376 MPG Blast From the Past
 

Now I want to share some old school engineering with you the year is 1973 Free Bird is the top song on the radio the music was good. A group of engineers from Shell Oil competing each year to out do the previous years competition building a gas saving vehicle. Well, in 1973 they made a vehicle that got 376 MPG I thought I would share this trip down memory lane with you.

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A picture is worth a thousand words, this is not a Kevlar composite body just an old 1950s car. The systems were simple It really made sense. They heated the fuel and engine brilliant! Then they put a chain in for the drive train. How easy would that be if you needed a repair. lol. really easy.

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Look at all that insulation, here's a different view. I remember Ross Perot saying you don't have to invent the light bulb just make it better. I hope these photo's will turn on some light bulbs and inspire you. They sure have inspired me.

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And last but not least the brilliant designed rear end. The drive train is a few sprockets and chain. Our best racing bikes bullet proof gears could be used, just built bigger for the larger chain. We already have the technology.

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I know a lot of people think this technology doesn't exist or it's impossible to double the MPG. I hope by sharing information I can offer some hope and knowledge. We can improve on what we already have. :thumbup:

Wow. Stank up treehugger with your wackiness and now here?

I'll give you points for persistance.

Looking at those tires he can't have any sort of traction.
No way in hell those would be road legal.

:confused:

Get ready for a dose of the infamous Louis LaPointe. :rolleyes:

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Yeah! The'll let anyone on here. An you made it to Massa level already! Dang seems kind of cerebral tho. lol. But what the heck without cheap gas I gotta get more out of the stuff at the pump. Hope your doin good.

Cerebral is considered a good thing here. You and your psuedo-science will have a tough time. I do have a question for you though: What do you get out of all your acetone blather?

Have you tried acetone?

That's REALLY cool. Any more info on that car?

Looks like they used aircraft tires for rolling resistance.
Is that a transverse mount mid-engine?
Is there any OPEN area on the radiator, or is that just a high FE pulse until it overtemps, then let it sit and cool forever? Being on the right side of car aft of cabin without any scoops or louvering can't be good for airflow.
Is the clear/yellow coily thing above the carb the 'fuel tank'?

I wasn't there when they built it. But it is brilliantly simple they heated the engine and vaporized the fuel. The drive train is awesome you could lift it with one hand. There is no reason we shouldn't have a 300 to 500 MPG car right now. They have had it wrong all these years. It will be easy to build but you have to realize what's wrong with what we have. Look at it differently.;)

I believe this is the same car. The most ironic part of it all is that it was owned by Shell.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qt7VDBWAJmc

Okay okay, let's not do simple, boring, bickering sorts of things. I am sure most of us things this is BS, myself included.

And it is going to stay that way until someone proves otherwise. No one has said anything to that effect, nor will they likely, because the idea is so far out of the realm of physical possibility it will be hard to prove.

Personal, I don't see why a chain drive is important. Chains are used in many vehicles, and were used on many cars. Part of the reason they're not used on cars anymore is because they suck for that application.

One thing you have to realize about the mpg figures from those Shell Fuel Economy Challenges is that the competitors are doing EXTREME pulse & glide with low top speeds, not real-world driving.

At that level, why have a car at all? Ignoring the highly questionable validity of the claims, you give up safety, reliability, practicality, and performance. There's a popular vehicle out there that's cheap even in expensive form, has performance on par with this thing or better, is easier to maintain, usually has the chain drive you're so enamored with, and uses no gas at all—it's called a bicycle. The only thing I can see that's better is weather protection, though I wouldn't want to drive on those tires in the rain.

Other than the Opel being built from bits of a real road car, it is completely unsuitable for street use. The 376 mpg was not obtained on the street either- we are talking closed course, no stops, extreme pulse and glide, low average speeds. I haven't found specific info on the builders but I'm fairly certain they AREN'T Shell engineers as we are told. Shell SPONSORED econo ralleys, and they still do, but Shell doesn't enter their own vehicles, and I'm not sure when the last time is that any of their own engineers did.

The Opel is a purpose built competition car. Some of those mods could be brought to the street but many of them can't and the end result wouldn't be any better than what you guys are doing with current offerings anyway.

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Additionally, it appears to have a side draft carb fully enclosed in an airbox and it BREATHES through the crankcase ie: ALL the intake air comes through the crankcase, as well as being preheated by the "radiator".

