Doin what they say cant be done.

[Fat Charlie]

There's so much inefficiency built into every part of a full size pickup that increasing combustion efficiency isn't going to reach too far.

[cRiPpLe_rOoStEr]

Originally Posted by Fat Charlie

There's so much inefficiency built into every part of a full size pickup that increasing combustion efficiency isn't going to reach too far.

Sure there are other aspects that can be addressed in order to increase the overall efficiency, such as gearing, aerodynamics and weight reduction. And in a full-size truck one might find many places and different ways to take some weight away.

[Sparkeysmall]

Ive had thoughts of upping the comression ratio. Stock is supposed to be 8.4:1 on this engine. I need to do some research and find out what the dynamic ratio is so i can raise it just enough to still use 87 octane at low altitude. I had a 1.5l 12 valve hyundai that had 10:1. But i had to run 89 in it for it to run smoothly. Im thinking if i can shave the block down to 9.5:1 or so i could get higher efficiency.

Now. On that. Ive also been wanting to convert a vehicle to run on e-85. From the research i did years ago in order to get good efficiency out of ethenol you would have to run around 14:1 compression. Obviously that would make regular pump gas unusable. And i see e-85 pumps pretty much everywhere ive gone. Or atleast within a 50 mile radius. I dont remember what the cost is at the moment but has always been quite a bit cheaper than gasoline. Ill have to do some more research about it.

I have done alot of recent googling on HHO. And ive found "I get 4000 miles per gallon", and "i blew up"..... Now. Anybody who know anything about efficiency knows that the energy used to crack up the water with electricity from the alternator and ultimately gasolene. Would ultimately use more energy then feeding from an external source. Ive had thoughts of running a slim solar panel on the roof to supply the juice to split up the water. But. It would probably be more efficient to use that electricity to power an electric motor to drive the wheels.

I always wondered. Why dont they put a few hundred watts of solar on the roof of hybrids to eek out a few more miles. I know its not really that much power coming in vs going to the road. But sitting in a parking lot all day with no charging stations you could potentially soak up a few miles. Or even get you home if you run out if gas in the desert....

I still really like the idea of strapping an electric drive into the truck. But the expense to do it would take around 10 years to pay off. Atleast while using new controllers that could push that much power. This simplest way i could figure to do it would to have manual switches to control when the motor and generator were running. But would have 0 control over how much power is applied or pulled. If i could make it where the motor kicked on after a set amount of throttle, it would be like a sudden push. And turn on the generator with the brake light. However that is a very simple system. But would get the job Done.

Anyway. Im going to do more research on e-85. The whole purpose of this project is mainly to save money. Mostly on fuel. The manual transmission swap is more of a preference thing, but is a major contributor. And it would be fun to say my gas one ton is a hybrid, and gets 30. But at what cost.

[Frank Lee]

I always wondered. Why dont they put a few hundred watts of solar on the roof of hybrids to eek out a few more miles.

Because at a rather high cost, if they were extremely lucky, they might eek out a few more miLes.

[oil pan 4]

Hybrids run very high voltage battery packs.
Solar panels typically stay well under 100 volts.

[Sparkeysmall]

Originally Posted by oil pan 4

Hybrids run very high voltage battery packs.
Solar panels typically stay well under 100 volts.

A watt is still a watt. And you could run all the cells in series to whatever voltage you wanted with the appropriate wire guage within the pv's.

[oil pan 4]

A watt is not a watt when talking solar power.

[Sparkeysmall]

Originally Posted by oil pan 4

A watt is not a watt when talking solar power.

Enlighten me.

[oil pan 4]

Say you have a 100 watt solar panel. It would be safe to assume it would make 100 watts right? Wrong.
Unless the manufacturer "under rated" the panels to reflect real world out put you never get name plate wattage. Only a few manufacturers do this.
So your 100w panel now produces 70 to 90 watts. That's if it's actually pointed at the sun.
Then you lay it flat on top of a vehicle. Now you just cut the output in half.
So now the 100 watt panel is producing 50 watts and you have not gotten to the charge controller.
To take panel voltage of let's say 24 volts because if you just series up panels for hybrid battery voltage wich can be over 300 volts one splat of bird poop, one smeared bug, one cell facing away fron the sun on a series of 700 cells would cut output by over half. That's just shading one cell. So realistically you go for 24 to 36 volt panels.
The charger to step the 36 volts up to 270 to 330 volts might be 80% efficient if you are luckily.
So you started with 100 watts of solar panel and you end up with 40 watts and that's being generous and not even counting battery charge and discharge losses or the fact that laying the panels flat cuts your typical 4 to 5 hours of good charge time down to 3 if you even consider a flat panel producing 50% of name plate rating good production.

[Fat Charlie]

Originally Posted by Sparkeysmall

Enlighten me.

Lugging your power generation equipment around is inefficient. Ignoring the aero penalties of solar panels and the silly inefficiencies of vehicle mounted panels, the weight would be better spent on battery capacity. Think of it as a couple 5 gallon gas cans in the back instead of a mini biodiesel refinery filling the bed of your truck.

Upping the compression ratio, or doing anything else to your engine is going about things backwards. Your truck is one of the sloppiest, most inefficient messes on the road. It's heavy and unaerodynamic with gobs of rolling and powertrain resistance being pushed around by a big V8 through an automatic transmission. Driving it is like moving a bean bag chair around by kicking it. You seem to think that changing the way you kick it will change the way it moves, but it's still a bean bag chair even if you get Adam Vinatieri to kick it. Work on what it does once you've fed power to it before you worry about the exact way you feed power to it.

It doesn't take much of a gain to make a huge difference in your rig's economy, and that's great, that's our focus here. Trying to do it backwards leaves that gain sitting on the table, wondering why you don't want it.