Hello from northern Canada
 

Good day eh!

So I definitely do not not have a battery or eco vehicle at all living this far north. What I do have is ideas to help with trying to improve on what we need for living in cold climate far from any "big city".
When we do travel it's 8 hours of driving to the nearest big city with no places to plug in.. yet or maybe some closer to the city. Most of the places we fill up with fuel only have 87 octane.
The 2014 Ram 2500 is my ride and my wife has a Honda Ridgeline. We use the Ridgeline for daily stuff and my beast for the winter roads, hauling, hunting, fishing and winter sports.
As I continue modding my truck it keeps losing fuel mileage when on highway trips and this is why I'm here. My goal is to improve that without losing it's abilities. I have been reading and researching this for some time and have some ideas. So looking forward to conversing with you all on this topic. So anyone here that has big trucks don't be shy and chime in.

Cheers

Welcome to Ecomodder. Have you been a lurker, or did we pop up in some web search?

I haven't looked at a map, but it seems you'd want [to ecomod] a snowmobile:

This site popped up while researching and I saw a picture of a truck with a cap sorta like I'm interested in building. I think electric snow machines are already in the works but I gave up on those expensive things a long time ago. We live close the Hudson Bay so 3 months out of 6+ winter months it averages -30°c. It's those -50 temps that hurt ��.We do alot of skiing, snowshoeing, ice fishing. The trees are smaller up here, wildlife is plentiful, we still have trap lines and fur tables. I try posting some pics ��

Well that didn't work ..how do I post pics from a URL? Or is there a way to download from a phone?

There is an arbitrary number of posts before you can show pix or URLs. 5 or 10 or more. Keeps out the riff-raff.

No shame in making a post (every 30 seconds or more) to bump the count up.

Go to your Profile and create an album. Then reference it from there. Dropboxs like Imgur are unreliable.

Ok.. right on ..thank you

Not even Diesel fuel easily available? Even though I know gassers tend to have a much easier cold starting, not even truck makers who provide spark-ignition engined heavy-duty trucks in a dedicated-CNG configuration still offer a gasser model.

Sorry, yes there is diesel... I meant not all stations have 89 or 91untill you get further south. The town I'm in has all fuels but it's the small road stops that don't always. I had a GNC S10 back in the 80's but blew the engine. Maybe that was due to the cold.

You mean a CNG S10? Well, old GM engines have been reported in Brazil to be the ones which adjust better to CNG, yet some folks try too hard leaning the air-fuel ratio, increasing the likelihood to overhead and damage severely the cylinder head. BTW I remember reading something about some ambulances in India being fitted with CNG fuel systems because cold starts would be easier, as the fuel is already stored in vapour phase, while gasoline switching from liquid to vapour phase would be more difficult in a severely cold weather near the Himalayas.

Yes ... propane, it was 16 cents a liter back then and yes the head warped after about 2 years.

Propane switches from liquid to vapour way faster than gasoline, but it's not the same as CNG which is mostly methane. Going leaner on propane is also not that easy as with CNG, due to different anti-knock indexes. I don't remember exact figures but, while propane has a lower AKI than regular gasoline, CNG fares better than ethanol regarding that.

I remember them installing a vaporizer with different spark plugs and bunch of work but mostly saving huge on fuel because I was a courier driver back then. I wouldn't mind if you explained the difference between CNG and the others so it can clear the mud in my mind.

Thanks

There is no vaporizer for CNG, as it's already stored at vapor phase, yet often there is a pressure reducer because it's stored around 3000-3600 PSI, while propane is stored at a much lower pressure (which I don't remember right now but it's noticeably lower). However, while pressurized, propane is at liquid phase, so when it's either left to de-pressurize or heated (through a heat exchanger connected to the coolant circuit, after the vehicle having been started on gasoline) it switches to vapour phase.


CNG main component is methane.

Ok .. I see, right on and thank you.

Illegal LPG conversions actually used to be fairly common in my country, mostly relying on home LPG bottles and no vaporizer, yet the intake manifold would often freeze. The only car converted to use CNG (yet still capable of using gasoline) on which I saw the intake manifold freezing was a mid-'90s "baby Camry" Corolla which an uncle of mine used to own, with the 7A-FE engine. Such uncle used to claim cars older than '97 were better suited for a CNG conversion because they're not legally required to be fitted with an electronically-controlled (always more expensive) conversion kit, yet a multi-port CNG injection would've been better suited to the 4A-FE anyways...