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MOPEkid 12-13-2007 08:44 PM

Wild engine efficiency improvers
 
I was reading some articles on fueleconomytips.com and PowreHaus.com about some crazy experiments people have done that gave them astronomical gas mileage and efficiency. Most of it involved getting the fuel as completely vaporized as possible. There were unconventional things like bubblers and Nay Boxes, and other, less extreme things like heated carb spacers, angled screen under the carb, port walls and valves with screw pitch ground into them, and reworked combustion chambers that help swirl the intake charge and boost combustion efficiency. Has anybody tried any of this stuff with good results? It bugs me that I'm dumping liquid gas into my engine that isn't even getting burned.

rumblefish360 12-13-2007 09:31 PM

The best way I have found to get excellent mileage out of your engine is;

Small carb. tune tune tune tune etc.......
Free flowing intake like a RPM, Modern Stealth etc....
A good quenched area between the piston and head with small valves
Multi spark ignition
Overdrive and low gear ratio for a low cruise speed
thin tires

If a stock cam is no longer a option, get a split duration cam as close to the intake duration as the stock engine.

Excellent exhaust
Rid parasidic loss from the engine and reduce pulley size & car weight.

rampage_82 12-13-2007 09:41 PM

Hey Mopekid do some research, before go and trying those various snake-oil remedy's. If those things are true, then why would everyone be attempting to cool down their intake charge. Truth be known if your engine is working efficiently, you're getting about 98% of the potential of Gasoline. The people making these claims have been around since the 70's, those things didn't work then and still don't work now. Cause face it the cooler the charge, the more oxygen, the more complete burn of the air/fuel mixture....

BTW do you guys know one of the most efficient vehicles ever produced? it would be an early 80's Volkswagon Diesel Rabbit's. They are truely POS but for fuel economy they were the bomb.....

ehostler 12-13-2007 10:00 PM

If you're dumping liquid gas into your engine, then there is something wrong with your carb.

Remember one important tid bit of information. If it were that cheap and easy to get that kind of fuel economy from your engine, the auto manufacturers would be using it.

dave571 12-13-2007 10:32 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ehostler (Post 715660)
If you're dumping liquid gas into your engine, then there is something wrong with your carb.

Remember one important tid bit of information. If it were that cheap and easy to get that kind of fuel economy from your engine, the auto manufacturers would be using it.

Amen

If your fuel economy is really bad, then don't try to redesign the fuel system.

The issue is more likely a worn out part like the carb, or an ignition problem, or worn engine, vacuum leaks etc.

Proper tune, and well maintained engine will give you the best economy possible.

Remember this, the guy who designed the car is smarter than we are, so we don't need to re design it for it to work properly.

MOPEkid 12-14-2007 01:37 AM

The guy who tested this stuff is really only supportive of the simpler mods, like the screw pitch on the intake port walls and combustion chamber shape. He tried all that other wacky stuff, and it did work, but the car would either have horrible power or be a pain in the butt to keep working properly (or both). He said his first real test car was a '70 Duster with a slant-6 that he had hot-rodded with ported head, cam, carb, etc. and he was averaging 21 MPG. With the screen under the carb and a few other things, he boosted it up to around 28 MPG average. It makes complete sense to me. Have you guys looked down a carb while revving the engine? You can see that the fuel is sprayed in like a big cloud. Now, if you think about it, how could all those droplets of liquid fuel, no matter how small, completely vaporize and form a homogeneous mixture with the air in the fraction of a second that it travels from the carb to the cylinders? Now it is true and the guy did admit it, that if you heat the gas it will vaporize better and burn more completely, but you will also raise the temps of the intake charge and lose some volumetric efficiency. That's why I was thinking, what if you found a way to heat the gas itself, but keep the intake manifold cool?

Bear in mind, this is all hypothetical. It's basically brainstorming for a science experiment to me. And as far as engineers designing the cars go, I'm sure they'd have made engines this efficient if they didn't have pressure from the bean-counters to make a cheap powerplant, and from the government to meet strict emissions standards at the same time (not to mention the possible conspiracies about the oil companies losing money if engines were made to efficient). It costs a lot for factories to machine something like screw pitch into an intake port, and from a business point of view the cost would outweigh the benefit as far as mass-production goes. But for us at-home hot-rodders that have access to tools or machine shops, it's much more feasible. I really want to try this stuff on some old slant-6 car and see for myself if these things would work. Read some of the articles on http://www.fueleconomytips.com, it's pretty interesting and a lot of the stuff does make sense. Again, it's pretty unconventional though and requires careful attention to detail to get a lot of these concepts to work right.

