Vapor carburator

[SOUL-DRIFTER]

Years ago Popular Science magazine had ads in the back by a company called H A industries.
They carried how to manuals to all kinds of energy saving devices and a couple were two vapor carburators. One used the vehicles hot water to preheat the gas. The other used hot exhaust. A manual fuel injector was to be used until the vehicle reached normal running temperature.
I had one built but the v8 Chevy truck took a **** before I could try it out.
They were intended for carburated vehicles.
It was claimed that any vehicle could double fuel mileage with them.
Has anyone else here heard of them or are otherwise familiar with them?

I am thinking on trying it out on my 1989 Ford Festiva.

[Daox]

I'm not real well versed in carburated vehicles at all, but I believe its not horribly uncommon to see carbs heated by exhaust or coolant to aid in fuel vaporization. You just have to make sure that you don't get the fuel too hot in the fuel line so it vaporizes in the line causing vapor lock. If I recall correctly, the smaller hydrocarbon chains can vaporize at temperatures lower than the coolant temperatures.

[user removed]

If it was advertised in Popular Science, and it actually worked, then there would be at least 100,000 of them built over the years. Haven't seen one working in the last 4 decades.

regards
Mech

[mja1]

Vapor carb was a spinoff of Smokey Yunick's 'hot vapor' engine. he used a 4cyl pontiac 'iron duke' to roll out of spark and run the engine basically off preignition. He nearly doubled the gas mileage and hp of a the little fiero he worked on, while driving completely normally. Dude was a genius.

Problem with the 'vapor carb' is most carbed intake manifolds and runners (or wet manifolds in general) are not ported, to help with atomization of gas/air charge. By the time the charge enters the combustion chamber, temps will atomize the charge regardless. Unless combined with a system that can take advantage of the lower autoignition temperature of the vapor charge (like yunick's fiero), it really won't make that much difference.

[Frank Lee]

My uncle built one and got 239 mpg with his '56 Cadillac but the black helicopters came and took it away.

[SOUL-DRIFTER]

Originally Posted by Old Mechanic

If it was advertised in Popular Science, and it actually worked, then there would be at least 100,000 of them built over the years. Haven't seen one working in the last 4 decades.

regards
Mech

Keep in mind that ambition isn't that easy to come by either.
No sarcasm intended, but most people are interested in 1 hour or less modifying. Anything that requires lots of time and fabrication is usually ignored.

The idea behind them is to render the gas into a true gas state rather than the equivalent of what you get from a simple spray.
I think we can agree that gas fumes is far more explosive than the liquid.

[gone-ot]

Carburetors are no longer used, due to emissions requirements.

Vapors are almost impossible to control as well as liquid can be controlled...ie: injectors.

[user removed]

My post was in no way any argument. I have PS copies dating back to WW2, and read Smokey Yunick's column religiously.

The 100 MPG carburetor myth where the old lady took her car back to the GM dealer because it had not needed gas in 3 months.

On the other end of the spectrum was Smokey's work with fuel and carburetion.

Now here is a link to something that has many of the characteristics of the old vapor carburetor, but may actually be the future of fuel delivery, and in the process possibly the elimination of all after treatment of combustion byproducts, by improving atomization to the point where the by products no longer exist.

Transonic Combustion | Ultra-high Efficiency Fuel Injection Systems

Even then you wont see fuel mileage double, unless your base for measurement is a worn out atrociously tuned engine a few miles from the scrap heap.

No fuel delivery system alone is going to fix all of the other problems with IC engines, but a systematic approach that addresses all of the efficiency issues could get an IC engine to 60% thermal efficiency. Check out the work by Argonne labs.

http://www.anl.gov/Media_Center/News...as-diesel.html

regards
Mech

[SOUL-DRIFTER]

Very interesting article.

[oil pan 4]

You think superheating gasoline will boost fuel milage by xxx% ?
If that worked than propane would be a real good test of this concept, since at room temperature propane is a superheated vapor.
The problem is BTUs per miles on carbed gas vs propane/natural gas engines is about the same.
There is no unexplainable wild FE jump by switching to a superheated fuel.