Team name

A while ago I blogged about how I voted for the dumbest team name at work and how it worked since I was the only one who voted… Well as you can see by the t-shirt that was made for my group representing our team name, it’s not quite the same name that won the election.

Our team name is DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Too Safe Crew, not the 2 Superman C!

When I protested this folly to my team captain he said most of us in the team could never be comfortable wearing that shirt in public.

This is just another example why democracy does not work here.

Do you find anything offensive or uncomfortable with the original unaltered name?

http://accordingtokirk.blogspot.com/2014/04/the-day-i-threw-my-vote-away-and-it.html

Donating plasma

While going to college I heard of and participated in the local plasma center which gives you money for every visit.

This is what happens when you donate at the plasma center: you enter and take a number, and then you sit and wait and watch a movie in the waiting room. After about 30 minutes they call your name and ask you to enter a small concealed booth where a representative educates you about AIDS and interrogates you to make sure you have lived a lifestyle free from the virus. They then proceed to take a blood sample and take your vitals. They then excuse you back to the waiting room to continue watching the movie. About 25 minutes later they call you into the room where the procedure will commence.

They sit you down in a funky chair and a certified phlebotomist pricks your arm and starts an IV that is hooked to a machine that will suck out your blood, extract the plasma from it, and then put the blood back into your arm. All the while you are still watching the movie from another TV in that room.

Once they have filled the quart sized bottle of plasma, they bandage you up, and pay you and then you’re free to leave the facility. This entire ordeal takes a little over two hours to do each time.

I have not been to the plasma center for a few years and I would like to share with you the pros and cons to donating plasma.

Cons:

1) Everyone gets paid the same amount each time. If you are a big fat guy like me they will keep you on the machine for a long time and milk you until that bottle is full to the brim with plasma.

2) Everyone has to have a physical examination with one of their representatives before  officially donating plasma. There is nothing awkward about it, they don’t ask you to drop your drawers or stuff like that. The physical is very basic. But plan on at least 3 to 5 hours of waiting to get this part completed.

3) Their hours of operation are pretty much open during business hours so if you have a job you will never find a convenient time to go in.

4) You have no choice on which movie to watch.

5) If the phlebotomist is inexperienced, they may bruise your arm, they then turn you away and you can't donate for a while. Then they make you have another dang physical.

Pros:

1) It can be a good source of a supplemental income. If you donate frequently, you can make around $200 a month.

2) Everyone gets paid the same amount each time. If you are a 90-pound girl they will take much less out of you than the big fat guys. You only have to fill up a quarter of a bottle and you get out of there sooner. 

3) You get paid to watch a movie.

Do you like to donate plasma?

How to annoy a Californian

Top ten list on how to annoy a Californian:

1. Bash anything Disney related including movies, high prices etc.         
2. Tell them Disneyworld is better than Disneyland.
3. Picnic at Forest Lawn Memorial Park (Walt Disney’s final resting place).
4. Ask them, "What is In-N-Out Burger?"
5. Ask them, "What is an iPhone?"
6. Drive around the beach in a rusty old non-emissions friendly car.
7. Have a picnic on the beach with tin foil dinners and second hand paper plates.
8. Ask them, "What is Starbucks?"
9. Wear a T-Shirt that says “Nuke the Whales” on it.
10. Tell them you heard they are reevaluating Proposition 8 again.

Do you agree with this list?

The day I threw my vote away and it worked

As I mentioned in blog "Safety starts Now!" my company takes safety to insane measures.
http://accordingtokirk.blogspot.com/2014/01/safety-starts-now.html

My company has now divided everyone into groups, like a safety buddy system in teams. Our assigned groups are supposed to watch out for one another in our teams and help keep them out of harm’s way. Now we are collectively rewarded as a group when we can go a full calendar quarter with no recordable injuries at work, and thus we are also collectively punished if one of us gets officially injured.

To reward us, at the end of each quarter our company treats everyone in our group to lunch from our choice of caterers. In preparation for our very first lunch our CEO asked us all to select a team name that we can all rally behind. Via email, some people submitted inspirational names and a few submitted really stupid names. If you know my opinions on democracy most of the time I exercise my right to vote and throw it away when I feel that there are no good options. I picked the stupidest name on the list.

