Doin what they say cant be done.

[oil pan 4]

You can stick small solar panels to the roof of a vehicle. For little to no aero penalty or perhaps build a bed cover out of them

[freebeard]

Originally Posted by oil pan 4

A watt is not a watt when talking solar power.

Sure it is. That you expect getting the hypothetical maximum is down to marketing, not physics. Buck/boost circuits and all.


SEV Solar Roof Makes Prius Even More Prius-y

Sparse article dates to 2008. Not helpful if you park in a parking structure, carport or garage.

[Sparkeysmall]

Originally Posted by Fat Charlie

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.

I would slap a manual transmission behind it before i ever tear down the engine.

How does increasing the compression reduce economy? By that logic a prius would be running 4:1. But it uses the atkinson cycle. And from what i found in one min of googleing in the NZ engine, it uses a 13:1 static but with the cams gets dropped to an effective 8:1. So why would they squeeze the 1.5l engine physical size with a smaller effective size because of the atkinson cycle to such a high ratio? Because the greater expansion from spark to exhaust stroke allows better use of the heat generated.

Now. Compairing any atkinson engine to an otto is like apples and oranges.

So what about a typical non-hybrid, otto cycled car. From the multiple modern econoboxes i googled they all where around 10.5:1. Pretty much the max you could use while pumping regular gas. Albiet with a very tiny camshaft.

Anyway. Squeezing a large mixture into a tiny mixture increases heat generated by compression alone. And a hotter mix burns faster, producing more power earlier on the down stroke, as well as a more complete burn (warm and hot air intakes for instance. (Ya ya "smaller" engine, less dense, less parastic losses)). So with higher heat generated from the same amount of air and fuel, more efficiency. Why compress the fuel at all if just igniting it at ambient pressure makes more power than compressing it. Explode a small box vs a gymnaisium with the same amount of fuel and air.

And like i said. A watt is still a watt. What about high noon in the middle of summer? Panels sloped on the back of the car driving away from the evening sun? Sure if you could fit 400 dead on straight watts on the roof you probably wouldnt get more than 200 realistically. And anyway they make flat flexible panels now. And they dont weigh very much. Less than all those airbags they keep shoving into every knook and cranny. The point is its still some electricity coming in by a "renewable" resource. And you all said it yourself. "Every little bit counts.". If a few cells on the roof of a car saved x number of gallons of fuel over its lifetime. Some idiot with more money than me and a "save the planet" ego would still buy it. It doesnt even have to be a standard feature. Just some silly add on. Somebody would buy it.

Personally i could care less about the environment. Call me a pessimist but the world as we know it is one asteroid or volcano eruption away from going back to a ball of nothing. If i wasnt so cheap yet living this lifestyle i would either be kicking it in alaska doing nothing but finding heat and food. Or driving a $200 econobox (aka the old hyundai i had when i was delivering pizzas) to some desk job for some econo whatever company. I decided i wanted to be able to travel the country and work wherever. I needed a pickup that could handle everything i needed. Diesel was out of the question because of its high inital cost and massive oil/maintenance bills. Ya sure someday ill have one. But i got this v10 for a good price. It handles everything i need it to and then some. And i knew good and well when i bought it that it would get nothing for miles per gallon. And also had the intentions of modifying it to suit my needs. I would love to have a pickup that smokes hondas at the lights. But at the expense of fuel and towing abilities.

Simply put everybody is different. Im young but momma diddnt raise no fool. In this economy its hard to get a decent living without a degree. And i totally dont have the cash for higher education. Welding is my skill. All i need is a weld test and i got a good paying job. And by widening my area of work over the lower 48 states ill have work for as long as i live. i cannot use a prius for my profession. And i am way too cheap for the $60,000 price tag on new diesel pickups. Let alone the average $12000 everybody wants for the typical lifted with 22's and a 10" pipe out the back "rolling coal"... Simply put its hard to find an all original diesel pickup (in general) for less than $10,000. And if it is less than that. Its got 400,000 miles on it and or beat to hell.

