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  #1  
Old 12-13-2007, 08:44 PM
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Default 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.
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  #2  
Old 12-13-2007, 09:31 PM
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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.
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  #3  
Old 12-17-2007, 06:55 PM
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Default good fuel mileage

Quote:
Originally Posted by rumblefish360 View Post
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.
I never worried about fuel mileage because my 70 Challenger, with a built 360 aprox 425 hp is alot of fun to drive and don't worry about mileage. This is my play vehicle. mini van get the best mileage.
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Old 12-13-2007, 09:41 PM
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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.....
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  #5  
Old 12-23-2007, 05:45 AM
namvet67a1f namvet67a1f is offline
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Originally Posted by rampage_82 View Post
Hey Mopekid do some research, before go and trying those various snake-oil remedy's.
The "kid" has been asked for some "proof" ... and all he does is post stuff that does not support anything he alleges.
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  #6  
Old 12-23-2007, 01:30 PM
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Originally Posted by namvet67a1f View Post
The "kid" has been asked for some "proof" ... and all he does is post stuff that does not support anything he alleges.
Okay, what exactly should I be saying differently? I don't really want proof on why these ideas aren't totally reliable... What I wanted when I posted this thread is a good reason why I shouldn't try any of these things just for the heck of it! It seems like it would be a crime if I threw a piece of screen under my carb to see what would happen!

Sigh, I don't think this will work, like many of you guys said this isn't the right place to be discussing this stuff. Sorry if I wasted your guys' time...
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  #7  
Old 12-13-2007, 10:00 PM
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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.
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  #8  
Old 12-13-2007, 10:32 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by ehostler View Post
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.
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  #9  
Old 12-17-2007, 06:58 PM
moparmikethree moparmikethree is offline
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Default great mileage

Quote:
Originally Posted by ehostler View Post
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.
There are ways of getting great mileage, but don't you think the Fuel companys
bought the rights to the formula. They will never let it out to the public
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  #10  
Old 12-18-2007, 11:24 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by moparmikethree View Post
There are ways of getting great mileage, but don't you think the Fuel companys
bought the rights to the formula. They will never let it out to the public
Ah, yes......the famous "Fuel Conspiracy" brought up again. The oil companies bought the secrets to getting 100 mpg from cat piss.
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  #11  
Old 12-23-2007, 09:45 AM
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Ah, yes......the famous "Fuel Conspiracy" brought up again. The oil companies bought the secrets to getting 100 mpg from cat piss.
No no no, that was YAK PISS that they used. I read it in the enquirer!!!
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  #12  
Old 12-14-2007, 01:37 AM
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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.
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  #13  
Old 12-14-2007, 01:34 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by MOPEkid View Post
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).
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Old 12-14-2007, 03:30 AM
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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.
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  #15  
Old 12-14-2007, 09:35 AM
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If something sounds too good to be true, it usually is.
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  #16  
Old 12-14-2007, 11:04 AM
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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?
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  #17  
Old 12-14-2007, 11:09 AM
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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.
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  #18  
Old 12-14-2007, 12:05 PM
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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!
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  #19  
Old 12-14-2007, 12:44 PM
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Originally Posted by Rug_Trucker View Post
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.
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Old 12-17-2007, 09:14 PM
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I don't put too much faith in the conspiracy theories about mileage improvers, however I did know a guy. I worked at a harware store and this guy was always building some variation of the under carb screen. He would find different materials to make it out of and then get a heating element bonded to the screen. Each one he'd build was a little different than the last. He always told me as soon as he would patent one "someone" would show up to buy the patent off of him. His basic theory was to cool down the air/fuel before and at the carb then heat it up and pass it through the screen after the carb. He claimed 80-85 mpg out of a Ford 2.3 liter. He was an odd duck but I never saw him with a real job......
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Old 12-18-2007, 12:31 AM
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If you find anyway to burn anything especially efficently you will be stopped. There was a guy that figured out how to burn water(yes water) through the use of radio waves. He ran a small block chevy v8 on it for quite sometime. It was written about in a few articles and then nothing. He was silenced. More than likely fuel companies because the less of a dependency for oil. Water is a very abundent source. lol. Anyway, also this is not the best place for asking people how to improve mpg's. Mopar guys in general, but not all, are guys that are fast. Performance motivated guys. If you want mpg's get a cobalt or a turbocharged 4cyl. Gas is 3.10 a gallon here and no matter how much i will buy it i need to get around and make sacrificies were need be. I see how you would want to get more mpg's outta your daily driver but it gas is a problem you should have got a beater 4cyl that gets like 30pg's. Everyone wants power and fuel economy. But it is a fine balance you have to give to receive. 22mpg in your car is pretty good. I have a pontiac g6 that gets 21/22 which is pretty well in my mind. If you want some power and 20 mpg's thats a good balance. You have good ideas just be careful you dont blow your self up expirimenting.
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Old 12-14-2007, 10:24 PM
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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.
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Old 12-16-2007, 01:06 AM
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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
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  #24  
Old 12-16-2007, 12:41 PM
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If you want another MPG or two put a fuel injection on your motor.
OR a ThermoQuad carb !
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Old 12-14-2007, 11:54 PM
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Check out what this guy is doing http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/...d-messiah.html.
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  #26  
Old 12-16-2007, 01:52 AM
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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.
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Old 12-16-2007, 03:22 AM
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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!
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Old 12-16-2007, 05:54 AM
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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.)
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Old 12-16-2007, 12:48 PM
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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
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Old 12-16-2007, 02:31 PM
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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.
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