P.S. I don't have an engine that I need to do this for, it's just some interesting info I found to boost engine efficiency that I want to try some time just for the heck of it.

rampage_82 12-14-2007 03:30 AM

Wait a second, you aren't telling me that you're complaining about the big(evil) oil companies making money are you? Don't you realize that where as the "evil" oil companies are making 10 cents per gallon profit off gasoline, whereas the Goverment (State + Federal) makes 14-20 cents (depending on your state)? But I don't want to start this debate here... so basically disregard everything I said, I'll be a good little robot.

DartGT66 12-14-2007 09:35 AM

If something sounds too good to be true, it usually is.

peg leg 12-14-2007 11:04 AM

Taxes
 
on gasoline are in the 47-50 cent per gallon range, some lower, depending on geography. Now, like rampage says, who is big evil here?

MOPEkid 12-14-2007 11:09 AM

No, I'm not really complaining about that stuff. What I'm saying is that the businessmen running the car companies have to make sure a car they're developing is cost-effective, so the engineers don't always get to incorporate everything they want into a design. Also, after listening to John Perkins' interviews about his book, "Confessions of an Economic Hit Man", it does make sense. Basically what he said was that our whole government is a corporatocracy, that is that behind every decision to invade a new country or something like that there is a giant corporation looking for a benefit. I believe him too, because he orchestrated a lot of this stuff since the late '60's until recently, when he retired and wrote his book. It's really interesting, you can watch his interviews on YouTube, just search for "John Perkins" or "Economic Hit Man" and judge for yourself. I don't think it's just the oil companies, a lot of it does come from the government.

Rug_Trucker 12-14-2007 12:05 PM

Twice in the junk yard I have found screens under slant carbs.

Factory?

Can't have the engines being too efficient. The GOV gets paid by the gallon on their taxes!

MOPEkid 12-14-2007 12:44 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rug_Trucker (Post 715740)
Twice in the junk yard I have found screens under slant carbs.

Factory?

Can't have the engines being too efficient. The GOV gets paid by the gallon on their taxes!

That's EXACTLY the problem. There were so many examples I read about people who invented all these simple things to boost efficiency in the past, but they were all mysteriously shut down and silenced by somebody. Different carb designs (Fish, etc.), gas additives to make it bond with water, bubbler systems, etc. were all invented years ago, but all of a sudden you wouldn't hear about these things anymore because the inventors were shut up.

moparmarc 12-14-2007 01:34 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by MOPEkid (Post 715695)
Have you guys looked down a carb while revving the engine? You can see that the fuel is sprayed in like a big cloud. Now, if you think about it, how could all those droplets of liquid fuel, no matter how small, completely vaporize and form a homogeneous mixture with the air in the fraction of a second that it travels from the carb to the cylinders?

That spray you see in the carb is the accelerator pump, and that only squirts when you punch it to keep the car from hesitating as all the air comes in. Punching it isn't when you should expect your best fuel mileage, and it's just a small part of everyday driving (well, for some of us, anyway).

MOPEkid 12-14-2007 10:24 PM

No, the accelerator pump squirts a solid stream of fuel into the carb throats. When a carb'd engine is running above idle, you can actually see a "mist" that flows from the air bleeds (I think that's what they are) down the carb and into the intake manifold.

Jacksdad 12-14-2007 11:54 PM

Check out what this guy is doing http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/...d-messiah.html.

bobr 12-16-2007 01:06 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by MOPEkid (Post 715802)
No, the accelerator pump squirts a solid stream of fuel into the carb throats. When a carb'd engine is running above idle, you can actually see a "mist" that flows from the air bleeds (I think that's what they are) down the carb and into the intake manifold.


The droplets you see get into the heated engine and vaporize. You really aren't too familiar with the basics of the internal combustion engine if you are truly curious if these rip-off contraptions really work or not. There is no conspiracy theory either. The feds just passed ANOTHER law mandating higher minimum fuel mileage. The automobile companies HAVE to comply so they must spend ANOTHER ton of money re-engineering what they have already re-engineered a dozen times. All the easy fruit has been picked LONG AGO. Fuel injection did away with carbs and fuel droplets a long time ago. It's now finely atomized before reaching the combustion chamber. If you want another MPG or two put a fuel injection on your motor. Or you can research, buy and be ripped off on one or all of the gimmicks of the week. -Bob

MOPEkid 12-16-2007 01:52 AM

Well, the Somender grooves and combustion chamber edging has been proven to work. I'm not going to "buy" any of this stuff either. If you actually read the articles by the guy, Mike Holler, who does all of this research into improving gas mileage, you'll realize that he's a normal guy trying to get these ideas across. He doesn't really care about selling anything; yes, he does have a business in PA that does these sorts of modifications to engines (not the bubbler or Nay Box or crazy stuff like that), but he also writes articles and will tell you how to do this stuff by yourself. The only money I'd be spending would be on machine work and materials. There's a whole forum called mpgresearch.com where people discuss these kinds of things, and they experiment and provide results on things that do and do not work. I honestly can't see how this is a gimmick if I'm not buying anything.

