In the old days when all cars had mechanical fuel pumps, when one went bad we often purchased an electric fuel pump and plumed it in. ( as a mater of fact I have an old Toyota in the yard that has such a change one it.) After you got to an electric fuel pump other thinks are simple. To switch from running on gasoline to char-gas you can attach a toggle switch to shut the electric pump off. If you want to run high-bred, you can attach an old dash light rheostat or better yet a PWM to the fuel pump so you can run full flow gasoline, partial flow, or no gasoline by adjusting. There has been a lot of conversation on PWM if you read back. TomC
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Electric fuel pump with PWM makes perfect sense, but you can, if necessary, use an inline adjustable needle valve. I once (1979) had such a setup on a car and controlled the valve from the driver’s seat via pieces of drill rod connected with tiny universal joints. For this kind of physical control, a flexible drill shaft or dremel shaft would allow easier Knob placement and give smoother control.
The breather is disconnected from the air filter canister, and any other potential air leaks stopped as well, to ensure that the mixture is 100% controlled by the [former] manifold heat butterfly.
Regarding the mechanical fuel pump: On a carburetor engine, you will need to devise a way to stop the fuel at the jet. One thing to remember is that the float bowl will empty out more or less, causing a lean mixture, more or less, correspondingly. I don’t know if a PWM setup on an electric fuel pump will allow for much control in this situation.
The briggs V-twin that I worked with at Open Source Ecology had a handy solenoid for shutting off the fuel in an instant. That’s ultimately what you want, but I have no idea how to do that on an '89 corrolla.
Good to hear from you, Robin! Thanks too for your help at the workshop. We sweated a lot on that project! I don’t know if the gasifier has seen little or much use. It must have been a success in the intervening years, because Marcin has asked me back several times, but I’ve been too busy to make it out there again.
The lumina still runs and is a regular (almost daily) driver, but the gasifier got water in it, and I removed it to dry out the charcoal but have not re-installed it. I hope someday my schedule will allow me to resume efforts on this.
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Thanks for the reply, Dan. Hope to see the van running on charcoal again soon!
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Thanks Dan, Tom and Bruce for your feedback.
Should a filter be added to the disconnected breather hose and tube?
As far as the fuel pump is concerned, I think I can rig up a cable controlled fuel cut-off valve between the fuel pump and the carburetor, but I see that the delay while the float bowl empties will result in a period during which it will be tricky to get the proper chargas/air mixture.
Another thing I’ve heard of is to provide a whole second air intake underneath the carburetor, and a second throttle, so you have two accelerator pedals, one for the gasoline carb and one for the gasifier air mix. This would be quite a lot more involved, would have to do some custom welding and machining. I think victory gas works did this on an old dump truck. Then you step on whichever gas pedal you wish, or some of each.
Regarding a filter on the breather, not sure what you mean by that. On the Lumina, the breather pipe comes out of the valve cover and goes nowhere, just hangs in midair, and the place where it went on the air filter canister is sealed up.
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Hey Mr. Dan
Would you please share more details of your charcoal powered tractor nozzle in detail I read the same in your blog but there is only picture not pipe size
Regards
Vinod
It was 1-inch NPT on the tractor, and 2-inch NPT on the Lumina APV.
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BTW I no longer have the Lumina APV. The transmission went bad, and it was fairly badly rusted underneath, so I scrapped it. Sadly, I haven’t done anything with charcoal gasifier vehicles since then.
Gas is going up. I bet you start back at it soon. 
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Ain’t that the truth. Stop the Keystone Pipeline, so we can focus on deforestation for our wood-powered vehicles. Just kidding. For most of my heating needs I actually burn pallets which would otherwise either take up space in a landfill, or be chopped up into mulch which eventually becomes atmospheric carbon again (in the form of methane, if it rots by that process) anyway.
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The north part of the keystone pipeline was so canada could export oil to china via the port in houston versus building their own port since they do not have one that is open all year. Obama increased the capacity of the inlets in I believe two places for US needs, which also means most of the pipeline (and leaks) will affect canadians not americans. The real problem is tar sand oil is more abrasive then regular oil so it wears out the pipeline a lot faster because of the 50 year depreciation schedule, we would have a trillion dollar liability in our country until 2070+.
With EVs coming along about as well as expected, we could be looking at 2030-40 for oil independence and we can be a net exporter again. We didn’t have to get -all- of transportation, only part of it. It will be interesting to see what happens post-covid scare to see how many jobs remain/be work from home and how that will effect the oil demand.
But I’m off into the woods, while I am here I need to pick up some sticks for char production. Char keeps a while…
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Thanks Mr.Dan
For your kindness.
For sharing your experience
Regards
Vinod
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This is one of the biggest simple fire gasifers that has been built on this site. It ran a V-6 engine. The Barrel finally rusted out. It was also in the updraft configuration. It shows us how simple a design can be a get a vehicle down the road on charcoal. Just wanted to bump this back to the top for newer members can see it.
Bob
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Hey Dan, I thought I’d ask on this topic for relevancy.
Is the Lumina van a Body on Frame or a Unibody? I’ve been thinking about how to go about putting a gasifier on my 3100 powered Buick Century. I have been thinking about using a Reece adapter and then a luggage rack, but I’ve also been thinking of just replicating how those adapters mount and make a fixed platform for the gasifier.
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Uni. The most it has for a frame is the engine cradle which bolts to the body just aft of the front fender. I used uni-strut rails to mount the barrel. These stuck out just far enough to bolt the barrel to, but then went through notches in the tailgate about 4 feet inside the van and bolted to the floor.
Look for the squarish green rails in the photo.
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Under the carpet in the back of this van, the floor is really nice flat, and slightly corrugated, similar to a pickup bed. The only protrusions are a heavy steel loop here and there where the seats fastened.
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