A week later I was surprised to discover that my stupid vote won the election. The CEO stood up and said, "I am surprised by the involvement in this election. Out of the ten teams that represent ACME’s safety standard’s only one team actually followed through in making a decision. I am pleased to announce that this team's name is 'DJ Jazzy Jeff and the 2 Safe Crew!'" Apparently I was the only person who voted. Because this joke is now official, they are actually making our own official team t-shirts.

This is a first for me, having my vote actually count. Have you ever thrown your vote away? Or have you done anything in jest only to have a seriously official outcome?

Musicals are stupid

Riverton High School's production of Guys and Dolls

Musicals are stupid. This is an odd statement coming from a person who grew up loving the arts and even lettering in theatre in high school. But I guess people change. I can’t really put my finger on the moment this changed for me but I do know some incidences that occurred that helped this along.

While I was changing my major for the fourth time in college, I became a theatre major for two semesters. Why only two semesters? Because when I asked the academic adviser over the theatre department and the counselor at the career center at UVU about how I could make a living as a theater major, they both said, “I don’t know.” Another reason was it was mandatory that all theatre majors at UVU had to watch all of UVU’s productions and critique them for all the theatre classes. One musical that I was forced to see was called Chess. 

Chess is a musical with music by Benny Andersson and Bjorn Ulvaeus (formerly of ABBA), and with lyrics by Tim Rice. The story involves two chess grandmasters, an American and a Soviet, fighting over a woman who manages one and falls in love with the other all in the context of a politically-driven, Cold War-era tournament between the two men. Although the protagonists were not intended to represent any real individuals, the character of the American grandmaster was loosely based on Bobby Fischer.

I’m not surprised that Chess premiered on Broadway in 1988, but only lasted for two months. Yes, it’s that bad.

Here is a quote from the critique I turned in to my theater classes for that particular production.

“This is the seventh UVU production I’ve had the opportunity to see and I’ve finally realized two things: 1. I hate musicals, and 2. They have (the not so popular) scripts tucked away in the theater archives never to be put on production ever again for a reason. I think I would rather passionately make out with a diseased warthog than to have to sit through a second production of Chess.”

I still passed my classes regardless of my blunt critique. Here are a few points I have come up with to pinpoint what bugs me about musicals and how they are being performed among us.

1.      “We need another pointless musical number!” I believe that a musical number in a production is intended to accentuate critical points of the plot. Some writers do this, and some, I think, are just adding musical numbers into their play for the heck of it. If that is the case, then they are just wasting the audience’s time. I don’t have to be familiar with the play to feel that a musical number is about to start. If the musical number is actually relevant to the plot then the second challenge is trying to understand what is being sung by the amateur performer and /or the bad microphones and sound system. If no one can hear or understand the lyrics the performer is singing, then this also is a waste of the audience’s time.

2.       Overdone productions: Rodgers and Hamerstein material needs to go away. You might have seen one of their famous productions on video. South Pacific, Cinderella, The King and I, Oklahoma... they are all long, and have been circulating through arts councils and other theaters in Utah for decades, and are, in my opinion, beaten beyond the life of a dead horse. Fiddler on the Roof and Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, although not written by R and H, are also overdone and need to go away.

3.       Amateur performers: The state of Utah has a small pocket of people who are passionate about theatre. Most performers around the valley are nowhere near as talented as what you would find on Broadway in New York City. So when you have lead performer who is tone deaf, and can’t sing or dance, you are stuck with the amateur for the next two to three hours.

4.       Awkwardly exiting the theater: Hale Center Theatre is big on this and other smaller arts councils mimic them. When a musical has concluded and you are exiting the theater you have to make your way through the horde of the performers you just saw because they are all at the door as you exit. This stupid Utah tradition is highly unprofessional; I was told that it is never proper etiquette to wear your costume off the stage. It is awkward as well. If you are indifferent to the performers and were not impressed with their performance you feel obligated to say something to them anyway before you can pass by them because it is only polite to cheaply compliment them. To me this is a pathetic way for amateur performers to desperately fish for praise and adulation.

These are the four points I could come up with. Do you have anything to add to it? How do you feel about the performing arts and the undying musical trend?

Safety starts Now!

Anyone who is employed in any industrial job gets to hear a safety schpeel the first time on the job. It's usually about how their company is all about safety and how employees need to do their active part in keeping themselves safe so that they don’t critically hurt themselves and that all the shareholders can rest assured that their money isn’t going to medical costs for the company (mostly the latter).

