Engines

With gas prices continuing a steady upward climb, you may be headed to the dealer in search of something less thirsty at the pump. But which cars' sticker price gives you the most bang for your buck? We asked Edmunds.com to look at the vehicles with the lowest sticker price per fuel-economy rating. The math was simple: divide the car's base price by its EPA rating for combined fuel economy. The result gives a look at how much each mile per gallon will cost you. Photos: Top 10 cars with lowest cost per mpg Topping the list is Ford's C-Max Energi.

It looks like a truck, drives like a truck and hauls like a truck. So the 2013 Ram 1500 is, you guessed it, very much a truck. This is despite the fact that beneath the handsome sheet metal are two key elements that, until recently, would have disqualified it from many full-size-truck buyers' lists: an eight-speed transmission and a V-6 engine. Both are new additions for the current Ram truck, which received a thorough mid-life makeover for the 2013 model year. The new drivetrain and thoughtful upgrades mean this truck is well positioned to take on the longtime sales champ - the Ford F-150 - as well as all-new full-size pickups from Chevrolet and Toyota due out later this year.

Many automobile owners are spending more than they need on motor oil, believing that it should be changed every 3,000 miles even though almost no manufacturer requires such an aggressive oil-change schedule. The long-held notion that the oil should be changed every 3,000 miles is so prevalent that California officials have launched a campaign to stop drivers from wasting millions of gallons of oil annually because they have their vehicles serviced too often. "Our survey data found that nearly half of California drivers are still changing their oil at 3,000 miles or even sooner," said Mark Oldfield, a spokesman for the California Department of Resources, Recycling and Recovery, which has launched the Check Your Number campaign to encourage drivers to go with the manufacturer's recommendations.

Bubbles are a serious business. While they're beloved as a childhood pastime and a bathtub luxury, the physics behind the delicate, iridescent clusters remains remarkably complex. Now mathematicians have pinned down the ephemeral physical processes that mark the life, and death, of these suds. Their findings, published this week in the journal Science, could prove useful to chemical engineers seeking to better understand all kinds of foams, from shaving cream to plastic insulation.

Three workers were killed and three others were badly hurt Thursday afternoon in an explosion on the edge of Kern County's Mojave airport during the test of a propellant system for a pioneering private spaceship. The blast occurred at a private test site run by Scaled Composites, a company founded by high-profile aviation entrepreneur Burt Rutan. In June 2004, the firm became the first business to launch a reusable manned rocket into space, a craft known as SpaceShip One.

Jeff Bezos: founder and CEO of Amazon.com, and now, bona fide ocean explorer. A year after vowing to send a team into the ocean to find F-1 engines from the historic Apollo 11 moon launch, Bezos announced Wednesday that the team had recovered F-1 engine parts. Because many original serial numbers are missing or partially missing, it was unclear if they actually came from the Apollo 11 mission. Calling it an “incredible adventure,” the billionaire said the team had just finished three weeks at sea, working nearly three miles below the surface of the Atlantic Ocean.

The battered, twisted left engine of the US Airways plane that crash-landed in the Hudson River was recovered Friday, after an eight-day struggle to find the wreckage and pull it from the murky water. Using a large, floating crane, salvage crews gently set the engine on a barge. Shards of metal and wiring hung from the engine, and a large portion of the outer shell appeared to be missing as it was lifted from the river bottom, 65 feet below the surface.

The Soviet army has used battle tanks for sale. The weekly Argument and Fact magazine said Friday that the Soviet Defense Ministry is hawking hundreds of outmoded 36-ton T-55 tanks to civilian heavy industry rather than scrapping them. Although the exact price was not disclosed, the discount ranges up to 66% off the original price tag. "Converted military hardware can be used as tow tractors, cranes with high cross-country capacity and fire engines, as well as for hammering piles and logging mountainous areas," the magazine said.

While electric vehicles continue to grab the green-car spotlight, an older technology has quietly emerged as a player in the fuel economy wars: turbocharging. Once the province of performance cars, turbochargers now power economy cars, family sedans and even full-sized trucks. Turbos now account for an estimated 13% of U.S. auto sales, according to Honeywell International Inc., a leading turbo supplier. That's double what it was in 2010. The increase is driven by ever-stricter federal fuel economy standards.