The fuel is finely atomized with fuel injection, but it isn't in vapor form and homogeneously mixed with the air. There are STILL minute amounts of liquid gasoline that go into the combustion chamber and vaporize in there, but by the time it is in a combustible vapor form it's already past the exhaust valve(s) and on its way out the tailpipe. It doesn't really matter though, because engines can't run on perfectly stoichiometric A/F ratios anyway because the heat becomes too great (although the engine does run pretty damn good before meltdown). Somebody did invent an engine that injects water directly into the CC after combustion and can actually run on a "perfect" A/F ratio, but it wasn't very practical because it used lots of water, which costs more than gas anyway.

Check out http://www.somender-singh.com and the tests various people have done.

cudabob496 12-16-2007 03:22 AM

Some guys may be ligit, but most are snake oil salesmen trying to make a buck off of gullable people, or folks that want to become millionaires through a discovery, in my opinion. These guys have been around since Henry Ford the 1st. I really believe that if there was any merit to most of these "new discoveries/tricks", the engineers and scientists at Ford, GM, and Chrysler would have discovered it long ago. I've been hearing since the 1960's how some guy got 100 mpg on a V8, or made tons of power, and the story has never panned out!

bigj3341 12-16-2007 05:54 AM

There are a couple ways of getting better mpg's that don't involve dramatic mods or goofy setups and carb screens. A numerically lower gear(ex:3.23) will make a big difference and so will adding another gear to your transmission(ex: overdrive in an automatic or a 4spd over a 3spd manual etc etc.)

namvet67a1f 12-16-2007 12:41 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by bobr (Post 715941)

If you want another MPG or two put a fuel injection on your motor.

OR a ThermoQuad carb ! :thumbsup: :wave:

namvet67a1f 12-16-2007 12:48 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by bigj3341 (Post 715964)
There are a couple ways of getting better mpg's that don't involve dramatic mods or goofy setups and carb screens. A numerically lower gear(ex:3.23) will make a big difference and so will adding another gear to your transmission(ex: overdrive in an automatic or a 4spd over a 3spd manual etc etc.)

But ya gotta' have the cajones to pull that shorter gear !

I had a 78 van with a 400 in it some years back with a 3.5 gear and decided to put an 8 3/4 in it with a 2.93 gear.

It got WORSE fuel-econ since the motor was "weak". All that work - just a waste of time :flush:

MOPEkid 12-16-2007 02:31 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by cudabob496 (Post 715960)
Some guys may be ligit, but most are snake oil salesmen trying to make a buck off of gullable people, or folks that want to become millionaires through a discovery, in my opinion. These guys have been around since Henry Ford the 1st. I really believe that if there was any merit to most of these "new discoveries/tricks", the engineers and scientists at Ford, GM, and Chrysler would have discovered it long ago. I've been hearing since the 1960's how some guy got 100 mpg on a V8, or made tons of power, and the story has never panned out!

Yeah, this stuff has been around for a while, but the things that truly do work require VERY detailed machine work. Look how much combustion chamber shape has changed in the past 40 years. Engineers in the 60's knew how important quench area and flame travel was, but it would've cost too much to produce a head chamber shape that incorporated all these things. They've known about these things all along, but they are in no way easy to incorporate.

Let me get something straight. The ONLY way you can get extreme gas mileage, like in the case of that guy who had that 100-MPG V8, is by using a bubbler-type system or a Nay Box. It DOES work, but it requires hours and hours and hours of tuning, fabrication, and a big sacrifice in reliability and/or power. These things, IMO, just aren't worth it, and Mike Holler has admitted to this after trying these things (I admit I've changed my mind from the beginning of the thread). Now, he says if you modify "normal" components of a "normal" gasoline engine, you can improve mileage by a lot. You won't get 80 MPG out of a 440, but you can probably squeeze out around 30 if you play your cards right.

Things like high gear ratios don't make the engine any more efficient; they merely make it spin at a slower speed, so they use less gas than if they spin at a higher speed. But even at idle speeds going 60 mph, some stock big-blocks will still only get in the high teens.

I sent an e-mail to Rick Ehrenberg of Mopar Action too to see what he thinks. From all the project cars and stuff he works on (not to mention being an Automotive Engineer) he must have some experience with these mods.

namvet67a1f 12-16-2007 10:21 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by MOPEkid (Post 716019)
You won't get 80 MPG out of a 440, but you can probably squeeze out around 30 if you play your cards right.

What type of vehicle do you propose that this be in ?

A big Imperial or station wagon .. or a lite weight Aero Daytona?