The company I work for currently has taken this safety policy and blown it way out of proportion. Before I go off on this tangent I would like to make it clear that I love my job and can lovingly laugh at all the maniac quirks that go with it. My friend from Geneva Steel said that he, too, had some odd safety practices and procedures he was supposed to live by then said this (which I agree with), “First you laugh at it, then you follow it.”

Because my company had a higher number of recordable injuries last year, all of the big CEOs  took safety at ACME to the next level and then beyond that.

My company has become so safety crazy that they have trained us all on how to walk properly in the safe company way. This is called the ACME technique to help avoid slips, trips, and falls. 

They are listed as follows:

• Take your time
• Pay attention
• Adjust your stride to the task
• Walk with feet pointed slightly outward
• Always make wide turns

So imagine walking like a duck or Charlie Chaplin. This is how we are required to walk while we are on company time and on company property.

The new ACME walking technique

They also have a technique for walking up and down the stairs to help avoid slips, trips and falls. See the picture to get an idea.

If we have a flawless quarter with no recordable injuries at work then every employee gets presents from our corporate staff. Last quarter's safety present was a multipurpose flashlight that was made in China with really cheap batteries. Some operators found out that once you put the batteries in the flashlight and turned it on, the entire flashlight would get extremely hot and burn the hands of whoever was holding it.  Our managers then strongly encouraged the rest of us to take our safety presents home and to not use them while at work for fear that we would hurt our safety numbers for the next quarter.

My safety reward!

 What do you think next quarter's safety present will be?

I have altered my companies name in this blog for privacy  

Alternative Fuels: Is there a Solution? Chapter 8, Conclusion

So, as of now, I have opened up all of my study notes and travel logs to you, my beloved followers, on my struggles with alternative fuels. I will now summarize the gist of what my alternative fuels class offered at UVU.

Accept the fact or not, but we as a nation are addicted to oil! If you look at the statistics on oil barrels consumed a day the population of the U.S. is the leading consumer, with a population of 3.1 million. China has a population of 1.4 billion. So why are we consuming 12 million barrels a day more than the most highly populated country in the world?

Obviously with the limited diminishing supply and the rapid demand we are starting to find ourselves in a crisis. Well then, why don’t we stop this rapid oil demand by switching to alternatives? It’s not that easy. Petroleum is used mostly, by volume, for producing fuel oil and petrol (gasoline), petroleum is also the raw material for many chemical products:

•          Wax

•          Synthetic (man-made) fibers

•          Detergents

•          Fertilizers

•          Food additives

•          Some medicines, such as penicillin, Acetylsalicylic acid

•          Synthetic rubber (the demand is four-times greater than for natural rubber)

•          Pen ink

•          Plastics

•          Compact discs

•          Make-up, nail polish and lipstick

•          Bandages

Why do we as individuals choose not to switch our vehicles to an alternative fuel? 10% Conspiracy, and 90% America’s lack of education and fear of change.

While I was in class we had many guest speakers who were inventors and some were crack pots and some agreed that they did encounter threats from big business and shareholders invested in the automotive business because they felt threatened. The threat is shown clearly in the documentary you can watch called “Who Killed the Electric Car?”

Every guest speaker agreed on the above-mentioned statistic that we choose not to change because it’s mostly lack of education and fear of change. For that reason I have created this blog to hopefully help contribute to finding the better alternative.

What is the solution?

The reason why we are seeking an alternative fuel is to get away from paying extreme gas money which requires paying for extreme alternative. There’s the expensive cost in maintaining an alternative fuel vehicle. Most competitive businesses want to offer alternative fuel at their stations but there is no profitable way of getting it started. My alternative fuel class covered and analyzed every possible alternative available and every single option did not offer a plausible solution to the summary above.

Here is my own personal solution on what I will do next. The hybrid is a genius system that is just barely being offered on the market by dealerships. It has a continuously variable transmission which helps switch between gas and electricity. The system is supposed to save you a ton a of gas mileage. Chevy and Ford only have expensive brand new ones right now so I’m waiting until they are a little cheaper. 
 

Another cost effective alternative is the 3 cylinder Geo Metro. The engine is small, and thus you get the best gas millage. The only drawback is that it isn't family-size friendly.

Do you agree with my solution or do you have a better idea?

Alternative Fuels: Is there a Solution? Chapter 7, Researching Propane

In my alternative fuels class, we were given a final project to research and present a 15-minute lecture on a certain alternative fuel. Everyone in the class had to do something different, so I chose to do mine on propane.

