special V8 multifuel vehicle

[P-hack]

He said he will delete this thread if we don't come up with his system for him, to his standards, within one week... We just need to think harder, but for sure it will work, his buddy is just trying to make a living.

[sarguy01]

Originally Posted by RustyLugNut

They run on used vegetable oil. I dare you to do the work I do with your 40 mpg car. You CAN'T! You can't tow a several ton trailer to an unimproved "off road job site" with your car. I can. And my Cummins and Mercedes diesels have done so for 20+ years. Your 40 mpg car will be a rust heap in that time period and will have used more fossil fuel in a year than I use in a decade. Developing a way to net a 10% fuel efficiency gain in a 10 mpg truck is far more effective in helping the environment than adding 10% to your 40 mpg car. Why don't you go and trash sheppard777's thread. He just spent years and 10's of thousands of dollars on a class 8 truck that just about doubled comparable truck mileage.

And yes, you have no idea what the OP is talking about. Once waste oils are turned into syngas, the engine emissions are akin to running on CNG. I consider that an "ECO win".

Why are you defensive about your truck?? You are taking this thread personally. No one is arguing that a truck used as a truck is a bad thing. But, OP hasn't told us what he needs a lifted big block Bronco for. My guess is that he just wants to drive it. Whether he commutes in it or tows with it, I don't care either way. It's not my money I am throwing away on lift kits, big tires that wear quickly, or fuel. Besides, most people I know that have a truck to use as a truck don't lift them. They keep them stock so they can actually load and unload the bed and that it still can tow safely. Safely towing with a lifted truck is another arguement.

You can take a 10 mpg truck, gain 100% mileage and still only get 20 mpg. If we are commuting to work (without the need for towing trailers and carrying large loads) or going to get groceries, who cares about a 100% improvement because the 40 mpg car is still getting DOUBLE the mileage to achieve the same results.

That class 8 truck serves a real purpose. What he did was awesome. Let's keep the arguement relavant.

An "ECO win" as you put it, would be for our country as a whole to buy efficient vehicles and get out of the mindset that we need full size trucks, SUV's and sports cars to get back and forth to work in.

Originally Posted by RustyLugNut

But I am limited in what I can say about the subject.

I have spent some time with Wayne Keith and his wood-gas vehicle and walked away impressed. The main pitfall I observed with his and other setups is the amount of fiddling needed to get it to run over the large load range a road vehicle operates at. To his credit, he has driven cross country with his contraption, so it is not an impossible pipe dream.

If you are wanting to use only liquid hydrocarbons, that is a good pathway that can yield the CO/H2 gas mix (syngas) that you seek to produce. However, it will still have poor "throttle response" and even with the use of Ni/Fe catalysts, the heat needed for a clean production of syngas will be difficult to keep above the critical reaction level. The need for an electronic feedback circuit would be almost a certainty as the variable fuels would result in a variable carbon to H2O ratio. I am assuming you are building a steam reforming system to fuel your engine.

And please forgive the overzealous denizens of this forum. Many are not scientists, and those who are have very narrow specialties as those of us in the sciences are wont to have. They easily get excited about pie tins and used sign boards and denigrate anyone who wants to do anything mind bending with engines. The few on this forum who do work with engine modifications have often come under duress from experts who have never set foot inside a dyno lab.

Feel free to stick around for a bit. Just ignore the "negative Nancy" crowd of experts and maybe you can get a constructive thread going.

And yes, I have built vapor carbs, GEETS and reformer engines. They all have their positives and their pitfalls. But, when you side step the hocus pocus surrounding them, they all have some good science.

We get excited over pie tins and grill blocks because they are cheap and work. If you can improve the aero of a car, it will use less energy overall.

But let's face it, how many people have made any major modification to improve their engine, that can be PROVEN while repeatable and reliable? Please show me examples. I am not saying it can't happen, but it usually takes a large budget and a lot of time.

[Frank Lee]

There is potential in some alternate fueling and engine management schemes but IMHO you need to walk before you can run. There is a lot of variation in a vehicle's operating environment and I think the learning curve for much of this sort of thing is too steep. I'd use a stationary engine as the mule, and make it perform useful work like space heating and power generation, or even pumping water or some such.

An "ECO win" as you put it, would be for our country as a whole to buy efficient vehicles and get out of the mindset that we want full size trucks, SUV's and sports cars to get back and forth to work in.

There, fixed it.

