Author Archives: bwnunnally

About bwnunnally

Bruce Nunnally is an independent Blogger who writes Cadillac Conversations on all things Cadillac. Connect with Bruce on Google+

US could get Diesel Cadillac CTS after all? Diesel saves the V8 Caddy?

Posted on by
1

In Europe later this year Cadillac plans to incoporate the VM Motori designed 2.9L Turbo diesel engine  into the Cadillac CTS, CTS Coupe, and CTS Sport Wagon for European consumption.  It looks like a nice powerplant, and at 250hp output certainly will not be a slouch.

Here in the US we have a different market.  Here, diesel fuel is quite a bit more expensive than premium unleaded gas.   There is no tax benefit to use of diesel.   It has seemed unlikely that GM would bring the 2.9L Turbo diesel here to the US.

Motor Trend today brought us a new Rumor however — why not throw the 4.5L Duramax Diesel engine into the CTS, put the CTS-V hood on so that it would fit, and sell that in the US?  The new 4.5L V-8 diesel is expected to deliver more than 310 horsepower (231 kW) and 520 lb-ft of torque (705 Nm), while delivering a 25-percent engine fuel efficiency improvement versus comparable gasoline engines.  Note that is MORE hp than the direct injected 3.6L optional engine in the current CTS.

4.5L Duramaxx Turbo Diesel V8

4.5L Duramaxx Turbo Diesel V8

The new dual-overhead cam, four-valve V-8 diesel engine boasts a number of innovative design approaches that have enabled its compact size and mass, including integral aluminum cylinder head exhaust manifolds, integral cam cover intake manifolds and a narrow V-angle block. The new V-8’s compact size enables it to fit within the same space of a small-block V-8 gasoline engine and offers GM the flexibility to introduce it in a wide variety of vehicles to meet market demand.

“This premium diesel engine is expected to deliver the power, torque and refinement our customers expect,” said Tom Stephens, executive vice president, GM Global Powertrain and Global Quality.  Of course he meant truck customers, but I think this is a VERY viable engine for the CTS.

The new V-8 diesel will be GM’s first engine to use a selective catalytic reduction (SCR) NOx after-treatment system with a diesel particulate filter to help achieve Tier 2 Bin 5 and LEV 2 emissions, making it compliant in all 50 states. SCR was chosen for its proven NOx reduction capability and durability, and high efficiency while operating in optimal diesel combustion modes, making it a very attractive system to achieve high fuel economy.

The environmental benefits of the new engine include a 13-percent reduction in CO2 emissions and at least a 90-percent reduction in particulates and NOx compared to many diesel vehicles today.

Would the US Cadillac CTS customers be willing to get improved acceleration and performance at the expense of having to fill up with Diesel?  I would.

5 things NOT to do with your garage door

Posted on by
Reply

1. Don’t make any changes, adjustments, manipulate any settings at all on the opener without recording their current values and being able to put them back to the original settings.  In delicate manipulation and adjustment, it is often useful to be able to undo.  Keep the ability to undo by noting the original settings for everything.  Take photos if necessary.  Make 1 adjustment, and test the result.  If you do not get the expected result, reset the adjustment.

2. Don’t re-engineer the door if part of it is broken.  Fix the broken part.  If you think you need to re-engineer the door, stop and consider the various parts of the system again.  If the door WAS working, but now it is NOT working, something changed.  The door does not need to be re-imagined.  It needs a small adjustment.

3.  Don’t call a Garage Door place at random off google or the yellow pages without being prepared to kindly and politely decline to buy a new door, new opener, new house.  The opener you have is not an antique (unless it is of course).  The door you have can be opened (it worked yesterday).  If they can’t look at it, determine what is wrong, and adjust it so that it works, thank them for coming and call the next random place.

4. Don’t ignore the garage door until it STOPS working. While it is working properly, keep the tracks clean, oil the hinges, keep dust and dirt out of the mechanism.  A clean and well oiled mechanism does not have to work as hard.  This leads to longer periods between stoppages.

5. Don’t work on the door at all until you have re-read the manual, and reached a sense of the zen of the whole garage door system.  Garage doors are very simple, and hideously complex.  If you assume that the door is easy to fix and jump right in to fixing without understanding what has gone wrong and is out of tune, you will become lost on the path to proper Garage Door operation.

Blogging about Blog About

Posted on by
2

For the recent Canadian Thanksgiving, John Chow challenged readers for his blog to donate money to the Vancouver Union Gospel Mission to help feed the hungry.   John offered to match any donations.    I was happy to be able to donate 10 meals and have John match them.  The total donation with all intake and John’s match raised over $6K for the Union Gospel Mission, so yay.

John Chow’s blog is a very popular blog on how to be an internet entrepreneur.   Besides matching the donations, John also offered to link to all of the donors in the blog.    I have been clicking through these and have found a variety of useful and interesting reading.  My initial thought was just to click through them all and note that I had done so.  But what I found by and large is that this self-selected subset of blogs has a lot of treasure inside, and has taken a bit of time to read, study, and save off as bookmarks for later review.

Today’s find — a quick thank you to Creative Pride News for the link to Writing the Greatest About Me Page Ever on Steven-Sanders.com.  After reading this I revised the About page here. Thanks to Steven for the actual advice of course.

Just another lesson in the obvious — but people who are generous in giving usually are interesting to talk to or read as well.