget about RF). And, you have to deal with the attendant. So I suppose you could muddle through by just pricing everything $1 dollar less ($4.05=$3.05) and then tacking on an extra dollar for every gallon and an extra dime for every tenth. Cheaper than new pumps no matter how you look at it.
Imagine Zimbabwe's problem. They just started issuing $500,000,000 notes. Worth $2 US. It would cost ten billion dollars to fill your Hummer.
Just set the pump so it displays 1/2 of the price per gallon, then double the amount shown for every purchase, like they used to do.
At least into the mid-90's the single on-campus gas station at Stanford University priced its gas in liters. I have no idea why that was.
Yes- we have been in this situation before. The BCD encoded "thumbwheel" consoles in older stations handled the over $1 conversion by adding some diodes and panting the "1" on them. The mechanical gear pumps were upgraded with bench modified register heads having the price display drum lead digit wheel show thru a 1 inch drilled round hole in the pump front.
We used to tease gas station clerks about using a torch to burn that hole into the pump front.
Am I seeing things, or does that sticker suggest that they're selling FORTY octane gas? What the hell runs on that?
@ se7a7n7:
"If gas goes to $4.159, then set the price on the machine to $.415."
Wouldn't it be $4.16?
I agree with you completely, problem solved, etc. I'm so glad I don't live in the Netherlands right now. Those poor people should be setting fire to their cars.
On the other hand, Venezuelans and Saudi Arabians still have it pretty good.
Interestingly, Bush is begging the Saudis to increase production in order to drive down prices. The Saudis have had the absolute gall to point out that current supply is adequate to current demand. The nerve! Using valid economic principles to thwart Bush's efforts to shore up his failing regime. There's no reasoning with these barbarian fanatics.
why sad? it's beautiful! high gas prices are good for the environment!
@6 - I don't about where you are, but around here the pumps only stop at $50 if you're using a credit card. That's because the system will only preauth (put a hold on) a $50 chuck of credit at a time. It's similar to the preauth/tab system alot of clubs and bars use for patrons who pay by credit card.
@All- The real funny to me is the digital pumps who can't be stopped accurate to the cent. The local station near my house (FINA) has digital pumps that are fairly new, but apparently due to one part or another (the pump? the stop mechanism? the interchange between the computer and the mechanical pump itself?) they miss a cent often. The clerk sets the pump to stop at $10, and when you pump it jerks to a stop at.... $10.04 to $10.08
I'm assuming it's because the mechanism is just not tuned well enough to handle that miniscule amount of liquid. What is that, like .27 gals? (at $3.69/gal)
Back when gas was $0.659 a gallon an independant station was going out of business and protesting the way big oil was pricing the independants out of business so he set his pumps to the maximum price possible. $0.999 and everyone laughed saying "Oh it'll never get there. Less than a year later that's where gas prices were and we were facing the same problem these pumps are facing now.
A few months ago, $100 per barrel for oil was 'a fluke created by a rogue trader who wanted a story to tell his grandchildren.' Now it's $128 per barrel.
Grandpa, did you really start the apocalypse?
Yes, Pumpkin. Now eat your scorpions while I go to the surface for a minute.
Watch Max Keiser's Death of the Dollar.
I'm not going to put 40 octane gas in my car!
Alas, you can't just set it to $2.something and double the price. Laws and all that.
The problem with the devalued dollar argument is that Europeans are paying a lot more for gas now, too.
Gas will be $10/gal soon enough and even upgrading the gears will not help.
How do those mechanical things WORK anyway? That's essentially a transmission with 3999 different gear ratios, accurate to 1 part in 5000. How can you do this with gear teeth? Lemme see...
10 gears running at 0x, 1x, 2x ... 9x? No, 10 gears on the same shaft with different numbers of teeth.
Each digit of the price can be set to mesh with one of those 10 gears.
Successive digits geared down by 1:1, 10:1, 100:1, 1000:1.
Add them together with differentials.
Maybe the gear reduction happens between differentials, like ((d0 /10 + d2) /10 + d3) /10 + d4. (/ = reduce, + = differential.)
Have I got it? What does the thing LOOK like?
WE NEED STEAMPUNK GAS PUMPS! GASPUNK!
high gas prices good for the environment? Nope. War for energy will lead to REAL destruction. Want to leave a world habitable for your grandchildren? Work real hard on solar etc. Work fast.
Do the dutch really have such a bad name for gas prices?? I can imagine why: just the other day I paid 1euro 59 per litre.. which comes down to (holy mother of god!) 11 dollars 27 per gallon!
My car is supposed to guzzle one litre per 20 kms... turns out to be a good idea to choose a Kia Picanto over a Hummer
Didn't they have this problem before and they just posted the price per half-gallon and then doubled it when you went to pay?
This is just the media, trying to figure out how to cover this story in a new way.
About two years ago I was driving in rural Utah and when I stopped for gas the owner/gas pumper looked to be in his 70's. Gas was getting close to $3 and he said that when it went over 2.99 he "would have to go out of business" because of the pump price display.
Takuan, high gas prices IS working on solar. Americans will never take solar, wind, etc. seriously as long as they get their gasoline for practically free (which until recently it was).
As a share of household income, and a bunch of other measures, energy is still nowhere near the peak of 1980-81.
1) I have a beast (for sale) that at the current local price of $3.759 would cost me $150 to fill up.
2) rather than complain about extra digits on an analog pump, replace it with a digitized pump.
3) lets spend more time finding a fix for the Y2K38 bug that will happen with all computers
@16, 24: The pictured pump is almost certainly for diesel fuel with a 40 cetane rating.
That pump looks like it was designed by Massimo Vignelli.
"A few months ago, $100 per barrel for oil was 'a fluke created by a rogue trader who wanted a story to tell his grandchildren.' Now it's $128 per barrel."
Yeah, and notice how quickly that went away? Oh, now it's the declining dollar, demand in BRIC countries, declining oil output, and lower refinery output. Oh, and some claim that if oil prices go below $100, the U.S. economy will collapse. Yeeeeeeahhhh...I'm calling shenanigans anyway.
Does anybody else that read all the doom and gloom in this story and thread just wish it would happen already? I'm sick of just hearing about it, if it's going to happen, let's get into post-apocolyptic survivor mode.
Or they could replace the dollar sign with the British pound.
I think it's a shame to be burning oil, when we can be using all of it to make plastic gadgets. :)