You guys crack me up … We finally got some rain !!! Been a month … LUV, Mike
PS, been shooting off fire crackers since it started … My new driveways finally got packed down and didn’t get washed out … GET BACK TO WORK and STOP TYPING … I worked all day and all weekend … 608-623-3000 if you need to chew me out … I’ve met Jim and Bill but Herb is still on my list but he is undergoing an experimental treatment and I got paralyzed last year so all is by invite only … You should have seen the guy I had to deal with today … I knew his mother for 30 years … She always drove a Cadilac … Just barked out orders. Her son has NO teeth and chain smokes cigarettes and was worried what I was going to charge … My wife sat in the truck with a broken toe for 1.5 hours … We finally agreed on a price and then we went to do another job that I won’t lose any money on and was on the level … Crazy world … I promised a few people wood rides over the last few weeks. I hope a few take me up on it so I can fire up the red truck … Mike
Don, you’re right about traction problems with FWD and wet conditions. I had a 1974 Olds Toronado using the stock 455 cu. inch. I could smoke a small block Camaro on any dry day, but not moist roads.
Wow! I am surprised about problems with FWD. The motor home I might be able to understand with the extra length, the weight dispersed all the way to the back and the tandem rear axles. But I would have thought with the Toronado, the weight of the engine over the drive tires would have given them more traction. I know with the Camoro some weight transfers to the rear when you punch it. I just didn’t thing the FWD would transfer enough weight to change the fact the weight of the engine and trans were over the drive tires. I kind of got my feeling about the weight over the drive tires from back when I drove a VW. With the weight of the engine over the drive tires on that, I never put on snow tires and went pretty much any whereTomC
I’ll never forget I was driving down this mud road one time, this is when they first came out, and the road kept getting worse, I just knew I was completely screwed, couldn’t go forward and couldn’t go backwards! So there I sat on this very off road stuck, sat there for a while wondering what I was going to do, the wheel wells were full of mud, long before cell phones, I put that thing in drive, turned the front wheels as sharp as they would go, floored it thinking I can’t get in any worse shape. That thing started throwing mud like crazy, it worked its way out of those ruts and completely turned itself around and I drove right out the same way I drove in! Ever since then I have been a FWD fan!
Tom C, you are spot on about the FWD pickup truck. The first FWD auto I owned was a Subaru wagon way back in 82. The thing would go anywhere. It was a pleasure on rainy roads cause wherever the front went the back followed along calmly. No sideways push from behind! I now own a Pilot with primary FWD ( you can kick in rear wheels if you need them) thing is good and heavy and will do what the subaru would do and then some. There must be some marketing reason for not producing a FWD pickup. Kinda like the 4 door pickup thing. I saw 4 door Datsun pickups way back in Costa Rica, many many moons before they ever came here.
carson
Still working with trying to find the owner of the limo, I been back to look at it a couple of times, it’s pretty ruff, quite a bit of rust in weird places like across the top right behind the windshield all the way across and about one inch back, the vinyl top has let go and is rolled back about two inches and rusty. I would really like to do a limo but I’m thinking this one is a little to ruff. I think the owner is in trouble with the law and therefore hard to reach, kind of weird, the car is setting at this old run down motel out in country only about five miles from here, nobody seems to know anything about it, I’ve left my number with them but so far no call, price would have to be real right and mechanically sound or will keep my eye out for a different one. Latter
How in the heck did you find this Bill? I was about cross eyed reading before I found it but if you look long enough there it is, a little piece on the Wood Powered Caddy under " Single Fueled Vehicles" which of course it isn’t but I guess it’s pretty cool that it’s on there, I pushed on some button and also found a very familiar looking red Dodge v10 that also runs off of all things “wood” how strange!
Is officially off the table, I found out today the wife of the guy wants 4 grand for it, that’s about 3 grand more then I would want to give! I still want to do a limo but considering what I have in front of me better wait. My wife is the smart one and always puts things in perspective, she said what do you want to do that for you already have one, she doesn’t get the stretched part!!
What you need is one of those 2 man log saws about 6 feet long and say “honey will you hold the other end and help me cut my car in half behind the front seat so I can stretch it?” She will probably say “why don’t you just buy one already stretched?”
I find that works with my wife.only she calls them toys
The older the boys, the bigger the toys …
Now all I can think about is getting an old Caddy and cutting the back off, the tuff part would be filling in the back of the now “cab” so it would look good then building a nice flat bed, that would be a real head tister!
Hi Herb. In my home town many years ago ( 50’s/60’s) there was a “scrap iron” dealer who bought Cadillac station wagons. Some one cut the back off from the Caddy and married an Oldsmobile station wagon to it… Visualize that and it may give you an idea of how to make a “style side” truck out of a Caddy to put your wood burner in. Eliminate the roof of the station wagon. As long as you are “thinking”.TomC
Now my head is starting to hurt!
Inside the air/gas steam to engine, thought I would post pics. Haven’t had that off the engine since I replaced gasket the third time when I first started trying to run woodgas and I guess I won cause it has about 5200 miles on it now and I hear tell should clean out at about 5. When I took that gas way off turned it over I saw what it looked like, after I went in and cleaned myself and put on some fresh trousers I took a pic of it, if I took my intake off the “A” and it looked like that, well I hope that never happens! Anyone thinking about blowing woodgas in there engine please think about these pics, I understand it doesn’t hurt engine and probably not blower rotors either but yeah you probably will make more power but soooo many disadvantages.
Is this what the rest of you are finding?
Pop offs: they have went off a couple of times, I know they are pretty small but they do the job.
