Green Dragon
Bonneville Bound !!
Green Dragon: Setting a carbon-neutral land speed record. by Half Fast Productions — Kickstarter
and while you’re at it make it as complicated looking as possible so anyone looking at gasification thinks it’s too hard for a regular joe guy to do… other than that looks real impressive… wish them luck.
you gonna have another go at it Wayne?
Looks like if you calculate speed vs, dollars invested, Wayne wins hands down. 
Hello Arvid ,
I wish I could but it is a long trip from here !!
Now I understand the Federal government.
Oh, what’s that you say, you’re running out of money?? That may be your first dose of the reality of that type of gasifier. And tell me again how many horsepower of electric motors it takes to make those nifty “bio-waste pellets”?? 200hp, 300hp, yeah, that’s real efficient. Let’'s do those carbon neutral calculations again.
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Just shoot me now!
Those throw money at it people have got ahold of gasifiers, nobody is safe now.
Maybe they got the idea from one of those TV shows.
Mr. Wayne Keith, I have been thinking of going to Bonneville again this year, (I try to go as often as I can). It is 800 miles south from my place. I down loaded all the paper work to race in the 130 MPH Club, a month ago. I have not done anything with it yet, but this Green Dragon has got me going. Pre-entry Fee is $435.00, includes course prep fee of $35.00, and last but not least is $50.00 to join the Utah Salt Flats Racing Assoc. And this all has to be pre paid no latter than July 1, 2015. Don’t forget all the other money one needs to get there and back. I think I can do it with a little help from friends. I think you should go down and defend your title, what you say Mr. Wayne Keith? Think about it and let me know your thoughts, I’m all in if your up for it.
Besides it’s a blast to be part of Speed Week, and a great vacation for you.
Looks impressive (not impressed my self)…
It aint what is on the outside , but its the inside that counts .(laugh)
I’ll take a shabby looking WK gasifier over that any day .
But all in all I wish them well …
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Good morning Mr. Ron .
Thanks for the kind words .
I feel very fortunate to have carried the torch for a while and now there are plenty of gasified vehicles around that are deserving of the title . When I was building this truck nothing about a race track was ever considered . It was designed to go to the grocery store , drive to church and take the kids to school . The previous record holder’s supercharged vehicle was being built , designed to set the speed record and did for a year .
I was lucky enough to break his one mile top speed record just out of the gate at 2/10 mile, so the rest of the mile ( 8/10 ) was no issue, and keep in mind done with the family car.
Yes I do need a vacation but I am covered up with duties . Also it is over 2,000 miles one way trip for me.
Any applause for the Salt Flat event must go to Mother Earth News magazine . They made it possible for me to make the trip .
Thanks
Wayne
.
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going to be funny when the truck goes about 80-85.
(What ours can do on a daily basis to get groceries)
Well . . . remember this record attempt IS racing.
“Ain’t nothing stock about a Nascar Stock Car”
Don’t meant to be a mealy-mouth but the proof of this it in the tow-it there front bar
and the small passage-way radiator adapted in gas cooler on this has to be smaller engined Ford Ranger chassis.
I recon 500 miles of actual road driving would carbons clog that radiator gas-cooler.
Daily capable driver I’d put up better TerryG’s, SeanF’s and a couple of others street capable gasified Rangers
S.U.
Wayne – thanks so much for sharing the Kickstarter link. For those of you who feel this vehicle makes gasification look too complicated, I should point out that it was designed and built as a test platform specifically to test various configurations to get the most power and cleanest burn as part of a startup green energy business. The idea was to charge farmers a nominal fee to haul away their agricultural waste, dry it and pelletize it (using biowaste to fuel the process), then lease the farmers a gasifier-fueled generator and sell the pellets back to them. It penciled out at about 6 cents per kWh for the farmers and was still profitable for the business. Eventually the person who was trying to start the business decided he had to go back to working for a company if he ever wanted to be able to retire. So the vehicle was available for our documentary.
I’d like to ask you all for two favors – first, I’d like you to be open-minded enough to watch the video on the Kickstarter link. Our goal is to develop an educational resource that will influence policy makers and inform the public about a carbon-neutral energy resource that is largely ignored. Secondly – I’m hoping that one of you (or more) will be willing to show up at Bonneville with your gasifier-fueled vehicle so we won’t be the only ones there attempting to improve on Wayne’s record. It would be a lot more fun for us all if we could get several vehicles to compete. It would make the documentary more interesting and it would increase the potential for publicity about gasification.
Green Dragon: Setting a carbon-neutral land speed record. by Half Fast Productions — Kickstarter
Regards,
McQ
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Do it. Do it. Do it!!! I’d love it if there was another team there running on wood gas. We’re planning on the World of Speed event rather than Speed Week. I think that’s scheduled for Sept 12th-15th.
