Wood burning truck!

[SwampDonkey]

Looks like he had to seek a coadjutor, while he's cogitating. 

[GF]

Years ago I worked putting on propane systems on pickups, the company I worked created a propane dominator carburator and had it patented.  The process was that is had an aluminum plate about 2" think that went under the carburator, it was machined out to match the holes in four barrel carburators.  A brass pipe with holes went from front to back we called it a spray bar.  There was a valve on the back and one on the front for the propane to enter, these valves then had adjustable linkages that connected to the ping outside the carburator where the primary and secondarys were. 

This allowed the existing throttle linkage that power the carb with gas to also power when on propane, it was very simple and worked great.  When you put your foot down and opened up the secondarys the back valve opened and dumped more propane in.  I think this same item could be used for wood gas real easy, thought about it many of times.  For some reason the company quit doing these systems and went on to other things, I know they still have alot of these parts around since they were mass machined.

Gary

[Paul_H]

Gary,

I went googling for the dominator carb and found some info but none related to the linkage.It sounds interesting and I would be interested in any info you can find.
Mother Earth news built a dual linkage for woodgas and gasoline too but it was complicated(but apparently worked well) so they set up a motorcycle type on the steering column.
Others have rigged up a second pedal on the left hand side.I haven't decided which way to go yet.

farmerdoug,


I think the 12vdc heater motor may be under powered and this blower has a cooling fan for the motor too which may be a good thing because it'll get pretty hot for 5 minutes or so when the gasifier heats up.I read where some guys were running 110 vac with a inverter but the type needed to run this blower are expensive.(?)

While the carb was getting rebuilt today,I worked on getting the blower mounted and wired.I wasn't sure how to hook the blower itself to the pipe but it turned out that with a bit of messing around,I could thread a 2" pipe nipple iinto the fan housing and then tack weld and silicone it.
To start the gasifier,the gate valve is opened and the blower plugged in  for a few minutes and then the gate valve is closed and the engine is ready to start.I had read that having the blower before the cooler and filter saves them from clogging with dirty gas.

The tank between the gasifier and gas cooler is the filter canister,built from a 18" HW tank with the same lid const as the others.

 

 

The gas comes in the bottom pipe and passes up through black fibreglass filter cloth,up through a 1/3 of a bale of loose straw and finally through another layer of filter cloth and then piped out from the tank to the carb.
There is a condensate drain in the bottom of the tank.

 

 

 

I got the carb back this afternoon and hooked it all back up and ran the engine on gasoline,just have to work on the idle a bit.
Tomorrow,I'm hoping the 2" hose arrives on the bus and I can finish hooking the unit up completely.If not,I have to make some charcol and finish sealing the lids.

[jpgreen]

How many watts is that blower motor Paul?  Shouldn't need to big of an inverter.
All depends on the start up surge too which can be as much as 50 percent. Square wave
inverters are pretty darn cheap nowadays.

DanG I wish I had time to build one of these gassers right now. That unit looks outstanding.. 

[Paul_H]

Today was a little frustrating because I was expecting to have the 2"suction hose arrive on the bus by today but a call to the depot made me a little suspicious so I called the Princess Auto store in Langley and they told me they would try to ship it out today sometime 
I had that issue with their shipping dept before and the store manager told me to let him know if it ever happened again so when I asked for him,people started hopping.I had ordered the hose on Tuesday morning and was assured they had it in stock and would be sent out by Wednesday at the latest.I really like Princess Auto,I think it is great for tinkerers and farmer/fabricator types like us and I hate complaining but the upshot is that I have no suction hose 

Because I couldn't source any charcoal locally,I decided to cook some up as I worked on the truck today.I cut up some chunks of Birch endcuts left over from a floor I did for a customer in the spring and put them in a 25 gallon barrel that had a lid and lock ring.

 

I had cut a hole in the lid and screwed in a 3/4" nipple to let the smoke and water vapour out and once the smoke built up some pressure and turned white,I got a chunk of heater hose and set it against the nipple and routed the gas down to the flames.
It lit on fire and came out as a blow torch but then the hose filled with brown condensate and it slowed the flow.When I tipped the hose to let the condensate out,I was surprised at how much formed in the short time .

 

After several hours,when the smoke from the barrel slowed way down, I removed the barrel and let it cool and finally opened it up for a look.
Most all of it is charcoal with the exception of a few pieces but all in all I'm pleased with the results.