Toyota Motor Corp. is replacing faulty engines on a "small number" of 2007 Tundra large pickups. The 5.7-liter V-8 engines have been replaced on about 20 of the pickups, a spokesman said. Camshafts used in the engines were improperly processed by a supplier and can snap, causing the engine to fail, the spokesman said.

Los Angeles Fire Chief Brian Cummings rejected a request from members of the City Council to postpone Sunday's start of a controversial plan to shift dozens of firefighters to ambulance duty. Council President Herb Wesson asked Friday that the Fire Department delay the changes, which are designed to address an increase in 911 medical calls, for three days so lawmakers can consider the effects of the reassignments. The council has scheduled a hearing Tuesday to address what critics say are safety issues surrounding the new staffing plan.

Turns out an engine part on Matt Kenseth's Toyota was three grams too light when the NASCAR driver raced to victory Sunday at Kansas Speedway, the equivalent of about two cotton balls in the words of his engine builder. But in terms of Kenseth's bid to win his second Sprint Cup championship, the violation carried the weight of an anvil. Kenseth on Wednesday drew a massive 50-point penalty from NASCAR for having the unapproved part, knocking Kenseth from eighth in the Cup standings to a tie for 14th with Jeff Gordon.

SACRAMENTO - As Gov. Jerry Brown returned this week from his trade mission to China, his decision to have his travel and that of 10 staffers paid for by special interests was raising eyebrows. The dozens of delegates who joined Brown on the tour for $10,000 each - footing their bills and that of the governor's entourage - included about 15 groups that lobby the state for favorable treatment on their agendas. The California Hospital Assn., Kaiser Foundation Health Plan, the California Beer and Beverage Distributors and other interests sent along representatives - in one case a lobbyist - affording them face time with the governor during layovers, meals and receptions.

During his 30-year reign in Iraq, Saddam Hussein repeatedly plunged the country into war, even transforming an ancestral marshland some say is the "historical" Garden of Eden into a battleground. To punish political enemies, Hussein built canals with names such as Mother of Battles to drain water from marshlands and sap the lifeblood of the Marsh Arabs, a community of indigenous Iraqis who depended on the swamp to survive. An ecosystem twice the size of the Everglades became a desert of salt and sand.

In the beginning, it was about losing a few pounds. Hans Svanoe, 64, would leave his house in Encino at 5:30 a.m. and walk for an hour before driving over the hill to Century City, where he works as a butler. A what? "A corporate executive butler," said Svanoe, who caters to the domestic needs of media mogul Haim Saban and his business partner, Adam Chesnoff, when they're at the office. Before that, the Norwegian-born Svanoe was a domestic for Milton Berle, who once responded to a Svanoe quip by saying: "I'll tell the jokes around here.

An online engineering course at San Jose State that has shown promise in improving student performance will be expanded to 11 other California State University campuses next fall, officials announced Wednesday. The San Jose campus, which has been a leader in adopting new technologies, will also establish a new Center for Excellence in Adaptive and Blended Learning to train faculty members from other campuses interested in offering the class. The initiative was announced at a news conference attended by Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, who along with Gov. Jerry Brown has been pushing universities to pursue online education as a way to curtail costs and serve more students.

The number of engine malfunctions on the Coast Guard's workhorse helicopter has increased dramatically as efforts to install safer motors have fallen behind schedule, according to a report by the Homeland Security Department's inspector general, Clark Kent Ervin. The Dolphin helicopters, or HH-65s, are used for search and rescue, port security, enforcement of treaties, drug interdiction and marine safety.

A small plane ditched in Big Bear Lake on Saturday after losing engine power, but those on board were able to get out with only minor injuries, authorities said. The single-engine Beechcraft A36 Bonanza came to rest upside down near the lake's south shoreline, Federal Aviation Administration spokesman Allen Kenitzer said. The FAA defines ditching as emergency landings on water. The plane had left Carlsbad airport Saturday morning, and its pilot reported engine trouble and planned to land at Big Bear Airport, said Sgt. Ryan Collins of the San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department.

A series of cracks are veining through the historic Watts Towers, a recurring problem that's forcing engineers to rethink how they repair the sculpture. Join us at 9 a.m. as we discuss the towers and the problems facing it with Times reporter Angel Jennings. The towers have been deteriorating for years, prompting quick patch jobs that did little long-term good. A worker with binoculars would spot a crack, panic and rush to seal it over with cement and other materials. But the cracks always came back.