Running On Fumes, Literally!!

[pappy19]

Want better mileage? Tired of big oil prices?
Check this out-

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZFxwJ8mIDtA

[sawguy21]

I think he is kidding himself, it would take a light foot to make that work. A backfire would be quite entertaining. :D

[Magicman]

It all boils back down to Physics because it takes energy to do work.  There are no free rides.

But it is still interesting.   

[redprospector]

My Uncle did something similar in the late 70's. It actually can work, and most would be surprised at just how much power can be developed using "vapor". My Uncle called his contraption a "Bubbler", and the first one was on a Lincoln with a big V-8. I don't remember the numbers, but the gas mileage was very impressive, especially in the 70's.  :D
He tried one on his old Chevy pickup, it got around pretty good empty, and did very well on mileage too. But to back up what Magicman said, it lacked quite a bit to be desirable pulling a lightly loaded trailer.

It's funny, back then gas was generally under a buck a gallon, and everyone was trying to figure out how to increase mileage. I pulled a 16' x 5' gooseneck stock trailer with a 78 Ford Courier.  :D After 30 plus years, I just pay the fuel bill. I don't like it, I just pay it.  ;D

[Ianab]

Fuel get vaporised before it's burnt in a normal engine....

All this is doing is making it into a vapour first. The engine can run on this, like it could run on natural gas, propane or wood gas... None of those gasses give any magic fuel economy either, and petrol vapour wont either.

Ian

[Gary_C]

Something is really wrong with that video.

First, just how does the gas get into those tubes? If the tubes just go thru the gas can and back out the top, how does the gas vapor get into the tubes? And it takes heat to vaporize any volume of gasoline. How does he control the rate of vaporization?

How does he regulate the fuel air ratio to get the best combustion and control engine speed?

Most of those older engines with carburetors had mechanical fuel pumps. I guess that's how he did his magic,  the old fuel system is still working.  :

And without the air cleaner and with a steady diet of dust, he will soon take the rings out of that engine and then he can burn oil too. 

[Ron Wenrich]

He disconnected his fuel pump in the video.  He also was using the intake air tubes as a bubbler in the gas tank. 

I remember seeing a patent from back in the '40s where they built vaporizers with big chambers and I believe they used some engine heat.  It vaporized gasoline.  Supposedly they were getting 200 mpg with the contraption.  There's also been all sorts of inventions to atomize fuel.  Most of them failed.  Also, the hype about injecting hydrogen.

I remember back in the '70s seeing a figure that there was enough energy in a gallon of gas to lift a car 7 miles in the air.  Some cars weren't getting that going down the road.  Figures like that all assume that you could run at 100% efficiency. 

I find the best way to improve gas mileage is to become a better driver.  If I have to drive through towns with lights that aren't synchronized, my mileage suffers greatly.  I avoid those areas when I can.  I have a Jetta diesel.  This past weekend I drove home from vacation.  I went through a few towns with synchronized lights and a medium amount of traffic, which meant few stops.  On the highway, I was doing about 70.  After 150 miles, my mileage was 58.3 mpg.  Then I hit a stretch of road with heavy traffic and poor light management and dropped down to a little under 50 mpg.    I ended the 200 mile trip with 53 mpg.  The technology is there to get better fuel mileage.

[Gary_C]

He disconnected his fuel pump in the video.  He also was using the intake air tubes as a bubbler in the gas tank. 

He simply showed a relay that was removed in the video. Those older V-8's had mechanical fuel pumps, not electrical.

And the tubes went straight thru the gas can. There's no way for vacuum to "bubble" gas into vapor and he proved there were no holes in the tubes inside the gas can when he choked off the air to kill the engine.

That video was phoney baloney. 

[r.man]

I like the idea of a flywheel to absorb excess energy when slowing down so it is available to restart motion or boost speed. Anyone who has had an implement shove a tractor forward because it lacked an overrunning clutch knows the feeling. A lot of energy is wasted and bled off as brake heat or engine revs that could be salvaged to improve mileage.