 

The charcoal will be the first added to the gasifier,followed by a 6" layer of domino sized chips and finally dry chunks around 1x3x4

 

I was hoping to maybe get the gasifier lit this weekend but it's looking like I'll have to wait a few more days till the hose comes but it'll be a good thing to do some tweaking and tuning in the mean time.

jpgreen,

I forgot to look at the specs on the blower,I'll check tomorrow,it would be good to know if an inverter would work.

[jpgreen]

That's a neat way to make charcoal. It is really amazing the flame off of the smoke like that, which is after all what the whole concept is about.

That wood looks like pine?

Get me the wattage or amps on that unit Paul and I'll track down an inverter.

[SwampDonkey]

Nice looking batch of charcoal. Someday I gotta tinker about and make some. Now if I only had an old fuel barrel or 2.  Should be easy enough for a non tinkering feller like myself to figure out. There have been enough threads on making it.

[GF]

I did a rough drawing on the carburator, not good at using paint to draw with but I hope it helps out.  Using something like this would require to put a fuel solenoid in right before the gasoline carb.  This way you can flip a switch inside and you run on gasoline flip another and your running on woodgas, mush like using propane.  The picture of the inside valve body is what the valve looked like when machined out to allow the flow of the woodgas.  The linkages will connect to the existing carburator throttle body.  This way the woodgas valves are opened and closed using the existing throttle body of the gas carburator.  This system would require no major mods to the gas carb itself.  I am going to see if I can ahold of one.  One thing on the drawin that is not correct that I just remembered is where the linkage attaches to the carburator, it needs a lever also just like the one on the valve itself the linkage connects to lever on the valve and the lever on the carburator.  The adjustable linkage is used to set the woodgas fuel input for idling.  The linkage on secondary valve is used to adjust the woodgas fuel input when the secondary's are used.  Sorry for the poor drawing hopefully this helps picture what I'm trying to describe.

Gary

 

[Paul_H]

When Tom came home from work today,I enlisted him to give me a hand.I don't have throttle or choke/air-fuel cables so I had to operate the carb while Tom started the engine.We ran it on gasoline for awhile but it wouldn't run on woodgas only and I was getting a little discouraged and thought maybe the spark advance was too far out.
Then I looked down the carb and saw that the linkage wasn't letting the woodgas butterflys open at all so I did some bending with a screw driver and we tried it again.

What you see here is Tom operating the carb while I record with the video camera.It was running 100% woodgas.

 
I still need to hook the carb up to the control cables and have the spark advance a little more so it runs smoother.

The exhaust smells like wood



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[sawguy21]

  Congratulations, betcha can't get the grin off your face.

[Paul_H]

I'm a little punchy 

[beenthere]

That be fantastic. Great to hear it running....Good on ya, 

Real nice to have that captured on video, and for all of us to hear it run.

[TexasTimbers]

Yes is sounds great. No one appreciates a Don Garlitz rumble anymore than me but those are the prettiest welds I have ever laid eyes on and I am not kidding because they are harnessing that rumble! 

Hey if you stuff honey locust in her will the fumes smell like honey

[jpgreen]

WoooHoooo.... 

Congratulations are in order..    How are you going to filter your oil?  I planned to run 2- Frantz toilet paper element filters in line via bypass.

[Paul_H]

 How are you going to filter your oil?  I planned to run 2- Frantz toilet paper element filters in line via bypass.

JP,

what oil did you mean,or were you refering to filtering the gas?
As far as I know,the motor oil should be okay with the standard filter.

[SwampDonkey]

Chitty Chitty Bang Bang  [/size]




  Sweet

[Norm]

Cool!

Wish I could of been there to give you a big pat on the back.

[Fla._Deadheader]

      Wooooo  Hoooooo,  EH  

  Another Frankenmonster is alive 

  Knew DanG well you would get it perfected.

  How many miles to the cord ya gonna get 

  Congratulations Paul. 

[jpgreen]

Paul the way I understand it from reading in on the experts from time to time is the wood gas system is very hard on engine oil.  So much so that it will take out an engine much, much faster than running on gas with tars and other impurities.  So one solution is to run the Frantz bypass filtration system via toilet paper element.

You can find out more about this on    gasification@listserv.repp.org and the Fluidine website:
http://www.fluidynenz.250x.com/

 How are you going to filter your oil?  I planned to run 2- Frantz toilet paper element filters in line via bypass.

JP,

what oil did you mean,or were you refering to filtering the gas?
As far as I know,the motor oil should be okay with the standard filter.

[OneWithWood]

Way to go, Paul 

Can't wait to see the video of you toolin' down the road in it