Well if I wanted to "cheat" in an econo contest I'd make the carb breathe crankcase fumes, and fill the crankcase with 2-stroke mix. How much do you wanna bet that thing would run with *NO* fuel in the gas tank at all?!? LOL! Wouldn't surprise me to find two or three "hollow" cylinders in there either.

I'm a little dismayed at the bickering going on here. Having said that, i know little about the car in question so maybe the negative comments about it are deserved.
On the face of it, it certainly looks the part. And i'm guessing that the engine does so little work to push the car that it can be lagged up like a hot water cylinder. I sometimes feel like doing that to my 1.4D4D in cold weather!
JeremyInIndy, that coil is a heat exchanger and it would appear to be the fuel tank although i'm sure it may be fed from elsewhere.
So, someone point me in the right direction so i can educate myself about this car and see where the pseudo science is with my own eyes.

ollie

Ollie- all you need to do is google "Louis LaPointe", then spend as much time as you can stand without pulling your hair out reading his.... er... material.

I've got precious little hair left so i'd better be quick!

ollie

too many people say they can do what everyone else cant. If this 376 mpg performance isn't repeatable by an independent party then it might as well have never happened.

Guy with the actual car can't even find the clutch pedal :) Would be interesting if he ever got it lit and what he could do with it. But it is dumb to assume outlandish claims are true before proven true. Like so much progressive x-prize hype.

I thought I saw that they had to keep it above 30mph for the competition, but a 35 year old report sprinkled with lots of bs over the years, who the hell knows.

Any one want to guess, based on the pictures, on the cda/energy requirements for 30mph for that car? And compare it to 376mpg?

lol but they can't do it now?

It's still interesting to deconstruct. It just needs to be taken in context. It does not seem to be a hoax, just an oddball experiment in the right direction with unsubstantiated claims. Just like a lot of us here.:eek: (No disrespect intended)

I bet it has no transmission and no differential. That's a whole lot of friction gone. Totally not doable on a conventional gas production car. It was tested and made just as far from real world vehicles as most of the MPG contests out there. (X-prize excluded)

Having said that, 376 mpg does seem very high. Perhaps the course it used ran on ley lines.;)

...but, what it DOES tell us is that pre-heating the fuel can coax more out of a gallon of gasoline.

...think about the "jet" analogy--jet engines become MORE efficient the hotter the intake air becomes.

...so, the "closer" the fuel is to vaporizing, the quicker it can do so, leading to better/more complete combustion.

...first, learn from the messenger...then, go ahead and shoot him!

I suspect the standard rear axle was replaced with the two near-centerline
wheels and chain drive as a weight saving measure.

It may not be relevant to this thread vis-a-vis extreme FE, but moving the rear
wheels so close together may have qualified the the vehicle as a three wheeler
-- that is to say a motorcycle -- under the regs/laws at the time.

How this might have helped in the FE effort is open to speculation.

...and, a motocycle chain is FAR lighter than a heavy, rotating drive shaft!

...anyone remember the early Honda 300/600 that had chain-drive? It was "outlawed" in USA and hasn't been seen since except in Honda museums.

FYI, the "more complete combustion" and "fuel vaporization" issues are addressed cogently here:

Fuel saving - a professional engineer's view

The gains to be had from either are very small on a modern fuel injected engine in good tune. Improvements aren't impossible, but not on the scale of magic bullets.

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? :confused:

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. *Edit* Just found this wiki FWIW: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:J....ox/Opel_Rekord

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. :rolleyes:

Funny, I was rooting around for cda stuff and found this analysis/rejection of the very vehicle in question, Makes me think of Ernie Rogers a bit :)
Hemmings Auto Blogs » Blog Archive » Big Oil conspiracy! 376 mpg Opel uncovered!

Good God, these guys that bought these cars really thought they were speed or ice racers??? :rolleyes: More money than brains.

There's only about a thousand posts to go through- ugh. If you are referring to Raptoer's post of 8/19 at 5 am, well I think he wasn't quite awake yet.

That's a good analysis. Maybe someone could figure out the formulas we need to make a spreadsheet/web tool to compute the possibility of certain vehicles getting certain fuel economy. :p

too bad he will not chop that roof off and put a roof with a better angel and boat tail the rest... Although I'm not really sure if I believe it gets 300mpg

The Lab glass holding the fuel is neat. I have one just like it. You can do a lot with it distill alcohol or solvents by running cold fluid around the coils. You also could expand or vaporize fuel by running hot fluid say heated radiator fluid around the coils. It's glass and it's beautiful but fragile, nice for seeing and understanding the process. For practical applications you would want it made out of metal or stainless.:thumbup:

That's a great idea! You should do that! It's easy!