Im sorry for these long posts. And i can get on a bit of a rant. But simply put i do my research. I have mechanical logic. Ive done my automotive homework. Ive owned a plethora of different vehicles. And this truck takes the cake on being a turd. But its the best turd ive ever had. Its clean, lowish miles and all original/bone stock. I hate buying modified vehicles. And the only one ive modified past a stereo is my beloved '95 jeep grand cherokee. Im never getting rid of it. I plan to keep this truck for a good long while. And the more i modify it the more i will love it. Theres something to be said for your own project vehicles. I took on the challenge of a less than 10mpg pig to making it efficient to modern standards.

Anyway. Im lowering it down today. 4" in the back and 1 or 2" up front. We will see how it sits when i get the rear dropped down.

[oil pan 4]

I don't know but I have gone from about a Briggs and Stratton 8.9:1 to 11:1 on my 8L build. Betting on the thin air here and maybe a little water injection to boost power and fuel economy. I know a difficult combo to achieve on an otto.

I don't care what anyone say. Welding is an education. The vast majority of people who have 4 year or higher degrees can't weld anything and wouldn't know how to safely start a cutting torch.
I'm kind of in between. I built my own DC SMAW and GTAW machines from nearly useless AC only buzz boxes and heavily modified my FCAW/GMAW machines to do what I want, adding unique featurs and gas mixtures used pretty much only by me as far as I can tell. But I'm not a full time welder.

[Sparkeysmall]

I got the rear end lowered. Was way too easy. And the old u-bolts were streched pretty bad so it was a good thing i replaced them. Anyway once the ubolts were undone everything just fell apart, jack up the axle again and line up the pin, bolt it down.

I didnt have time to work on the front this weekend. So it sits about an inch taller in the front now. Hopefully ill have time to do that sometime this week.

Anyway. Since i got the rear dropped. My economy has massively improved. All highway but 15 mpg. My instant gauge sits around 18-25+ while cruising. And the injectors finally shutoff going downhill. And since i took out the overload springs it rides much gushyer. I cant wait to get the front end to sit right.

And i have no idea why it keeps putting the pics in upside down. If i flip them it still uploads wrong. (Fixed it - Daox)

[ThermionicScott]

Weird. When I click on the picture to enlarge it, it's right-side-up.

If you're using an iPhone to take the pictures, make sure the little camera icon is right-side-up when you're taking the pic. It uses lighting and the accelerometers to guess which way is up and sometimes gets it wrong at first.

[Sparkeysmall]

Originally Posted by ThermionicScott

Weird. When I click on the picture to enlarge it, it's right-side-up.

If you're using an iPhone to take the pictures, make sure the little camera icon is right-side-up when you're taking the pic. It uses lighting and the accelerometers to guess which way is up and sometimes gets it wrong at first.

I do use my iphone to take most pictures. Everything else i use to look at the pictures it takes is correct. But when i load a picture onto here it gets flipped. Ive even flipped a picture before uploading it and it still comes in upside down. Like i uploaded like usuall.

[freebeard]

It's happened to me. I think it's the vBulletin software the site runs on. It's reference at the bottom of every page.

[ECO-AKJ]

Clicking on the pic to enlarge it will put it right side up, but until then, I like standing on my head until the wife says "Quit Monkeying around"!!!

[Fat Charlie]

I wasn't saying that increasing compression would reduce economy, I said that doing anything to your engine (other than making sure it's running properly) before everything downstream of the engine is done is going about things backwards. It looks like we agree on that if you're looking at a transmission swap before engine work.

Every little bit counts, yes, but sometimes you spend more energy chasing that little bit than you get back. Good instrumentation, airing up the tires, adding some appropriately placed coroplast and developing an appropriate driving style are going to get you 90-95% of the rig's available economy. Everything past that is going to be for the personal satisfaction of running up the score, rather than actual fuel savings. Big work trucks are only economy disasters if you aren't using them for work- you can do many things to get them a bit higher mpg, but it's not worth going overboard for.

Your alternator can probably already produce more electricity than your truck uses. Adding weight and aero drag for a solar system won't eliminate the weight of the alternator, but it might slightly reduce the amount of drag the alternator produces. If you think it's enough of an offset, or if it's simply something you want to do, go for it. If the truck is going to spend a lot of time stationary and you want electricity without running the engine, carrying panels and setting them up in place is probably a better move.