What you don't know about cars and fuel quiz

wdfifteen · wdfifteen's Garage

Quiz: What You Don't Know About Cars and Fuel

It's from the well known automotive experts at National Geographic, so you know it BS. There is one question that 99.9% of gearheads will answer "wrong" (according to them). Be ready.

I got 8 out of 10 (really 9 out of 10)

Oh Haha · 01-15-2016, 08:43 AM

I got 7/10.

aschen · 01-15-2016, 08:59 AM

8

The question about a clogged air filter was my favorite subject of discussion with my car buddies many years ago.

When you consider that Gas engines are throttled by restricting airflow, it becomes obvious the only possible way a less restrictive airfilter could improve MPG is at absolute full throttle. A bit counter intuitive and fun to discuss

wdfifteen · wdfifteen's Garage

Quote:

Originally Posted by aschen

8
When you consider that Gas engines are throttled by restricting airflow, it becomes obvious the only possible way a less restrictive airfilter could improve MPG is at absolute full throttle. A bit counter intuitive and fun to discuss

The question was replacing a clogged air filter.
The best air filter story I have is from when I was working at GM testing lock-up torque converters in the early 1980s. We had a Chevy 350 in the test cell that we were using to spin 700-R4s, testing the converters. That engine had run 17 hours a day for years and years on various bearing and transmission tests. We noticed that it was having more and more trouble running the test cycle. Upshifts were way slow at WOT. At first we tore into the transmission, and as I recall even put on a different one. We changed the plugs, checked compression, put a new carburetor on it - nothing would make the engine run right. Finally somebody (not me) looked at the air filter and it was BLACK. We took the filter out and it ran perfectly. The test cell got its air supply from a duct that ran outside to an inlet by the parking lot.

URY914 · URY914's Garage

8/10

aschen · 01-15-2016, 01:11 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by wdfifteen

The question was replacing a clogged air filter.
.

Yeah definitely not best choice of words on their part, these quizzes seem to always have ambiguous or poor questions.

If a filter is truly clogged I suppose the engine wont run at all

Arizona_928 · 01-15-2016, 01:54 PM

^^

M.D. Holloway · 01-15-2016, 06:28 PM

cool! let me try...

M.D. Holloway · 01-15-2016, 06:32 PM

pure luck on 2 of them

afterburn 549 · 01-16-2016, 01:44 PM

View Results »
Results
Score: 70
Correct: 7
Incorrect: 3
You're revving up! Ignite the quiz again to improve your score.

afterburn 549 · 07:53 AM

A, I think the electric car question is set to skew us all wrong as it was worded as in many.
B, -I do believe the air filter question was a trick- it was aimed at the newer engines as it measures air.
An old carb engine would be choked

SilberUrS6 · 01-17-2016, 11:26 AM

Nine out of ten, but the air filter one was a gimme due to the answers here, so lets call it eight out of ten, because I would have answered it wrong. The other one was the CAFE question. I drove the cars of the early 70s, and I don't ever remember any of them doing better than about 11mpg.