Myth Busters SUCKS! (HHO mod, does it work?)

[Shawn D.]

Originally Posted by ttoyoda

No kidding. But we are talking about doing modifications, and the whole point is reducing parasitic losses.

Uhh... you were the one who said "unmodified," not me:

Originally Posted by ttoyoda

In an unmodified engine I think the only gain would be from late timing.

I was explaining why there would be no gain from late timing in an unmodified engine. I don't need to watch the videos to understand that.

[SVOboy]

Now now, let's try to be civil. HHO is controversial enough without us arguing in circles with no personal experience or data to go on.

[Shawn D.]

I wasn't "arguing in circles." I was responding to what I thought was a claim that changing timing to ATDC would improve efficiency in an unmodified engine. If anyone wants to try that, they're free to do so. I'll be looking forward to the results!

[SVOboy]

That's fair, we should just keep it friendly since I think we all have the same goal, and oftentimes a discussion can get twisted about in forum format,

[klrv6]

I laughed at that show when they "Busted" the acetone myth. If they had done some research, they would have started around 3oz per 10 gallons. Instead they ran a car on it and said you wouldn't save money. The Brown gas generator is the same way, the just didn't do it right.

[Tango Charlie]

Originally Posted by kevlar

Someone at work was telling me that there is a system (fuel/water) in design somewhere that would introduce an amount of water into the cylinders at full compression, changing the water to steam, forcing down the pistons from the rapid expansion rate... any truth to this? sounds plausible....

You may be referring to the six stroke.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_stroke_engine

[SVOboy]

Originally Posted by klrv6

I laughed at that show when they "Busted" the acetone myth. If they had done some research, they would have started around 3oz per 10 gallons. Instead they ran a car on it and said you wouldn't save money. The Brown gas generator is the same way, the just didn't do it right.

Please let's not get off-topic into even more baseless claims.

[ttoyoda]

Is there anyone who HAS watched ALL the videos that could provide some comment? I would like to have an INFORMED discussion about this.

The down side I see in it is that even the amount of hydrogen needed for enrichment seems significant, from my calculations on the back of a postit note.

The up side is being able to run a spark ignition gasoline engine open loop with no throttle body and less heat loss to engine components.

[silverknight]

Hey guys,

I am in the middle of an HHO Gen build.
I have done some research part of it being the people in the video on page 1. It is Roy McAlister and I have read his book Solar Hydrogen Civilization. In it he gives some concepts of how hydrogen is supposed to work in an ICE.

Because H2 has the fastest burn rate of any gas it is most efficient to fire ATDC in your engine. This allows much less heat to be absorbed in the cylinder walls and more energy to push the piston down. It was also said that you can use H2 along with other fuels and the mixture, as long as it is at least 5% H2, will burn "like" H2. The analogy being if you set a room full of cardboard on fire it will burn slower then if you used a little gasoline on top of the cardboard then it would burn faster, like gasoline. In the same way you can burn cheap, junky fuel with hydrogen and it will burn up "like" hydrogen.

All that said, I have learned some theory about how this is supposed to work so I am going to apply it in a scientific way to see if HHO will improve FE.
I bought a scanguage and have been trying to get some good baseline number unmodified.

I plan on tweaking with my O2 sensor, MAP, and whatever else if I have to in order to get my engine to run lean. From my research this is the only way to see improvement with HHO from an EFI vehicle.

I will be testing some engine load info on the alternator amp draw requirements when the system is turned on but not hooked up to the car. I will test when it is running and then I will test with everything back to stock. If this thing ends up not to be effective then I go to phase II, which is a tank of compressed hydrogen to add to the fuel.

I love to experiment after I learn so this is the logical thing to do. Theory is one thing but you can't beat experimental data. At some point you just have to try it to see if it works.

[ttoyoda]

silverknight,
Thank you for your informed and reasoned post. What you are saying matches my impressions from the video on youtube. I should rent the whole dvd.

I was also remembering the 5% value for hydrogen.
Are you under the impression from reading the book that you could remove the throttle body completely, and then control the engine power/speed by first, always feeding an amount of hydrogen that would let the engine just idle, (if you added no gasoline at all) and then second, adding gasoline from the injectors to increase the engine speed/power as needed? Because that is the impression I get from the video. If my impression is correct, then it seems an engine ECU would be (almost???) un-needed, you could just have a box that pulse-width-modulated the injectors, and the control knob to set the duty cycle would be attached to the gas pedal. There would be no need to synchronize the fuel injection timing like is needed on a diesel engine.