Inside intake and air/gas runner.
Pop off upside down.
Where WG comes from Gasifier and fresh air inlet, comes from stock filter.
Close up of pop offs.
Carbon is found free in nature in three allotropic forms: amorphous, graphite, and diamond. Graphite is one of the softest known materials while diamond is one of the hardest. Looks about normal to me. Let’s all assume it’s the softest form.
Well Herb I can say this is much 'Tah-Doo about Nothing.
If a fellow is accustom to looking at gasoline droplet washed carbureted and throttle body fuel injected benn gasoline “spray cleaned” intakes; the first time he off’s an in-service “dry air” port fuel injected intake will be a real eyeball opener too. Especially if that intake plenum was bright aluminum!
From the throttle plates backsides to just above the intake valve in the actual injector spray pattern there will be a thick black, crusty and heat burnt-on carbons coating. That will be all from the vapor crud crap sucked up from the dirty crankcase oils by the PCV sucking up into the intake manifold; to be metered-in ran back into the engine for combustion disposal.
THICK, hard crusty crap you will swear would wear and score the cylinder chamber wall if broken loose.
And this is on high tier grades of gasoline. NOT soft lubricating, burnable woodgas soots.
So this “woodgas as clean as the air put in” is an obsolete; Before PCV’s mandates; and Before port EFI systems; from 1940’s old carbureted days dreaming/idealism.
Our real world engine conditions began in 1967 with mandatory Positive Crankcase Ventilation.
“Advanced” by then five emissions steps downs later, with by the late 1980’s virtually mandating port fuel injection to be able to meet HC’s and CO and Nox tailpipe out standards.
So I am being 21st century realistic. Not 1945, 1955, 1965 way-back unrealistic.
Ideally for the engine valves and cylinder bore/rings we would not be making it eat hot crankcase acids, combustion blow-by craps; and recycled engine exhaust either!
But we do. And have for near five decades now. So what a little bit of fsoots carbons added, eh? Just add more carbon fuel to the combustion
What you are seeing now on the visible side of the throttle plates has been a reality to any working auto tech been dealing with since the change over from gasoline washing throttle body injection to only dry air port fuel injection completly in the 1990’s.
Now for two decades we’ve been having to point manually clean throttle plates, throttle body bores, idle air pintles and idle air passages about every 30K for good idle performance and to keep “Check Engine” lights out.
No more automatic gasoline washing of PVC dragged up cruds then.
Look it up:
Throttle Body Cleaning Service
Intake Plenum Cleaning Service
The first; if done by throttle body removal, has no bad side effects.
Either: done by highly promoted and profitable forced chemical machine systems in-place will wash so-much intake built-up cruds, so-fast that I’ve seen valves edges carboned up leaking then causing detected misfires. And LOTS and LOTS of spark plugs washed crud’s ruined.
Demoed my own 1994 SEFI Ford pick-up at 44K just to prove this point. RAN worse misfiring from crud washed deposited spark plugs. Took a week to get them then burnt back off clean enough to not misfire code out!
So . . . for that one shop; that one time; I convinced IF upper plenum cleaning sold ONLY do just before a Sold spark plug change out!
In place fuel injector forced chem-machine cleaning was fine. No other harm done. Ussually. Seen with some systems with pressures and too aggrsive of chemicals cause fuel-rail o-ring joints leakages. Hey. Your gums bleed with a real aggressive dental cleaning too! A good bleed? I think not.
People get justifiably really pissed when a sold cleaning service results in a poorer running vehicle for them to try and drive drive home with a, “it will get better”. Or their vehicle now needing MORE services to restore to runnabilty.
I argued with pocket profit trolling service writer/“advsors” and chem equipment salesmen for years on this.
So Herb leave your “black” alone until you really need to do something about it.
Or . . . hot running engine water spray it regularly if it would bother you.
Your engine has been eating internally low grades of hot sulphuric, hydrochloric, and carbonic acids since day one. Been eating zink, and other metal salts out of engine oil additives since day one. Who knows the additives combustion heat derivatives from the gasolines? Been eating them too.
Only thing out of a woodgasifier you never want it to see are hearth ashes.
You are plenty of dropping , washing and filtering steps away from that.
That’d be no different than keeping abrasive road dusts out it. You only one paper pleat away from those!
Everything I drive gets a K&N on the air side.
100,000 miles later and I’m satisfied my pickup intake is just fine after that one bleeding gums assault attack.
TB manually cleaned twice. Fuel injectors twice machine cleaned. With the aged out sparkplugs changed right after these.
S.U.
Herb, I like those pop-offs. I have about the same size on my S-10 … I usually rig a hose on my shop vac to the intake ports and suck the soot out. Rotate the engine by hand to open up the different intake valves. do one side and then the other. My truck has a plastic intake so lighting it off is out of the question. Sometimes I just use the air compressor hose with the “gun” and just blow the crap out of it with the throttle body wide open and engine off and wait till the dust stops flying. Another option is to boil a quart of water and to run the engine at around 2000 rpm and then slowly pour the boiling water into the intake. It will turn to steam when it gets into that vacuum and go through the engine just fine unless you go nuts with it. This will also steam clean the valve stems as well if you have had one of those tar transgressions … Here in the salt belt my vehicles usually rot away from salt before I have to do this stuff anymore. I finally figured out out to make clean gas … Mike
Lots of good info, I guess I knew from other posts and “how to clean” videos that the carbon was going to be there, but when you see it in your engine it is kind of a shocker. I will follow cleaning instructions and I’ll be back in business, as usually thanks for the very knowledgable advice!