Here is my water tank. Holds 2 gallons which is plenty for traditional amounts of water. The pump and misting nozzle are adjustable from 0-15 drops per second (0-3 quarts per hour). For Koen’s water to char ratios I would need more capacity.
The double bell reducers hold bronze wool that serves as a flame arrestor. The misting nozzle is on a 1/8 inch pipe nipple 4 inches long that passes through the arrestor.
Almost ready to fire up.
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Off of jack stands. Only ignition wiring between me and startup.
<img Half round weights to keep charcoal moving toward the nozzle. If this doesn’t prevent cone shaped hollow in char, I’ll add a shaker.
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Ready for lid. Notice new location for flare. Red with piezo igniter.
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Man it looks great! Where did you obtain a piezo?
Thanks. The piezo is from an old gas cooking grill. They are available as replacements for the same.
I tackle the wiring today. MGs are known for bad wiring and there are several melted wires and others that are no longer needed for smog stuff.
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It looks like you accidentally typed your words into the middle of the picture tag.
Looks great! I can’t wait to see how it works out.
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It’s Alive! I took the MG for a ride today, but encountered a few problems.
I have a check valve that is not closing fully and allows some air to enter the system through my flare connections. I’ll replace the check valve with a ball valve.
The gas ignited clear and hot with the piezo in just two minutes. Dummy me, the piezo igniter has a plastic body that quickly began to melt and burn inside the flare pipe after ignition. A quick clean flare is the only thing that was easy today.
Starting the engine was much harder than on my Toyota. It was hard to find stoich on this. Hopefully fixing the check valve will make it easier to get good gas tpo my mixer next time. Starting wasn’t so bad on the MG once I found the magic spot on the valve --2 1/2 turns on a 6 turn gate valve. This will probably change when I fix the air leak.
Once I got the starting figured out, I played around with the controls for 30- 40 minutes trying to get a feel for the air mixing valve and timing adjuster, in order to give good idle and acceleration, then I went for a ride. About 5 miles from home the Temperature on the cyclone outlet suddenly went up from 200 to 300F so I headed for home. I was able to drive in 4th gear on the level, but on this winding back road I never went much over 35 mph.The temp didn’t go up anymore than 300 on the way home but it is a good thing I turned around.
When I got back I discovered that a short threaded brass bulkhead fitting had fallen out of one end of the tuyere and the the reactor was suckiing air directly through the side of the barrel–not good. The barrel was glowing around this hole and flames started licking out when I shut the engine off. I turned the flare fan on just enough to suck the flame back into the barrel, then grabbed a handful of refractory cement to plug up the breach. BTW, the thermocouple gauge quit working on the drive, but came back on when I got home and was reading 1500F. The thermocouple lies directly under the copper nozzle. With the cement patch in place, I shut down the flare fan and the temp started dropping. I’m sure glad that I made it home and patched things up without catching me or something else on fire.
It is going to be a while until I get back to this since my 1987 daily driver truck failed inspection yesterday and the repair list is long. I’m just happy that I got a little closer to making the MG road worthy.
I’ll post pictures when I empty the reactor and survey the damages.
Oh yes, one more thing. My giant sparkler didn’t work for lighting the charcoal on this one like it does on my little gasifier. I resorted to a squirt of flammable lubricant (like WD40) and my torch.
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Well done Bruce , once the air leaks are sorted I am sure that things will settle down and you will soon have the hang of where everything needs to be for a quick start and drive away .
Sure going to be interesting to see how the copper nozzle tube held up to that little run at least that will give a good idea to how things are working out .
Dave
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OK Bruce!!! Glad you finally got the olde char fired MG rolling down the road. If you had gone much longer with that plug missing, you would have ended up with a BIG sparkler going down the road. I’ll be anxious to hear what wife has to say 
Then again, maybe you should just keep this experience to the DOW crew.
Gary in PA
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Bruce you did a nice job of fitting that all in that trunk space and keeping it low. The first few trips are always nail biters (for me anyway) waiting to see what will go wrong first and next. Sounds like your list on this one is not too long and that is a sign of good planning. Great job!
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Bruce,
You’r on the way to be an experienced charcoal driver, with a damn nice build i might say…
let the lemons come…
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Very nice build !!!
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Bruce when l saw that blue button ot the topic title l knew the time had come! Looking great! Do you have any idea how the halfround weight works? Hope you fix it soon to see some realy nice driveing.
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Bruce, that is a beautiful build you have done there. Looking forward to a walk around video and a video drive with you.
Bob
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Gentlemen, Thanks for the encouragement. I’m learning a lot and having fun along the way.
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Kristijan, So far the weights are working perfectly.
Notice that the charcoal is peaked in the center rather than concave. This looks like it may be a winner.
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Congratulations! Beautiful job. Good news that you made it back just in time to keep the combustion under control. Can’t wait to see working after all the tweaks are finished.
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Hi Bruce ,It doesn’t look like its used much charcoal at all considering you were playing with the mixture for 30 mins before driving 5 miles out and 5 miles back even at the speed you travelled its looking better all the time , are you going to have a dig down to the nozzle as well ?
Dave
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Dave,
I’m hoping for a 50 mile range. Yes, I will dig it all out, check everything and rebuild the failed connection. I’ll share pictures.
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