OHD 12-16-2007 11:32 PM

You guys want to know about about the only idea these hairbrained individuals have ever dreamed up that was worth a damn?

Read the history of the Wankel rotary engine and his ideas that spark plugs could last 100K or more...(plugs were changed every 10K miles at that time) :eyesbig: See if you can figure out who uses his engine in production today.

All the rest, might as well of dreamed up a better way to pee into a fan and not get wet, while testing their theorys' on an electrified fence.:flush:

MOPEkid 12-17-2007 12:08 AM

You know, I don't see why everybody has to get so hostile. I put some ideas out there that I found and all I wanted to get was a scientific discussion with some good PROOF on why these things do or don't work. Many of you guys have helped me here and provided good replies, but I don't see why some of you need to get angry and annoyed by the ideas I'm proposing. I try not to take sides and I try to be as un-biased as possible, so IMO it's only fair to give these guys that came up with these ideas a fair shot, because so far none of them have been trying to sell this stuff.

About the 440 getting that good of mileage, that would be in something like a Daytona on the highway with a ~2.5:1 final drive ratio. Along with Somender grooves and edging in the chambers, ported aluminum heads, thermal barrier coatings on the piston faces and chambers, and other stuff like a mild cam, small-ish dual plane intake, log-type exhaust manifolds, and a manual trans, it would be possible. There are already stories of people getting in the high teens on the highway in things like Satellites with 3.23:1 gears, so with this stuff incorporated in I think you could bump that up to the mid to high 20's in something similar.

I really want to try some of these things myself on an old engine, like maybe my 318 before I take it out and put the 360 I'm planning in. I don't see any harm in experimenting and trying out people's ideas. I'm prepared to have some of them not work, but it's still fun to try it out anyway, right? I mean, isn't fun and messing around with mechanical stuff what this hobby is all about?

pishta 12-17-2007 12:55 AM

Remember the early 80's Dodge Colt/Plymouth Champ? 50 MPG on a gas carb. Not bad. Car was crap but would run forever on a tank of gas. How about a 4 cycle motor that runs at 300 RPM at max torque? Dude in India figured out a way to modify the combustion chamber to get a super quench and ideal flame front propogation to get a motor to run at almost viewable speeds. Remember the Tucker? Low RPM motor. As for engines making 98% efficiancy, try about 10%, 90% of the power is generated heat that is just radiated out to the atmosphere. I would think the easiest way to become efficiant would be a hybrid system that keeps a motor in its power band, a fixed jet carb or FI system with a cam radically tuned to one narrow powerband and having a CV transmission or an electric final drive off a battery that is charged by the motor, ala Locomotive diesel/electric motivation. motor runs at optimal speed, charges battery, battery drives car, motor charges battery. Im no scientist, but Li/ion battery production damages the environment more that a Hummer H2 that lasts 150,00 miles. look it up.

cudabob496 12-17-2007 01:05 AM

Don't see "everybody" getting hostile. Just maybe one or two cranky old farts!

RacerHog 12-17-2007 01:07 AM

need a diesel Omni...Ya baby:baby0:

MOPEkid 12-17-2007 01:33 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by cudabob496 (Post 716109)
Don't see "everybody" getting hostile. Just maybe one or two cranky old farts!

Yeah, sorry about that... I wrote my post and then went back through to take out some of the stupid things I impulsively put in there, I must've missed that part :o .

pishta, I think the guy you might be talking about is Somender Singh. He's the one that invented those grooves that are cut into the combustion chamber quench face that speed up combustion. Basically the fuel/air mixture that is in those grooves becomes a hot jet of flame when ignited that then blows around the chamber and helps ignite the other fuel/air in the chamber. It also helps clear the rings of any gas left over to prevent fuel wash. If you look at some pictures they are usually a straight cut that faces directly away from the spark plug; I was wondering what would happen if you added one or two more that started across from the spark plug, then curved around back into the "open" part of the chamber to direct the jet of flame straight into the intake charge. That along with some serious rounding of the combustion chamber edges ("edging") to have a "pulling" effect on the flame front, much the same way a stream of water is "pulled" around a can or glass. With these mods alone there wouldn't be too much difference, but with a boost in compression and a bit less advance it would make a BIG difference in both power and fuel economy. In fact, the guy (dana44 on the allpar.com forum) who came up with the "edging" idea ran regular 85 octane gas in his 11:1 compression Chevy SB (I know...:baby: ) with no detonation. It wasn't until he took a trip to Mexico and had to run 75 octane gas when he ran into trouble. These are in no way easy 10-minute bolt-on jobs, but they are worth it IMO.

it's all dodge 12-17-2007 01:51 AM

I read that a small amount of acetone in the gas will do alot for mileage, but I figure I'll wait and watch somebody else test that. Anybody remember the torque plus intake manifold gaskits with screens?


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