[sarguy01]

Originally Posted by dustyfirewalker

i dont really want a car id rather drive a beat up old truck than a car

This is my issue. "I'd rather drive", not, "I need to drive". It's your choice, not mine. I love trucks too. It took me three different trucks and a full size SUV to realize I don't need to drive them, I only wanted to drive them. Seeing the money saved every month on gas really put it into perspective for me.

You can run a beat up truck on whatever you want; whether it be gas, wood gas, syngas, or pixie dust. But, physics will still show us you are going to need MORE of whatever fuel you use to drive around a heavy, un-aero, big block gas guzzler.

Why not put the effort into a car instead???

[Frank Lee]

Could just as well be a beat up old diesel LUV... right? Or is there something else at play here?

[sheepdog 44]

http://ecomodder.com/forum/showthrea...you-28523.html

If you can't say something helpful in a positive way please don't bother. Your wasting your time and his in an argument irrelevant to him. If you aren't contributing to the discussion, you're detracting from it, and detracting members from the forum.

[user removed]

When Pop was ferrying planes to Paris, after the Allies had liberated the city, He landed a P47 at le Bourget. There were literally thousands of Kubelwagens parked there with coal gas generators. The were all booby trapped and the French warned him to not mess with them. He was 23 and much more interested in wine and French women.

Since the German oil industry had basically been wiped out, they had been forced to produce fuel that utilized their significant coal reserves.
Maybe at some point with crude prices we will work out how to do the same, but with the current attitudes about coal and pollution, I doubt it will go far any time soon.

I don't think the technology is a dead end. I do think that if it offered a realistic, cost effective alternative, there would have been more work done. It wasn't worth it in the immediate post war oil boom when a gallon of refined gasoline sold for 13 cents at the pump.

regards
Mech

[RustyLugNut]

Originally Posted by Frank Lee

The point is this is the "fossil fuel free" section.

. . . instead of making a hypocritical attack as the above answer did.

[RustyLugNut]

Originally Posted by sarguy01

Why are you defensive about your truck?? You are taking this thread personally. No one is arguing that a truck used as a truck is a bad thing. But, OP hasn't told us what he needs a lifted big block Bronco for. My guess is that he just wants to drive it. Whether he commutes in it or tows with it, I don't care either way. It's not my money I am throwing away on lift kits, big tires that wear quickly, or fuel. Besides, most people I know that have a truck to use as a truck don't lift them. They keep them stock so they can actually load and unload the bed and that it still can tow safely. Safely towing with a lifted truck is another arguement.

You can take a 10 mpg truck, gain 100% mileage and still only get 20 mpg. If we are commuting to work (without the need for towing trailers and carrying large loads) or going to get groceries, who cares about a 100% improvement because the 40 mpg car is still getting DOUBLE the mileage to achieve the same results.

That class 8 truck serves a real purpose. What he did was awesome. Let's keep the arguement relavant.

An "ECO win" as you put it, would be for our country as a whole to buy efficient vehicles and get out of the mindset that we need full size trucks, SUV's and sports cars to get back and forth to work in.



We get excited over pie tins and grill blocks because they are cheap and work. If you can improve the aero of a car, it will use less energy overall.

But let's face it, how many people have made any major modification to improve their engine, that can be PROVEN while repeatable and reliable? Please show me examples. I am not saying it can't happen, but it usually takes a large budget and a lot of time.

If the OP wants to do some engine research, it can benefit anyone else who would seek to do the same no matter if the vehicle is small or large. Diverting the discussion into the social re-engineering of our country and the world is just burying the topic under drivel. Trying to dissuade him because of money and time is simply doing the same.

There is a group on this forum that continues to do work on lean burning engines. As to making it repeatable and reliable for production? That is another topic altogether and you very well know that. Zip ties and cloroplast fall under the same proof of concept. Give the engine guys the same courtesy.

And I offered my trucks as an example of a large world of transport that could benefit greatly from an engine that could run on syngas and an agnostic fuel source. Heavy payloads dominate the vehicle operating profile so aero-aids, light weighting and battery electric drives can only go so far.

[RustyLugNut]

Originally Posted by Old Mechanic

I don't think the technology is a dead end. I do think that if it offered a realistic, cost effective alternative, there would have been more work done. It wasn't worth it in the immediate post war oil boom when a gallon of refined gasoline sold for 13 cents at the pump.

regards
Mech

When oil was plentiful and cheap, it made no sense to pursue such technology other than for interest. At this point in the Hubert Curve, it makes sense to look into it at the very least to bridge what fuel sources we do have until another solution presents itself.