The technicians from Freeway Propane were nice enough to provide me with some information. This is what I learned: propane is a clean-burning fuel and is supposedly more abundant and easily accessible than CNG. I found out the overall cost to convert a vehicle into a bi-fuel propane / gasoline truck would be around $17,000. This is about the same cost as a conversion to CNG. That is very pricey.

Pros to owning and maintaining a propane vehicle:

• Supposed tax incentive upon completion of conversion  
• Propane is better for emissions, it is nontoxic, nonpoisonous, and insoluble in water. Compared with vehicles fueled by conventional diesel and gasoline, propane vehicles can produce lower amounts of some harmful air pollutants and greenhouse gases, depending on vehicle type, drive cycle, and engine calibration.
• Unlike CNG, since propane is liquefied and not compressed you can store more of it in your secondary tank.

One of my questions in researching propane is why it is considered the red-headed stepchild of alternative fuels. Here's why.

Cons to owning and maintaining a propane vehicle:

• There are no universal connectors. You can’t simply head to the nearest KOA campground that sells propane and fill your vehicle up if it’s not equipped that way. Which disproves the myth that since propane is sold everywhere you won’t run into the same limited filler stations problem as CNG. Propane has fewer filler stations than CNG.
• Just like converting a vehicle to CNG, the new computers on the newer models are so technical (sensors and monitors specifically programed to work with gasoline) that you have a potential of jacking up your vehicle's on-board computer by trying to rewire and reprogram it. With this in mind, you're better off purchasing a dedicated propane vehicle (and we have already covered why anything dedicated is a bad idea in my CNG blog).
• The conversion is very expensive and not worth the cost of saving money on gasoline.
• Propane has a lower thermal efficiency range in its detonation resistance than gasoline has. With that in mind, you are actually getting worse MPG from propane.

This research helped me decide to never consider getting a propane vehicle since it is also not a cost-effective alternative to gasoline.

This drawn out series of blogs will be concluded next time. What do you think my personal solution to our oil crisis is? Find out on my next blog.

Alternative Fuels: Is there a Solution? Chapter 6, Researching Hydrogen Fuel

Hydrogen is believed by some to be the best alternative fuel and is undoubtedly the best that will be available for future use. Aside from being abundant and inexpensive, hydrogen is also clean, efficient, and renewable. Some people hope that hydrogen will be the replacement for all other fuels that are used today.

You can surf the web and find multiple bogus inventors that claim they have an inexpensive hydrogen fuel cell kit for your car that you can easily install yourself and save money on gas by raising your miles per gallon (MPG) on the water-based fuel source, which should act as a hybrid for your internal combustion engine. In layman’s terms, you buy their kit (which usually consists of: mini hydrogen generator (a funky mason jar), wiring harness, tubing, and accessories to hook it all up) and some sort of an easy do-it-yourself installation video. This can all be shipped to your house for 100 bucks. You attach it to the plenum, or the vacuum section of your manifold, and then you can have hydrogen pumped into your combustion chamber, which allows a secondary fuel source that sustains your combustion engine much longer before it needs another fill up at a gas station.

Cheap online hydrogen kit

One of my professors at UVU experimented with one of these kits when he drove his motor home from Orem, Utah to Anchorage, Alaska and back. He claimed that he observed no substantial change in his MPG.

Pros to Hydrogen as Alternative Fuel:

• Hydrogen fuel is beneficial environmentally, has better emissions with less carbon dioxide, no nitrogen oxides, and no unburned hydrocarbons (all of which gasoline has).
• Hydrogen is one of the most abundant elements on earth and can be extracted from water. The most common method of achieving this is through electrolysis, although there are some organisms, such as algae and bacteria, that can produce hydrogen from water. Hydrogen is produced by splitting a water molecule into its individual atoms, two hydrogen and one oxygen. When the hydrogen is burned it bonds with oxygen, producing water vapor.

Cons to Hydrogen as Alternative Fuel:

• If you buy a car that is a dedicated hydrogen fuel cell vehicle, just like CNG, you will run into expensive maintenance, and a lack of filler stations
• Hydrogen gets lonely and is hard to separate from other atoms

My undergraduate research team performed multiple experiments in hydrogen production through electrolysis using ammonia and water as a fuel source.

When electricity is applied to water, the oxygen atoms are attracted to the anode, and the hydrogen atoms are attracted to the cathode. This splits up the water molecules and the two gases bubble up into the air. The hydrogen can then be captured.

