Don’t give up yet your just getting to the fun part!!! BBB so you can SWEM!!!
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Old dogs and so on…
I’ve been down in a fewer, sore throath and runny nose since yesterday morning (Snotty Walter visited earlier this week 
).
BUT - today I started chewing my knuckles in the couch. Wife jabbering about dogs and pedigrees - and I was trying to concentrate on gasification. To calm down I went out and lit up.
In the back of my mind I’ve been wondering for some time if maybe my heat exchanger is a little tight on the air side. I decided to do some experimenting.
The gasifier air supply has a removable cap where I can let fresh air straight into the nozzle manifolds, bypassing the heat exchanger. I did some top speed testing at a certain stretch of the road. First with all the air going through the heat ex and then I removed the cap and drove the same stretch again.
Wow, what a difference. Top speed increased from 90 to 110 (55 to almost 70) at that particular stretch.
Also, a huge difference in vacuum ratio. It climbed from 3:1 to 6:1 or even more. Obviously much less work for the hopper area to pull on the nozzles.
Maybe my imagination, but it seemed even the exhaust had more bark to it at WOT.
I’ve been jumping up and down the truck bed enough for today. I’m back to a headache and an increasing fewer - BUT with a smile. The thinking chair is next.
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Thats super interesting. Why you think that is? Just less drag?
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I have also wondered, why do I only have 2 "air in?
Shouldn’t it be better to go up to 3 "?
Can you test with 120mm choke as well? Made a big difference to my car.
You did not get covid, did you?
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JO,
You’ve got real issues and I know you are only one of many, myself included. How can the weary get rest if we are always dreaming of ways to improve our gasifiers. That’s the real sickness, I tell you. . . .
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I guess so. At least short term, with less vacuum and better cylinder filling.
Long term, I hope the upper row of nozzles will flow better and help increasing the char making ability at longer trips. Right now running hard for long periods of time starves the firetube of fine char.
I’m planning ahead right now how to open up the heat ex and feed both manifolds with less restriction.
The volume of air in is about 1/3 of the gas out. 2" should be sufficient. My pipe-in-pipe heat ex air intake is a lot tighter.
That could be the next test.
Naw, I don’t think so. Normal colds still exist 
It’s called woodgas addiction
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Hmm, just when I made my car work a little better so it does 80 - 90kmh, then you get yours to do 110.
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Ops, I’m sorry about that 
What did you do to make yours run better?
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12mm air nozzles, 120mm restriction and found a vacuum hose that was loose, probably fixed the idle.
Krya på dig.
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Tack.
I did that by installing a new tennis ball valve and go for another test ride
In the video I read the guages slightly wrong. I was pulling 12:2 with the by-pass valve open vs 15(16):5 with the valve closed.
I’m still amazed how only 3-4 inches less vacuum at open road speeds can make for this amount of extra power.
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Thanks for the ride, what percentage are you on with the intake nozzles against restriction?
How much air intake do you have without preheating
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About 8%. 15×8mm vs 110mm if I remember correctly.
The cold intake pipe is about 40mm ID. The finned heatex intake pipe-in-pipe void may have only half that csa.
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Hi Jan,
interesting. Maybe just leave the heat-ex for the lower row of nozzles and feed the upper row directly with fresh air for high-speed runs? So that the upper row can be switched on when needed for extra power, just as you did it before but with hot air?
And hope that your cold will be over soon!
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Thanks Til,
Woke up this morning with a little bit of a setback - the upper throat sore and swollen and no voice whatsoever. I’m on my back in the porch couch glancing at the truck, itchy to continue experimenting.
I think you’re right. I can still do 90% of my driving with preheat. Open up the valve, lowering the drag, makes for 98% and those last 2% will be on dino as usual.
However, this whole thing messed up my entire conception of the world. Wayne taught us all about the perfect 3:1 vacuum ratio and how it tells us the state of the charbed. Both my gasifiers confirmed his logic, even if they are a completly different breed. Everything was crystal clear, I thought this was the end of the road and my wood-gasification knowlidge was definite 
Of course I’ve noticed that if the hopper lid is offset the hopper vacuum is always zero. Of course I’ve realised the hopper vacuum at all times adds to the overall system vacuum.
BUT- for some reason I never realised the vacuum ratio is first of all determined by the air drag prior to the nozzle tips. Niether did I realise how important less drag is for high end power. Makes my head spin with all sorts of ideas.
Driving on dino we often underestimate the power needed to go fast. A WAG is my truck needs close to twice the power maintaining 110 vs 80 (70 vs 50 mph).
If only a few inches of vacuum makes this kind of difference, maybe it would be worthwhile chasing down a few more tight spots.
Sorry if I get a little carried away
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Cyl filling ratio is crazy important with woodgas. Its how l squeezed 130kmh from my 1.6l chevy. It had 4 valves per cylinder…
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Woodgas is a volume bulky fuel in comparison to gasoline misted droplet fuel. Realize we do not extrenal of the combustion chamber/before the intake valve; intentionally gaseous vapor the gasoline. Those that have tried this soon learn about engine wild pressures spiking destroying. And under hood explosion fires.
Actually I am still amazed that we can comparison power as well with blended woodgas as we do.
Gives truth to just how much gasoline and diesel energy we still waste away in after engine exhaust cleaning up systems.
The woodgas simple molecular components not needing most of this.
Yep. A water moisture maker. A CO2 emmiter. But IF wood fueled you are actually just CO2 recycling. And useable H2O recycling.
Woodgas power is truly plants concentrated solar energy harvesting and harnessing.
Plastics and Municipal Solid Wastes as your gasifier inputs you are still Dino fueling dependent. Still a contribution maker. just down scaling yourself down to the level of a human cockroach. A human dung beetle.
Regards
Steve unruh
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No reason to involve myself in this since I don’t know anything about wood gas but I have wondered if injecting a percentage of methanol into the water feed of a charcoal gasifier would increase the power of the gas. I was actually thinking that fitting an auto engine injector and fuel pump would vaporize the mixture as it fed the fire from the charcoal. Methanol is easy to make, though very corrosive and it can still be a wood product.
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It wuld make the gas richer, but not much more thain injecting pure water. You got to get hydrogen in there somehow, and the gasifier doesent realy care if that comes from water, waste oil, methanol…
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Tom can you advise me on how to do it?
Rindert
Lots of information available Rindert. I am interested in all alternate fuels. You need methanol to make black diesel.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=making+methanol+from+wood+chips
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