376 MPG Blast From the Past

[Jamdat]

Originally Posted by aerohead

I thought,I hope I have a photo of the cover of book,"200 mpg Carburetors,"published by Lindsey Publications.They walk you through the Pogue,Fish,etc.,carbs which run vapor into the engine.There are 12 designs illustrated in the book.Yes,a Mercury V-8 station wagon can get remarkable mpg! Here's the rub-------------- You must push the car up to 35-mph,start the engine,engage the transmission,and drive 35-mph.You can't go slower,you can't go faster.There is no "transient" driving,you can only drive at a constant 35-mph.------------- And that's the price of these fabulous "vapor" carbs.------------- The book was about $13 US 20-yrs ago.I don't know if they are still in print.A great waste of $13.

Lindsey books still has a huge amount of their catalogue in print, so you might be able to still get it. Not that you'd want to by the sounds of it...

[Ruckus]

I am a bit confused why the knee-jerk reactions to ~350mpg.

Using the Ecomodder cd/drag/mpg calculator:

Change the vehicle weight to 1000 lbs. Not unlikely when you look at the chopped and stripped opel. They even took all the glass out.

Set the Crr to .005 or .006 (those look like solid rubber forklift tires on the rear and surely they pumped the fronts up to 120 psi...

Drag of .4 or .45, doesn't really matter at low speeds.

Drivetrain efficiency goes up to .99 single gear chain drive has virtually no losses. Putting the rear tires together eliminates the need for a differential.

VOILA! you can go up to 15mph and still get 380 mpg!

If it was aerodynamic like the Ford Probe IV then you could even go up to 25 mph.

Why do folks say this is "impossible"? Practical, no. but impossible? hardly.

[Frank Lee]

I am a bit confused why the knee-jerk reactions to ~350mpg.

The whole scavenging crankcase vapors thing makes perfect sense.

[Ruckus]

Yes, looking at the design, they were clearly heating the crankcase and pulling the volitiles into the carb intake.

Very Clever.

The new owner probably just dumped the old oil. An analysis might have revealed the secret ingredient.

What was it? How long was the race? Did the car only have to run a couple of miles? Would something like kerosene or Naphtha provide enough short-term lubrication for the engine not to seize yet also have enough volitiles to burn? Did they run regular oil but add something like alcohol to the crankase?

I just wanted to show that it is theoretically possible to get crazy gas mileage without a "gimmick" as long as you go real slow and reduce friction to a minimum.

I heard somewhere that Smokey Yunick helped prep the car (could be a rumor) but he would definately have the creativity to come up with a gag like that. When nascar limited fuel tank size he installed about 40' of 2" fuel hose -giving him at least another 5 gallons. - They hadn't thought to limit fuel line size.

[hu_man]

ruckus Smokey was smart in many ways. I would like to find everything he did on the hot vapor motors that he built and if they got the fuel mileage that he claimed. I have on ocation thought of building one just to find out what his results were.

[naturalextraction]

Here are a couple pix of what it looked like when I saw it. I've not uploaded pictures from the computer on this forum and didn't do so hot, so it's an attachment.
Myself and a friend in California were going to buy this. I used to restore cars myself and my interest is the same as the guy in the video. To some degree anyway.

I read what I could on the car and they were asking a mere 6K, which seemed to much to me for what it was. The information backing or verifying the results seemed reliable but from an historic car investment point of view, not worth the overall investment and no real re-sell market. Simply kind of a cool piece of history.
Since then, many cars in that competition have gone into the 1k miles per gallon. My own companies research into extracting and utilizing internal chemical energy in the use of an ICE has shown that there is plenty there with many different means of doing so. labs here, particularly Sandia, have proven that many times over as well.
At the time, 300+ in those competitions with what they had then, was a mile stone. Now not so much now.

[naturalextraction]

After reading through this a bit, in reference to Smokey's patents, we researched them a bunch and there is more to it than was ever released, even in the patents. Trish (his daughter) can attest to that and has (sort of). Past issue (Sept. I believe) of Hot Rod Magazine talks about that.

Most all auto manufactures are utilizing the techniques now well known to produce much higher mileage cars utilizing some thermal dynamic and physics basics. Soon they will have optimized the many control aspects to these Ultra Lean Burn systems in the ICE. Nothing new, just not made available to the buying public.

btw, Lee Iaccoca squashed the "Adiabatic" system back when proposed by Smokey and Carroll Shelby to Chrysler. Kinda ruined the relationship between Carrol and Smokey. Got that info and much more from Carrol himself back in 98. I owned a motoring publication and interviewed many people. (just an fyi)

This is what we're working on now Energy Extraction

[thecarfarmer]

Originally Posted by Frank Lee

It doesn't tell us that. Besides, carb'd engines are a different animal than injected.

