It gets much worse Cody. When you get really old days are only a couple hours long and years last maybe a month. You still get big plans and then feel constantly guilty because you never find the time to do them.
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@Wayne I think it’s safe to say that you won’t have to hide your truck behind the barn when my truck is around. I’ll be the ugly friend to make your truck look good!
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Got the final plumbing done, lit it up and it was running on charcoal! Noticed after shutdown that my lid is a little leaky, saw a haze coming off of it. Need to address that tonight. I still need to add my cutoff solenoid to be able to shut off gasoline. It was running decent with a gasoline idle going.
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What would be the minimum diameter fuel line if it were run up the A pillar like on Cody’s truck? I know that the preferred method is to keep it concealed under the vehicle but this way is certainly easier.
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I’m using 2" spa hose and 2" PVC at the moment. I know @SouthernYankee has done the same with his 350 except he routed under the truck. I plan to try to run two fuel lines of 2.25" stainless exhaust pipe down both A pillars when it’s on raw wood, unless I find just one is fine then the other will be for fresh air. My designs are always in a state of flux.
I originally made this charcoal gasifier for the 4.3 but it seems to run the 350 decently enough. I should have gone for 3" pipe coming out the gasifier into the dropbox and filter but I’d hate to delay this thing any further.
I’m getting my gasoline cutoff solenoid up and working, added my water drip and I’m trying to hunt for a filter pod to fit on my fresh air. Also need to find something to fit in the column shifter to act as my lever. I’ve somehow lost the old one between a bunch of “decluttering” sessions.
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Drove around on a nearby country highway. She got up to 65 once or twice when I wasn’t paying attention. Had one issue during the drive, I had a piece of shrink wrap plastic that got sucked into the gasifier intake and it was smothering the gasifier.
The fuel cutoff solenoid worked great and I have gasoline in a matter of seconds, so I was able to restart the engine while rolling on the road.
This gasifier gets HOT. I may want to get the cooling rail done just for this thing. I was nowhere near empty and my exit pipe was too hot to touch. Maybe a half a second touch. I don’t think I can rely on a thermometer to know when I’m running empty but it could let me know when I get too hot for the plastic fittings after the filter. I do know that this engine is a hungry hungry beast. I went down about 6" of fuel in maybe 10 miles and a little idling.
Also my AFR meter died on me, and I’m not sure what happened. I’ll wait til everything is cooled off before I go messing with it.
Here’s some videos.
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Here’s how much charcoal I consumed today just driving around. I didn’t keep track of my mileage or I’d be able to know a little more, but when I started I was at the exit pipe.
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Way to go Cody. It looks very good under the hood with all the hoses, SS and springs in there.
I have stalled my truck on the road several times as well. Unlike your truck though I have to stop, put it in parking, start it up and then start driving again.
You probably know this already but it will use more fuel in a new gasifier till the ash insulation gets distributed.
Are you using a wide band AFR gauge?
Have you installed a timing advance yet?
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I have the spark timing advanced a bit more than factory, because this truck was naturally a low compression engine. It’s just below 8:1 compression ratio heads. I forget exactly how far advanced I am but I can still run it on gasoline just fine.
And yes I’m using a wide band gauge with a Bosch sensor. I think the ground wire for the gauge got messed up during the drive. It somehow managed to get wrapped around the steering column in the engine compartment, I hope I didn’t internally break the wire.
Edit: I definitely broke the ground wire. Got it fixed now. I ran some 12ga wire into the cab right off the battery and put in an additional fuse box that will serve for things like my CB radio and the blowers and gauges.
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Congratulations Cody, it’s great that there are more people running on wood.
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This is wonderfully great Cody. DOC will travel. Now you are a profestional with a degree in moving charcoal down the road.
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Thanks Bob! Technically this gasifier is sized for the 4.3, if I remember correctly. Might explain why it runs so hot. Maybe it’ll start to run cooler after a few more refills and settles in.
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I figured that if I were going to gasify my truck I would put cooling tubes in the ladder rack. At least that would eliminate having to stretch that tube over the top of the door.
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Drove the truck to work today, it wasn’t running quite right so I was hybriding with a gasoline idle, I think the hay in the filter is a little compacted. Gas temp at the drop box got up to 130°F by the time I got to work.
This 350 is a real pig for fuel. I’ll probably have to drive on gasoline on the way home.
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cody, you wrote that the hopper lid is not complete tight…i can immagine that this can be like a hot leak where good gas burns partially , because the gas is yet hot there and oxygen enters by the lids untightness…this i see generally as a problem with updraft gasifiers, in downdraft i would say a untight lid is less problem, because a little quantity of air that gets inside through a lid untightness only reduces the air that enters through the nozzle, the gas production happens under the nozzle, therefore no disturbs…
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I put in a new drum seal, but perhaps it isn’t a good one. I noticed that I don’t have to choke the engine as much so I think I have less air leaks.
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It is good to follow the experiences of using charcoal to power an otto moto, this way it is easier for a person to decide what kind of system to build. Giorgio is an expert in the field of charcoal, he has many different systems and they all work well, well, they are all also beautifully and precisely made.
Cody, if you are bothered by the “high” consumption of your vehicle, you need to compare it with the consumption of gasoline. Your truck probably uses about 15 liters of gasoline per 100 km, so I would expect it to also use at least 20 kg of charcoal, which has a volume of 80-100 l. If the gasifier has a volume of 200 l, you have fuel for 200 km. Here I also thought of a comparison with wood. Charcoal contains about 8 kWh of energy per kg, and this kg has a volume of about 4 liters (200-300 kg per 1m3), if we compare this with wood, which has 1 kg of 4 kWh of energy and occupies a volume of 400-600 kg per 1m3, we can see that a certain volume of a container with charcoal or bulk wood contains almost the same amount of energy. 
To summarize the results:
- 100 liters of charcoal or bulk wood contains 200 kWh of energy
- 200 kWh of energy has 21 liters of gasoline
- if we want to carry the same amount of energy with us, the charcoal or wood tank must be 5 times larger than the gasoline tank.
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Since I know the exact distance from home to my work I can be a bit more accurate with fuel consumption.
Yesterday I drove 20 miles hybriding on charcoal. That is with a gasoline idle and occasional help on hills but I’d say 90% was on charcoal.
I consumed roughly 15 gallons of charcoal. I forget my exact fuel density but I think I average either 1kg/4L or in that ballpark like the figure you used, Tone.
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Tone, your numbers are spot. They fit my experience well. My Volvo drinks gasoline at rate of almost 1l/10km (~25 mpg). My bags hold roughly 20 l and I consider them worth 40 km each on longer trips (~5 mpg).
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Gosh that mileage is abysmal. Rounding up from 56.78 liters to 57, that means I likely used up 14.195 kilograms of charcoal. So in the course of 20 miles I used up 1.5 pounds of charcoal for every mile traveled on that trip, or 0.44kg/km.
By the time I consume that much charcoal my temps are already at 130°F, so I’d need to add cooling rails to make that worth using the rest of the charcoal. I’m glad this truck will eventually be a raw wood consumer.
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