I was cleaning op my car magazines till I came across a intresting article, which i forgat about.
It's about a amazing car a Opel Rekord Caravan from 1959 which compited in a fuel efficiency race by shell
.
It's extremly hypermilled but still, with it's (modified) orginial engine it got a place in the Guinness book of World Records, becouse it got
376MPG!!
In 1973
Here more info about it.
Here a site which tells all about this amazing car:
Shell Opel
Here a documentery about fuel effeciency, it's starts in dutch but most of it is spoken in englisch:
(Old) dutch artical about the car, it contains some technical data, wich i will summery's below:
Opel P1 1959 drove 376 mpg in 1973
-It's main featre (and that of my other fuel efficient cars) was it's fuel vaporizing system which alows the engine to burn all its fuel.
Thats the reason for all the isolation around the engine.
-Chassis, interior etc. was binned all that remains is a modyfied body.
Springs were removed, welded a subframe, lowered it (front 127mm) and converted the caravan body to a pickup.
-It's tranny was binned and replaced by a 2 speed sprocket driven one.
-Relocated the engine to the back, mainly for the room the vaporizing system took in.
-He used special rims with airplane tyres with 14atm for low rolling resistance (schame it's not road legal)
-Small 19mm scooter carb for a good fuelmixture with low revs.
-Old piston rings for lower friction losses.
-Shaved head 3,7mm to 9:1 (low nowwadays)
-Camshaft was advanced 30(crankshaft)degrees for better performance low down.
-Dubble walled inlet manifold.
-It sucked the air through a inclosed radiatorhousing, which warms the air to 104*Celcius
This resulted in a car with a rev range from 600 till 1500rpm with alot of torque.