That squiggly glass thing above the carb is their "gas tank". It is a laboratory heat exchanger. No doubt coolant goes through it.

Orange is right- no trans and the typical gear losses, just a clutch with outboard support bearings and a chain. May have reduced driveline losses 5 or 10%. However, if there was no free-wheel for the back sprocket that would suck a little bit for gliding.

It does have small frontal area. However the Cd is probably in pickup truck territory, unless the bottom is very smooth. My WAG for that is .40- .45. At the speeds they competed with it probably wasn't a deal killer.

There are many pics of this car online. The pics in this thread are post-"restoration". Originally the engine was covered in insulation too. Well, no doubt it was hardly ever running in competition. It needed all the heat it could get to stir up the volatiles in the crankcase so it could burn 'em. For sure it was burning more "energy input" than what came from the "gas tank".



It's totally not legal for the street anyway so fed/state regs/laws have nothing to do with it. Perhaps the Ralley rulebook said it had to have 4 wheels? Otherwise I'm sure they'd have used a single out back.


McMullen, owner, says the car was owned by Shell and modded by Shell engineers... then says this achievement was done "in someone's spare time in their garage". Which is it?

He asks why it's impossible to achieve something like that today. Perhaps he should look at today's Shell economy competitions?

He also says the Model T got 20 and we are hard pressed to do much better than that today. I would like to know what a "T" would get if run through the EPA test cycle. Or to make the comparison fair, what modern cars get at a steady 40 mph.

He says it weighs 2500 lbs- well, he did have an awful lot of trouble with numbers ('73 was 15? 25? 35? years ago?). That does not seem possible to me. That car is smaller (especially narrower and lighter, stock) than my Tempo and it's gutted besides. My Tempo weighs 2500. My WAG for the Opel's weight would be more like 1500, maybe even close to 1000 lbs. (deleted link)



So, yeah, "2500 lbs" my ***.

At least he admits the performance is NOT suitable for the street.

I'd like to see what fe "Tiny" McMullen would get in there!

P.S. No, wait, here's what McMullen says here:



More trouble with numbers! 1973 was NOT 20 years from 1959. And again with the homies in their garage.

I don't know the owner, but having visited that store, and seen what he's got in stock... talked to the sales guys... and now hearing him yak on this vid, I tend to believe that there's a touch of hot air coming from places other than the engine compartment of his car.

Originally Posted by Frank Lee

I doubt there's a hidden gas tank in the sump. It is evident to me they burned volatiles from the crankcase "oil", which could be regular motor oil spiked with gas or two-stroke mix.
(big snip)

Not so evident to me. How hot does oil run in a car engine? In the 200's of degrees. How hot is the discharge air from that radiator gonna' run? If the coolant temp is 200-225°, the air isn't going to come out hotter than that.

I'm thinking that what we're seeing is more like a 'mega PCV system'. Designed to get EVERY scrap of HC that blows past the rings.

BTW, how well is this engine going to maintain fuel mixture control as you start out with a crankcase full of gasoline vapors that depletes through the run? You might want to find a way of adding other fuel (pull the choke... )

Originally Posted by hu_man

I still can not figure it my Morris is almost 50 years old had 5 wires going to the engine, good heavy sheet metal and still got 44mpg at 55mph. And today with multi valves, aluminum, plastic, computers, engineers....on and on and we are still hovering around 30mpg on a good day.
Hugh

Funny, some of that old tech wasn't so bad. Little Stude Champs and Plymouths with overdrive 3 speeds would crack 25 MPG on the highway (but not much more, and certainly not in town). These are '50's coupes that weighed about 3000#, running bias ply tires, carbs, point ignition, and 7.5-8.0:1 CR flathead sixes.

Of course, they didn't have to deal w/ 5 mph bumpers, crash bars in the doors, blah blah blah. Take one of those old cars and retrofit it w/ all the crap that it'd have today, and you'd knock some of the performance and mileage out of it for sure.

OTOH, adapting a later 5 speed, header, 9+:1 CR, and fuel injection would be interesting... still not as inherently efficient as a more modern engine, but pretty cool to see what could be teased out of one of those old lumps.

-Bill

[hu_man]

Thanks Bill I have around 10:1 Compression overdrive I do not think was available on this transmission. I would like to use a newer design engine but to find one that will fit without major mods is not likely the stock motor was 948cc small by todays standards. Here are some pics of the fuel system being made up.
Hugh

[hu_man]

here is the other pic