Jan; Don’t spend too much time on an air “pre-heater”. I made a counterflow heat exchanger about 13 feet long. I had 3" exhaust pipe carrying the hot gas in one direction, and 4" furnace pipe carrying the air in the opposite direction.
You might see a thermocouple in the pipe directing the heated air into the gasifier inlet. I was never able to get a reading off that. I just the worth of the heat exchanger by the trucks performance. There was NO obvious increase in performance. TomC
Jan, do you poke down your wood when you light up? Thats wery important. When the gasifier cools down the wood above charcoal glues together. If you light it as it is you only light charcoal and no wood falls down during warmup. You burn out all the charcoal before the glued wood warms and falls down, but now in a empty hearth causing low power and tar. Just a few pokes with a rod in the hopper just after lightup will asure you have nice flowing wood from the start.
Second, if l may repeat my self, l wuld encourage you to try charcoal mixed in your wood for a test. Not saying you need it all the time but if you try a hopper or two with wood with 10-20% charcoal by volume and your problems go away you get a clue whats wrong.
Charcoal does the folowing:
rises the heat in the gasifier (more tar can burn)
acts like a lubricant so there is less bridgeing of wood
captures moisture and releases it later on when it is neaded
makes startup and warmup faster
produces dryer gas that filters much better and makes less problems later on
This test doesent require you to do any modification to your sistem. Just rake a bucket or two of coals from your stove, cover to cool down and pour in your gasifier. One layr of wood, a few handfulls of charcoal. Layr of wood… or mix with chunks. No need to even grind the charcoal, the coals from the stove are the right size.
Thanks for all the tips.
I was going to show what it looks like when I start.
Usually there is some wood left that I pick away until I see the charcoal, you see a nozzle in the second picture at the top, then I light the charcoal and shave the wood back, refill if necessary.
The smoke from the fan is usually visible a little more, had not put in any new wood today.
When the pipe between the generator and the cyclone is so hot that I can not touch it, I usually start the car on petrol and drive about 400-500 meters before it gets too greasy and I drive on only gas.
Looks familiar
If you don’t like to wait, you can drill a small hole through the char down to the grate with your poker. Air will rush down that hole and feed the entire char pile. You will burn your fingers in seconds
This all looks ok. Do you pull gas from the hayfilter right away? If thats the case it is possible that tar from startup hangs up in the hay and gets released later like JO proposed. Other thain that this is beond me.
Only short advise l can give to lightup (in adition to JOs excelent advice) is l like to lightup, if possible, with a reductive flame of a torch (full throtle, air holes taped down). What then happens is the slow burning flames get sucked deeper and cover more area at once. Lighting the whole plane of the hearth as opposed to just one spot. Speeds lightup a bit and prevent tar fumes to escape trugh cold spots.
Jan; What is the gizmo mounted on the top of the gasifier just to the left of the lid opening? Looks like a selinoid or coil.
I see a ring around the center of your hopper. Did you cut a piece out of the hopper so that it didn’t stick above the cab? TomC
But increasing the heat of the incoming air should well reduce the risk of tar, so that I can make the restriction greater and increase the effect ?.
Saw that you had insulated the wood storage, is not it good to have uninsulated for the condensation?
engine started on starting fluid , had not bolted down rocker arm cover . rocker arm cover flew off , oil sprayed . Koen Van Looken k_vanlooken
type twin gasifiers system runs cool . Did not expect tar , tar only is in manifold reused pipe that had tar to make manifold . Can not find parts in stores .
Can you help me, it was possible to move the ignition 5-8mm (5 / 16inches), but nothing more, and I think it was useful.
It is possible to move the distributor in the other direction quite a lot, can I move the ignition cables one step and the distributor in the other direction?
How many degrees does one step on the ignition cables?
6 cylinders.
Or can I move the rail on the rotor to reset the ignition?
One more thing I wonder, why is it so careful with the measurement between the restriction and the bottom of the fire tube?
It says in the books that it should not exceed 4 ".
(imbert)
Morning, Jan!
Gloomy weather, right? Bad for wood drying, but good for DOW
You’re able able to set the timing by turning the dist only if the camshaft position is determined within the dist. Since most 95+ engines rely on a crank sensor I’m a little confused. Is there a set of small wires coming out of the base of the dist?
Probably because the author found a deeper charbed would not be necessary - only cause more drag and more ash accumulating on the grate.
Hello Jan. When you have an idea— try it. That is the only way to find out if it will work. It is my opinion that moving the wires around one position will give you the ability to advance more than 5/16 ths. I can’t advise you to start by moving the #1 wire to the #6 or #2 ( if firing order is 1,6,5,4,3,2). I would not advise modifying any thing mechanical on the distributor. TomC PS Start by putting #1 in #6 hole and then go on from there. Then you will have to move the distributor about as far as it will go counter clockwise to get the stock setting. Moving it clockwise from there will give you advance until the advance is firing on #6 which would be too far and I doubt if the engine would crank.
@JO_Olsson , today it was time to empty the cyclone again, what do you think will happen if I only empty the cyclone and not the unit?
Is not that what you really do?
Hard to tell. Some gasifiers plug up. I found out the Rabbit gasifier didn’t. Why I decided to go grateless on the second one.
As I see it there are two small downsides leaving things as is under the grate:
No1: Pulling hard on the gasifier small eruptions sometimes occur, my tiny cyclones bypass some of thar char and it ends up in the rear tank. No big deal though, since it will get flushed out when I do my rails anyway.
No2: Over time heavy white ash (sandy slag?) will accumulate on the gasifier bottom. I used to empty the gasifier to vacuum it, but I stopped doing that. The level of bottom sediment seems to self-regulate according to driving habits.