Why haven't you modded your Neon that way? Have you owned it since new- 14 long years of using so much gas???

Lessee... pull the EFI off and stick a carb on it... insulate the engine compartment... throw the transaxle away and put a chain in there... put heat exchangers on everything... a few other lil things and yer set!

I wonder what might be on the inside of the oil pan - perhaps a 1 gallon or so metal gas tank, set to evaporate in the heated up engine oil, the gas would evacuate through that funny 'air intake' and would probably break the test. Dumping gas in the oil would have the same effect of course. Excuse my skepticism.

Where is the intake air going in to the engine coming from, by the way, it is unclear from the picture.

Do some research on Smokie Yunicks Hot vapor engine. I have been wanting to build one for sometime now. I now have the fuel injection technology so it maybe a lot easier to control the fuel. He basicly heated the fuel up with the coolant then with the exhaust the sent it through a turbo charger that he called a mixer then into the engine. I think the key here is to reclaim the heat. I have looked at heat regenerators on turbine engines and they do the same thing to increase eff.
Good luck getting 300+mpg on the cheap gas they sell today.
Hugh

lol, Smokey Yunick, the guy who builds a complete 7/8 size chevelle to try and fool the judges and slip in a smaller than stock car :)

Smokey Yunick - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

one in the same
 

He was getting 100+ mpg on a Feiro. I can not remember the exact figures but he was getting some amazing results with it. I did some study on it in 96 at UNO library. Unv. of New Orleans. They had a lot of magizines with articles on the subject. I have not found anything with any depth to it. I would like to try something like this with a rotory valve engine. I think that the automakers are missing the boat on rotor valve engines check out the british aircraft that had the Knight engine mods they got more power and better fuel consuption than the same size American aircraft engines.
Hugh

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.

It's funny, I've seen pics of this thing for decades and yet yesterday was the first time I really looked at the engine pic to see what was going on. Then it became clear. That insulated funnel coming off the radiator is the combustion air intake. It goes straight to the crankcase. The carb inlet is fed by that large rubber hose going to the valve cover. To heat the air going through the sump in order to stir up the volatiles from the oil and combust them is partly (mostly?) why they went to such lengths to insulate it.

Another funny thing... there has to be a million stories about this thing online, and I've read many, many of them, but NOT ONCE has anyone commented on it's crankcase fume burning system... and the effect that would have on fe. :rolleyes: :mad: Hell, I laid it out here and it didn't generate much response either!

Of all the techno stuff I laid out earlier, "outsidethebox" only talks about that stupid lab heat exchanger. :rolleyes:

So that's what the funnel thing on the Rad does! I hadn't figured that one out yet.

Want to bet that the only cooling the radiator is good for then is what air the intake pulls through it?

Stripping volitles out of the oil or a 2-stroke mix in the crank could work, and seems to be in the spirit and theme of FE competitions. Cheating! :thumbup: Otherwise it's the biggest PCV ever installed on a car.

Plus, it's an engineers plaything for 1 competition. You run it total loss. If we blow the engine, so what? It's a one-shot deal using old stuff they picked up dirt cheap. You can bet they pulled atleast the backup compression rings off, and probably the oil scrapers. The more I think about it, the sump is probably almost dry, you don't want to rob anything from the crankshaft splashing through oil. I wouldn't be surprised if just to start it took heatguns, a guy adding propane, a guy just to work the carb settings...

So it started off as a wagon, then they went all Ranchero style on it, chopped on it angrily, and put lightening holes everywhere, the interior was gutted and lightened... It's not even CLOSE to the 2100 - 2500 lb curb weight mentioned earlier.

BUT, why didn't they do an aerodynamic seal on the grille in the front? Babymoons or full spheres in the headlights instead of the blanking plates? Or run lighter, narrower motorcycle rims&tires instead of aircraft tires?

lol, 93 octane oil :) Smokey would have been proud.

Frank -

I am curious. Forget about the 376 MPG claim. Assuming no cheating for the moment, what do you think the configuration could have realistically gotten back in the day?

CarloSW2