Celebrating the Classic Woodgas Vehicle

Well you convinced me. When MEN first started messing with WG probably around 1980 they made it seem much more complicated, at least for my pea brain. Your explanations made much more sense. Thanks.

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I don’t think that’s true Wayne. I think you’re a great teacher.

Many years ago (early-mid 90’s), long before Tesla or the major manufactures started selling electric vehicles, I bought a book explaining how to convert a car yourself. I don’t know if it was me or the book, but I could not make heads or tails of it. But when you explain gasification, it’s easy to understand.

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That’s exactly my thinking. I started reading up on WW2 gasification already in the 80s and even more on the internet in the 90s and forward, but all the complicated diagrams and stuff made me shy away. Lack of fab skills and obtainium at the time made it seem even more out of reach.
Stumbeling on DOW 10 years ago was an eye opener. - It’s that it? Maybe I could do that.
With Wayne’s likeable personality, his easy going explaining and the wood…OMG, those golden chunk piles…I was hooked. I love all that wood related southern tecnology and it’s similiar to what I’m brought up with. Right up my alley.
8 years now since my first woodgas mile and they are piling up every day. I’m grateful.

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A different sort of post…
Remember these guys?


Their website {vedbil(dot)se} has been mostly scrubbed from the net.
A large portion of the site has been preserved at the Internet Archive “Wayback Machine”. You can get to a lot of it, and with patience, bring up some interesting stuff. I could only get 4 of their videos to download. Only one with much of the red Volvo in it.
Here are some links:

This link below will immediately download a 1:42 video that will play in VLC (open source free), Windows Media Player, and some other players. click with caution.
https://web.archive.org/web/20080219072317/http://www.vedbil.se/dagbok/bygge/films/ovningskorning.wmv
Hey, looky what YouTube AI found for us! :grin:

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Many of you have seen this truck and video before. I believe it belongs in this topic. I will include two versions of the video. The first one has closed captioning in English, which is great for some of us. The second one has better quality video, no captions, but is the closer to the original source, I think.
(YouTube won’t let me put the videos here without all the commercial baggage. I tried.)

(50) Wood gas truck WW2 style (Plz subscribe ) - YouTube

Knottbilen til Odd Boe (youtube.com)

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This bus “tour” from Japan just makes me smile! :blush:

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Happy Week-end, wood gas fans! I was looking for a certain Citroen Traction driving-on-wood video, and found this one instead. It is fairly new and maybe not everyone has seen it already. The operator is maybe new to woodgas, and is not completely accurate in the narrative, but I admire anyone who would make the attempt to put this rare museum piece back in wood-consuming mode. Enjoy!

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Good find, Mike. I had not seen that one before.

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Yeah, good find. New to me too. That model is what Hitler used to ride (minus the gasifier). Funny he chose a French car :smile:

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When you consider how renown Germans are for their engineering, one must wonder why the Nazis seemed so insistent on driving other people’s stuff:

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I agree, what a lovely automobile! My understanding was woodgas, much like microcars, far more common in Europe then the US, was largely a result of shortages during and immediately after WWII. The Citroën Traction Avant was made from 1934 to 1957. The video claims this car is a '56. My history may be off, but I had thought the vast majority of woodgas conversions would have been prior to the mid 50’s. I wonder, was this an enthusiast willing to buck the trend, or an older unit repurposed on a newer car? Regardless, it’s a wonderful bit of history.

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mike, thanks for the nice topic and collection!

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Thank you, Giorgio!
How about some more?
These are public videos of Wayne Keith’s “Curtis” Ram V-10 build from five or so years ago. :cowboy_hat_face:

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I continue to admire that Citroën. Something I’ve wondered about regarding many historic vehicles, I don’t notice a heat exchanger or cooling rails. Is that because the older low compression engines could run on the warmer, less dense woodgas, or did engineers of old address this issue in another way?

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Some used front mounted coolers that were small, they also used almost all metal piping so the gas routing added to the cooling.

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I may have linked to this particular article before. It presents wood gas vehicles with a positive light and historical perspective. It is a solar-powered server, so sometimes goes off line, if so, try again later. You will see some familiar conversions, like Dutch John’s Volvo. :blush:

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While we are on a documentation kick, might as well link to the Wikipedia Wood Gas Generator article which also contains some familiar vehicles, sights and names. Wikipedia is not completely evil, there is still much good information there and is a good starting point for wondering about the world.

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Found this just now purely by accident… :cowboy_hat_face:

Which led to this one…

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I may have linked this before. Swedish site - not active since 2009, but a lot of pics.

http://gengas.nu/bilder/index.shtml

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I hear these run well on woodgas:

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