One national tradition over here is the December 5 celebration of the birthday of Saint Nicholas ("
Sinterklaas"), predecessor and namegiver of Father Christmas.
The goodly saint travels over the house roofs on his gray horse, accompanied by so-called "Black Pete"'s, going down chimneys to drop sweets and presents in childrens shoes. And the occasional ecomodder's boot.
Look what he got me:
I could not wait to try it out, as you can guess.
Popped it in, keyed to accessory mode, and sure enough it started saving fuel right away even without the engine turning over.
Wow.
I'm curious to see what makes that wonder happen, time for a sharkectomy...
It is quite flimsy, actually. The tip comes off way too easy, dropping the pin, spring and fuse.
But what makes it tick?
A fuse, a blue LED, 2 1.0 K-ohm and 1 1.5 M-ohm resistor, a 2200 microF capacitor.
The capacitor may dampen high and mid frequency noise, but so do the capacitors in the stereo and the cars electronics.
The LED just wastes power.
I'd expect the whole device to waste about 0.05 Watt of electricity rather than save 20% fuel.
But maybe I'm missing the obvious.
Time to read the manual.
Oh my. Trouble!
They accidentally put the manual of a Neo Socket in the box instead of the Fuel Shark manual.
The Neo Socket is similar in shape but misses the Fuel Shark decal on the blue plastic screen.
Nevermind. We'll take the words from the sharks mouth anyway.
Please read carefully...
Have you noticed anything?
That invension is too easy to use!
Pity it does not work properly together with other fuel saving devices. Some people sell such rubbish! The poor shark can't cure all.
Now I have a suspicion that this device will not save me any fuel at all, even if i did not keep it stored away for some practical joke or whatever but put it in the car.
Apparently the good saint had his reservations too.
The present came with a poem in which he explained that he had personally tried it out on his horse, but had not noticed any changes in consumption at all.
At least it looks mostly harmless.
If anyone here insists I will do some ABA testing, but, let's face it... Would you expect that a couple of resistors and a tiny capacitor could do any good? Really?