• 0x4E4F@infosec.pub
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    11 months ago

    Yeah… they call it that cuz the same principle applies to vehicle engine cooling.

    Air cooling is not as effective as water cooling, but just take a look at beetle engines made more than half a century ago, they’re all air cooled and still up and running. It’s all in the design, if it’s good and overengineered, it will pracatically run forever.

    Too bad nothing nowadays is meant to run more than 5 years.

    • wrath_of_grunge@kbin.social
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      11 months ago

      they had a tendency to overheat in hot conditions, and when stuck in traffic. this is because they need a certain amount of air flowing in order to cool properly.

      they also weren’t very good for heat in the winter.

      air cooling is a simpler system, and as such has less to go wrong with it. that doesn’t make it better or worse. there are pros and cons to both systems.

    • IrateAnteater@sh.itjust.works
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      11 months ago

      Too bad nothing nowadays is meant to run more than 5 years.

      Where do people keep getting this from? Cars today tend to last far longer anywhere where winter is a thing.

      As for air cooled vs water cooled engines, the power output (and vehicle mass) has to be part of that conversation. Yes air cooling works on on a 25 HP motor, but it doesn’t work so well on modern engines making an order of magnitude more power.

      • 0ops@lemm.ee
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        11 months ago

        Honestly people give old vehicles (or old anything) way too much credit. It’s survivor bias, only the good stuff lasted this long. The shitty products have all been recycled multiple times by now. I mean think about it, 100,000 miles used to be an old-ass car back in the day, but for anything post 1990 or so that’s just getting started. Don’t get me wrong, I admire the simplicity and repairability of old vehicles

    • Sylvartas@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      Air cooling is a lot less complex than water cooling, so there are fewer points of failure. If both can do the job, I’ll pick reliability over efficiency every time.

    • Socsa@sh.itjust.works
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      11 months ago

      You have clearly never lived with an old air cooled VW engine and dealt with it overheating in traffic.

    • GeneralEmergency@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      If you genuinely think that those old engines are still running on original parts. Then I don’t know what to say, because you wouldn’t understand any of it.