Just how harmful is tarry gas in an engine?

Nope. And like I said in the post above:

I had a mazda with a wankel engine. They run good, but prone to back fire in the exhaust and blow up the muffler.

Hello community. Like the idea of using wood gas for an internal combustion engine. However from this thread and other sources, I have learned that this wood gas needs to be clean as possible before entering the engine.

Which has me wondering, how are electrostatic precipitators at cleaning the wood gas?

cleaning of wood gas is something I have been thinking about for a long time. I will tell you a story from when I worked for internatinal truck company. They had trucks with spreader bodys used to spread ag lime on crop land ( very dusty ). The owner always installed a old oil bath air filter on all these trucks and never had any engine proublems. He purchased a brand new truck and was assured the new filter would take care of the lime dust. Less than 2000 miles we were changing out the motor in this new truck and we put a old oil bath filter on this time ( this took care of any lime dust proublems) ----the question is there too much water to over come oil bath,how much power do you lose by filtering out carbon dust,then instaling it where oxygen is resticted so not to burn in a flash back ( just something I have been thinking about)