We ran tests with water in a bubbler with precious metals from a catalytic converter to hopefully create enough hydrogen to power a small and simple fan. We would monitor any spikes in electricity. We did the same with using ammonia instead of water.

Our experiment

Unfortunately, we never brought the fan to life but we did see a slight increase in the power when we used ammonia.

UCUR Presentation at Westminster on Hydrogen production through electrolysis

Although GM and Nissan are introducing a new franchise of hydrogen-powered cars in 2015, I don’t think it will be financially beneficial to any consumer who buys one. I am predicting it will be another flex fuel fiasco.

Here we have another alternative fuel option that although is healthier for the environment, it is not very cost effective for the buyer.

Do you remember the Hindenburg disaster? With that in mind, does that frighten you to never consider hydrogen as an alternative fuel?

Alternative Fuels: Is there a Solution? Chapter 5, Researching Ethanol

Ethanol or Biodiesel

Biodiesel is a renewable diesel fuel consisting of FAME

(fatty-acid methyl ester). It is produced from vegetable

oil or rendered animal fat.

Option 1

Cooking With Crisco! Some diesel engines can be converted to be able to run off of the power of ethanol. My professor who lives in Mt Pleasant had some local nuns ask him to convert their Volkswagen Rabbit to be able to burn off old cooking oil. After the conversion they would giddily collect the used french fry cooking oil from a local franchise in town. This plan seemed flawless and it made their emissions smell like french fries. This was in the summer… seven months later my professor heard that the nuns had to scrap the rabbit because the engine seized. The problem these nuns ran into is that cooking oil is a saturated fat once it cools down thus it would seize their engine from the gunky build up.

1983 Volkswagen Rabbit

In 2007/2008 my Under graduate research group for UVU’s Automotive Technology department  decided to run some tests on our own to learn more about the efficiency in investing in a bio diesel vehicle. Our Programs Initial objectives:

• Become proficient at producing industry grade biodiesel
• Test the biodiesel for gas emission comparisons
• Test the biodiesel for horsepower comparisons
• Test the biodiesel for MPG comparisons
• Accomplish the above objectives with the aid of UVU students
• Use the information gained for the development of Alternative Fuels curriculum

UCUR presentation: results for biodiesel 

Our overall analysis of biodiesel verses regular diesel was poor. You loose horsepower, and your mpg does not improve significantly better.

Overall pros:

• Sligthly better for the ozone then regular diesel is
• As long as you have a supplier it could be more cost effective than gas
• 10% less carbon and sulfur in it verses regular diesel,

Overall Cons:

• 12% less horsepower than diesel
• Raises Nox in emissions
• Natural solvent that clogs 
• Ethically it's wrong, we’re burning food

Natural solvent that clogs

We're burning food

So back to my two original questions: Is biodiesel better for the environment?  Yes, it does have less toxic emissions that can hurt the ozone compared to diesel. Is it more cost effective? No, most diesel engines are not meant to run off of used oil based products you would either have to modify your engine to accept that type of fuel and still risk the possibility of gumming up your engine and once again the maintenance is not worth cost in savings on diesel.  Chevrolet is now offering a flex fuel model of truck which burns a small percentage of ethanol in its diesel fuel but how are you saving money on that?

John one of my old bosses for ECO MOTORS was actually considering starting his own franchise in opening a gas station locally that mainly offered alternative fuels including ethanol at prices per gallon that would be competitive to gasoline and diesel. After going through all the red tape with the local government plus all the other hefty expenses in starting a risky business in that form was unwise because he would never be able to sell any of his alternative fuels cheap enough that would be a sufficient competition to gasoline and still turn a profit to get him out of the red zone from debt.  Many other visionary inventors I met with also discovered that problem and that my friends is the main reason why we can’t shake our addiction to gasoline.

Do you think it is ethically wrong to burn food for fuel instead of gasoline?

Alternative Fuels: Is there a Solution? Chapter 4, Working in the CNG Business

The summer of 2008 was very busy for me. I was hired on as an amateur student mechanic/installer for a plumber (let's call him Tim), who wanted to start a side business installing CNG systems onto mostly work trucks for industrial drivers. He found me through the university which I was attending. I was recommended by my professor. I should’ve followed my instincts on this one.

