Hi Mart, If you are thinking of using the Stanley shop vac for a charcoal gasifier and using the blower in the top, get ready for a literal melt down, I have even gotten away from using plastic hose comming out of the gasifier due to the increasing amount of heat that occurs toward the end of the run and melting the hose,
I like to use salvage drums as they are a little thicker than standard steel drums, They also come with a good rubber seal. One company that carries them is Cary, Here is a link, look down to the bottom of this page to find the salvage drums (they are yellow) I paid about $80 for the 15 gallon size, http://www.thecarycompany.com/containers/steel_drums.html
Hi Mart , if they wont cancel your order all is not lost as that would make a good large size filter , also as Gary mentioned don’t bother with a shop vac at all , but if you need something for sucking or blowing you can buy 12volt auto vac’s , or mattress pumps on ebay cheap and that’s what I use to start my gasifier .
Thanks, I can get them locally to me for 20$. I can get 55 gal plastic for $10.00 each. They sent my $ back for the plastic barrel whew glad they did. I will continue to scan craigslist for deals. In the mean time I think I will upload pictures of my carb, and start working on the filter.
Well I have collected a few things for this project, I now have 2 5 gal buckets full of charcoal, a metal bucket I got from roofing tar, Foam mattress for making filters. After opening up the the air filter to look at the carb, I can see that the inlet is all plastic, not a good thing if I plan on putting in hot gasses from the wood gas.
So next need to gather materials for making like a bulkhead fitting into the bucket, for the pipes to fit in. Will need hoses I think.
Any woodgas/chargas should be well cooled before it reaches the intake. That said, carbon/soot build-up can catch fire; or a backfire could crack the plastic intakes.
Hi Mart ,
Good to see that your continuing your charcoal project , if I can suggest a few things it may help you , take off the plastic filter housing ,as you wont need that .
Get a piece of 2 or 3 mm mild steel sheet and cut to shape with 2 holes for fastening and one 25mm hole in the centre and weld a tube or pipe nipple to it , you can then slide or screw on the gas pipe or mixer valve to that .
The other thing I would do ,if that isn’t an electric start engine would be to take off the pull starter and use a drill with a socket on it to spin the engine over .
If you want a few pictures of what I did with old pipe and scrap fittings onto the engine let me know and I will go out and snap a few for you .
All the best
Dave
I will take the plastic filter off and look at it again. I have used the drill method on my lawn mower there I used a dremel and cut a hole so that the socket would fit over the nut, the compression was great so will use a bigger drill next time. But yes a good way to start these is essential, my favorite is starting fluid.
Hi Mart ,
One other thing I forgot to mention is the crankcase breather tube , a few of my engines if not used on a daily basis would be hard to start and I found that the dry gas had seized up the butterfly’s on the choke and throttle , so I drilled a hole in the pipe nipple and squeezed the breather pipe into that making sure its airtight , the small amount of oil thrown up from the crankcase seemed to have cured the sticking butterfly’s .
With the drill spinning the engine there isn’t really a need for starter fluid if all is airtight and the engine has good compression .
Have you decided what you will use for the nozzle yet ?
Dave
You know Mart that charcoal gas is already a vapor, unlike gasoline, and you will be amazed how easy starting it is - almost better than starting fluid in my experience as long as the air mixture is right.
Mart, I see that those are listed as spring latches but the only “spring” they have is the over center tightening feature. Those will be hard to mount on a lid and will not give you any puff back protection. Gary Gilmore is good at making his own spring designs like this one using angle iron and flat stock plus a compression spring.