[Al_Smith]

 :D Maybe he had a "flux" capacitor in the works and forgot to mention it ?Next will be a tutorial on turning lead into gold no doubt .

[r.man]

All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.

Arthur Schopenhauer

Has anyone else ever wondered about this quote when they see something ridiculous. I think I might try an experiment with an engine and some vapour. Seems like it would be simple enough to prove or disprove. Did I mention I drove a charcoal powered tractor recently? Five years ago I would have said " pull the other one ".

[Ianab]

Yeah, but some ideas never get past stage one....

It's not that you can't run an engine on vapour, after all it's a vapour that actually burns inside the engine, and a propane powered car is fitted with a 'vaporiser' to ensure the liquid fuel is a vapour before it gets into the engine. The idea that it will work twice as well because of some vague voodoo science is what gets ridiculed.

Now, wood or charcoal powered vehicles have been around since WW2 (maybe before). Again, the idea is to create flammable vapour from the charcoal or wood, and feed that into the engine. There are technical issues to work around, but none of that involves suspending the accepted laws of physics.

BTW, an Australian University have build a solar powered car for those "Across Australia" races. With it's solar panels unplugged, they drove it for 300 miles, at an average of 60 mph. That set a record for a battery vehicle, and it was dragging a set of panels as well. Now although it's a "road legal" vehicle, it's obviously not a regular everyday car. But that's where technology is headed, without having to re-write physics and chemistry.  ;)

[Darrel]

I heard about this for the first time when I was about 10 years old, I had a cousin that was about 15 years older than me and he had his VW fixed up with a vaporizer, he got pretty good mileage so he claimed, but more importantly I do remember going for a ride with him and on the hills he only got about 5 miles to the hour.  ;D  ;D

[Gary_C]

Has anyone else ever wondered about this quote when they see something ridiculous. I think I might try an experiment with an engine and some vapour. Seems like it would be simple enough to prove or disprove.

There is no need to prove or disprove the idea of running an engine on a vapor. It is already proven and a very well known fact that all engines burn only vapors. If your fuel is a solid or liquid, you must create a vapor in a proper mixture with air in order for the engine to run. A carburetor or injection nozzle is simply a means of vaporizing a liquid fuel so it will burn in the engine.

That being said, what is fake or phoney in the video is the means he is showing to vaporize the gas is not real and there is no gas vapor being drawn into the engine thru those clear tubes that simply pass through the gas container with no opening for any vapors to be drawn into the inside of the tubes.

So the video is a spoof and only meant to get people to watch and wonder if it could be true. Even if he truly came up with an innovative way to vaporize gas and inject gas vapor into an engine, does anyone believe the engine would then miraculously get even one more miles per gallon let alone 200 MPG?

The part about getting people to watch his video is the only truth.

[Magicman]

Doesn't matter one way or the other to me, but the video stated that the inlet hoses went to the bottom of the gas can.  The incoming air bubbled through the gas in the can and the outlet hoses, which were attached to the top of the can above the top level of the gas, then sucked this air and gas fumes into the air cleaner inlet. 

[Gary_C]

MM, you could be right, but it matters little.

Wether you force gas thru a carb jet or an injection nozzle or you are bubbling air thru gas, it all amounts to the same thing. You are creating a mixture of gas vapors and air in hopes it will burn in the cylinder of an engine. In a carburetor or an injection system, the ratio of air to gas vapor has to be closely controlled and the amount of total mixture has to be regulated to vary engine speed. Too lean or too rich and the mixture will not burn. If you get the fuel air ratio right, you have one engine speed.

So even if the guy has actually made the engine run, all the guy has done is create a crude and uncontrollable way to first vaporize some gas and get an engine to run at a fixed low speed. There is no way to control air fuel ratio or engine speed. There is absolutely nothing new and unique about that set up, even if he can make his contraption work at low idle.

All engines run on vapors, liquids will not burn. So where is the fuel savings going to come from with that crude way to create an uncontrolled fuel mixture?

[CalebL]

He won't be running that engine very long without an air filter.........