Note to self: if you want to be a mechanic, don’t work for a plumber, especially a shifty one. He promised me a decent hourly wage, (more than what I was making through Jiffy Lube at the time) plus health benefits (which I never saw). When I told him I was a still a student and hoping to learn more as an apprentice for a while he said that I could use his new business partner as a reference if I ever had questions. His business partner (let's call him John) was a self-employed company of one for a mobile brake business and specialized in brakes steering, suspension, and front ends. I was young and convinced that this was a dream come true. John and Tim, the shifty plumber, decided to call their business ECO MOTORS. Catchy isn’t it?

The shifty plumber sent John and me to train and buy two different kits, tanks, and products from two different companies.

All sorts of businessmen at this point were investing in installing different kits and systems onto any vehicle that wanted to run on CNG. Some shifty websites offered to sell you simple install-it-yourself kits for cars at much cheaper prices than the patented kits were selling for. Magellan, I believe, was the name of the cheap do-it-yourself kit. I have heard bad results from people who have bought and tried this.

A week after I was hired on, John and I went to Denver. We spent three days learning how to install a patented system and learning how it worked. This was very expensive but it was EPA approved. EPA approved means that the Environmental Protection Agency approved that this kit was safe to run in our atmosphere and eligible for a tax credit. I have discovered with most kits that I was trained on that the only difference between an EPA approved kit verses one that wasn’t was whether or not the inventor/supplier of the kit paid an extra hefty fee to the EPA. Thus, they would have to charge the consumer thousands of more dollars to turn a profit for themselves. The training and supplies purchased from this company was way up in the $30,000 range which the plumber seemed to have no problem at that time with forking over that huge chunk of change.

Installing my first CNG tank in Denver

2008 Ford F-250: My first installation

John and I then went to Mesa for more training on a different kit that was not EPA approved but was cheaper. So we spent three days down there and bought all the tanks and supplies they were willing to sell to us.

 

2nd installation CNG fuel injectors on a Tundra

2nd installation CNG regulator

Meanwhile all of this carefree spending by Tim was starting to catch up to him. Since the inexperienced and slightly immature family member who was Tim's sales representative for ECO MOTORS was not doing a thing, when it came to selling our kits to potential clients, I didn’t have any work to do for the six months that I stayed with them. Tim was generously willing to keep me busy around his shop doing all sorts of complicated odd jobs that were way out of my league. He had me fix his diesel trucks which was something I was unfamiliar with. He had me do all sorts of other mechanical jobs that you would normally give to a technician with at least three years of experience off of an apprenticeship. He also had me paint his office, and do other tasks around his warehouse. While I was working for him I actually got to install a CNG kit onto one of his friend's delivery truck. That was it. So, our profits were not even close to covering the huge overhead that my boss created.

I suppose Tim and I were expecting something else out of each other when my employment started with him. He started blaming me for his loss in revenue and thus he demoted me (on my birthday) by giving me a major pay cut and cutting my hours back to an on-call situation.

To make things even more complicated, my boss then got called by a shifty salesman that duped him into buying yet another kit. They decided they would train me in Utah and would provide us all the tanks and equipment we would need providing that we sign on to only sell and maintain their product and drop all the other kits from other competitors. Since the kits and training was reasonably cheaper than what he paid for the first two, Tim quickly signed us up with them to sell only parts provided by them. We then had to figure out how to sell almost $100,000 worth of other kits which were now useless to us.

When I went to this third training I saw that I was being trained with 32 other mechanics, representatives from other shops, and other crackpots who worked from home. We were the third of more than one group that they were casually training. They were apparently attempting a monopoly by training anyone and everyone on this new system. I saw this as a major bad sign and I wanted out before the crap hit the fan for my boss’s business.

I painfully negotiated a way out. After I  had trained a replacement for me, I  officially resigned in October of 2008. Luckily for me (not so much for them), my pessimistic prediction was accurate. A month later, gas prices unexpectedly and dramatically dropped from 5 bucks a gallon to 1.50 a gallon. ECO MOTORS's only angle for selling was gone. The last place I was trained at realized they no longer could sell either and also closed their doors at the end of that year. Everyone who bought their system could not get any replacement parts or anything else associated with that former company. Nobody from their company would ever answer the phone or return messages for the hoard of angry mechanics and customers they sold their system to. CNG was finished!

Also, at the end of this year I completed my degree in Automotive Technology and I realized that I did not want to be mechanic any more.

Have you ever gotten to work for a shifty company?