Tell me what you’re driving? The Green Dragon is only a 4-cylinder Ford Ranger. The top speed with the original configuration was only about 48 mph. So it’s on loan to a vocational college in Seattle called the Lake Washington Institute of Technology, where some of the students are using this project as an opportunity to design and install some modifications to make it a little faster. Hopefully, we’ll have a pair of super-chargers mounted in the next few weeks. They’re also converting the gasifier fuel input to a fuel-injection system. We’ll be happy to share the info on how to do that, assuming we can get it to work. It should help us save fuel for regular driving.
Let me know if you plan to show up at Bonneville. Hope to meet you there.
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Hi Steve – actually the radiator is used to cool water for a tank that we bubble the fuel through. Mounting it on the roof is hardly the most aerodynamic configuration, so we plan to mount a standard A/C heat exchanger in front of the radiator to replace the roof-mounted radiator. But driving from Seattle to Bonneville via Berkeley and various other locations along the way for interviews with other folks involved in gasification will make for about 1,500 miles of driving. Then we have to get the vehicle back to the NW. So I’m sure we’ll have several equipment failures along the way – at least it seems likely to me.
For reference, here’s some videos of this truck from May 2009.
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Dennis,
I hope you’re not put off by the skepticism here. There’s a lot of dreamers out there and we see all of them come and go. In general the more the project costs, the less grounded in reality it is.
We’re all for woodgas development, and it’s good to see someone work on a project of any sort.
In the past, there have been many attempts by universities and big grant-funded projects to improve the state of the art… whereas the only actual improvements generally come from true woodgas users - people who put thousands of hours on working systems in the field. A lof of needless duplication comes from not asking the folks who know.
To be blunt, you guys have gone at this backwards. If you’d asked the woodgas community for advice, we could have saved you a ton of money and effort. The gasifier is your weak point right now, and will continue to be. Not sure what you’ve spent so far, but a Keith style gasifier can be built for around $1000.
If you asked me to build a land speed record vehicle, I would choose almost the opposite of the path you’re going down. You need a big gasifier running wood chunks, biggest motor you can afford with high compression pistons, naturally aspirated, lightweight aerodynamic vehicle, and no emphasis on electronics. Basically a pro-touring hot rod. Supercharging is completely unnecessary to break the record, it will just eat up your research budget, and is frankly a waste given your motor and vehicle. A supercharged 4cyl Ranger will be hard pressed to beat a V8 Dakota, gasoline or woodgas.
Again I hope you aren’t put off or feel unwelcome here. We want everyone to succeed, and this is why you’re hearing the hard truth. If we didn’t care, you would get polite silence.
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Hi Dennis,
I did watch your video Friday. The truck looks good. I am very curious about your wood gas ‘injection’ and how it works as well as how well it performs.
These are only my feelings- Even if I could go 100 miles/hour on wood gas I couldn’t and wouldn’t take Wayne’s record from him. As I see it, Wayne and everyone here on this site have shown me a new way of independence I never could dream of. People here share those ideas, trials and errors so that I can build my truck and gasifier as good as I think it can be. Wayne comes up with new ideas and doesn’t hesitate to share those ideas with us.
We have wood gas meet ups a couple of times a year. This is where we share ideas and experiences. I don’t know of anyone here that drives on pellets because wood is what we have. So wood processing is also getting advanced for the average guy here.
Again, if you want to share here what you have learned and developed, my guess is you will get a lot of questions and feedback.
Good luck
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Hello Dennis,
Welcome to the site.
Just wondering how do you shut off the gasoline fuel supply to the truck.
Thanks for the response back and clarifications DennisMcQ. Great you willing to commit to a drive it there and back.
Really what you are running into here is a membership push back against the 70-'s to current decades of woodgas $$,$$$,$$$ Top-Down worldwide projects failures. This is versus the historical 1940’s, early 80’s; to now 1990’s to current Change from the Bottom-Up, practical work use-it, individual systems successes for only $,$$$ per system.
So . . . you want to impress us bottom-up guys it would be one of you Video-Promotional guys actually using this Ranger as a daily driver.And then video up your daily use/fix/maintenance experiences
State of Washington, do use a Rural county vehicle licensing base (maybe one of the eastern WA ag guys) or expect to have to $$,$$$ qualify With WA Ecology for an experimental one-use only factory/fuel systems emissions modification legal road use exemption.
And yep. Puget Sound area based you will want to stay away from “sacred” whole tree wood fuels or alienate your Urban Greens $/political supporters. Same-Same as Kirkland based Ranger pickup woodgaser welder/fabricator T.D. learned. Signage as a “Fueled with Wood” got him road-rage aluminum Jolt-can pelted and un-invited from urban Puget Sound side alternative energy-fests. Changed his signage to the heating wood pellet fuel he was actually using then welcomed with open arms as Clean and Green. Publicizing then got him NIMBY alphabet name State’s departments liable.
He eventually just moved out of state. Dropped his woodgas net presence. And now mums the word, does as he pleases.
Look up Seattle Times articles about him ~2003-05.
Success on your trip.
Steve Unruh
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