If you do it the way JO sayd there will be no tar and l am willing to bet my head for it. I had a 11cm restriction on my chevy 1.6 l and l never got tar. Except when l got a big bridge in the hopper. Keep an eye on that and you will be fine.
Allso, in adition to JOs instruction, may l add l advice you use round chunks if you have them. They flow much better thain blocks.
Ok, I do as you say, I leave the OD for a while, so the rpm goes up a bit, and insulates the outside, the wood has dried this summer and is stored next to the boiler.
However, there was an oil shimmer on the water in the tank this morning, so tar is it probably.
Ok Jan, I hate to think it is tar but I have to go with what you say â a picture of what you are seeing would be helpful.
Listen to JO and Kristijanâ these two guys actually âdrive on woodâ where some of us do more talking. Added to what they said; I know right now is not a good time to be making âfuel woodâ but I would like to see bigger pieces than 2x2x1/2. JO has shown his Rebak chunking wood and I have shown my chunker. I think you will see they are larger ( Mr. Wayneâs run a little larger than either of ours because he has a different gasifier.) Before the Rebak, JO use to cut logs into 1 1/2â2 inch disks, then set down in the basement and with a hatchet chop them up into ( Iâm guessing) 2-3 inch pieces.
In the mean time you might go with a suggestion Kristijan/Bob have made is add some âgoodâ hard wood charcoal to the wood chunk mix. It may not be something you have to do continuously, but long enough to get your ash bed set. Good luck TomC
Hi Jan, I agree with everyone, JO, Kristijan, Tom. The ash needs to settle into the fire tube and form itâs shape, and the charcoal bed needs to settle in from the nozzles or tuyeres all the way the to the restriction opening and on down to the grate or the bottom of the gasifer if there is no grate.
When you have taken everything out of the gasifer to work on the gasifer, the whole process has to start over. Mixing in some charcoal wood chunks and smaller pieces with the wood will help to establish a good charcoal bed. Good dry wood is needed for this prosses.
One other thing to do is if you think you are getting tar into your intake then always shut it down using gasoline. I have a habit of doing this when I am going to do a hopper refill, this cools my hopper down. So now I always shut my gasifer down for the day doing this when I am pulling in to drain my condensation tanks and (hopper if it in cold winter temps) . I do not ever want to pee on a electric fencing or tar up a engine. I havenât yet and I am not planning on it.
Bob
Thanks for all the good advice, could not keep me from looking under the wood down at the nozzles yesterday.
It looks like itâs expanding an edge on the fire pipe between the nozzles, so youâre probably right Tom C, may be where the tar has crept past.
Hi Jan, on 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, even on my 12 nozzles or tuyeres fire tube tars can go in between the nozzles or tuyeres. The one place the tars can not get by with out going through is the restiction opening. This is where it will be caught and changed into good gases. This is why it is important to have a good seal of ashe in this area around the restiction plate, so all the gases, air, tar, moisture will go through the opening. This is where on a hard pull your white hot lobe is at and maybe down into the restiction opening. I have looked into my firetube when all there is left is charcoal above my nozzles or tuyeres all of the charcoal in the firetube is glowing hot, hotter, and real hot, even right next to the firetube wall.
It is down farther passed the restiction opening where the velocity of gases drops that the oxygen is used up and the hot charcoal starts cooling down rapidly. It is being controlled by how hard you are pulling a vaccum with engine and the velocity of air moving through the firetube. The real white hot lobe is in the center of the charcoal, it moves up and down in this fluid flow of charcoal that is coming from above and continues to move down towards the grate. The ash is doing the same thing.
Bob
Good Morning JanA.
I hope that BobMacâs last statement translates well and is understandable to you.
All of the publications stating that concern was to be at the planer oxidation zone at the nozzles were wrong. All of the ideas that opposing nozzles would be a problem was wrong.
Hard learned real experiences says that the REAL importance is enough distance/time AND HOT charcoal just above; and just below; the all-must-pass restriction opening as the real key operating condition.
Why a 60% downwards pointing six nozzles in two rows StephenAâs systems can, and do work well on coarse chipped wood fuels. HIS design chosen wood fuel. It satisfies what BobMac said; and I re-stated.
Ha! Ha! And I expect to get slammed for this âopinionâ.
The re-learned opinion of the all of the actual operating operators from the 1930âs to now.
Joni now even has a Soviet era publication stating this in scientific and engineering terms.
And re-prove by his own operating experiments.
Imbert was not wrong. What has been lost has been the old-learned operating procedures.
Seen in a few remaining pictures. Service men dumping out a Imbert converted military Jeep. With a fines clogged system.
True factory Imbert were an all-must-flow trough grating system. Experiences had shown the need for their three service ports system. With two ABOVE; and one and below the grate accesses needed. Sifting out the scraped out contents. AND THEN carefully recharging with some ash, and graduated sizing charcoal. Leaving out the excessive built up ash and fine soots.
Re-learned with the India Institute of Science units with them lower auguring out 7-9% by volume of the new wood fuel load put into the top. (These have no grates)
But NOT disturbing the actual bed pack.
The operating evidence-proofs are accumulating around us now.
Read less of the Brainiac stuff. âThemâ explaining what they think is happening.
Operate more. Draw your own conclusions based on your engines performance.
And quit peeking at the cooking rice. Let it un-disturbed steam-cook to fluffy perfection.
The vacuuming down examining layer by layer gasifier analyzers were wrong too. Unable to get consistent engine-under-power running results. Blaming the fuel. The system. Not their own meddlingâs.
It takes a real Operator. Having learned what NOT to do; as well as what to do, always. Consistently.
Regards
Steve unruh
Bob; If what you say is true, how is it ever possible to get tar past the restriction?
SU, I am still looking through postings trying to find anything that you have designed/ built/ and,or worked through the problems of getting it to run an IC engine. And you saying all the work that has been done studying gasifier and designing gasifiers is wrong and what you âthinkâ is happening is right??? TomC
That is a easy one to answer Tom, the gasifer is not hot enough when starting up the engine. Hopefully no tar gets to the engine the first time but you have now just contaminated your system even your hay filter, if you keep doing it the tar vapor will come to the intake.
You simply do not have enough charcoal reserve and you are always over pulling on your gasifer a lot, not to mention not enough gas to run the truck down the road.
Or when you load your gasifer after completely cleaning it out you do not reload it correctly like in the Imbert gasifer that Steve was talling about. Wayne has explained this in his book Have Wood Will Travel.
I remember the first time I reloaded my brand new rebuilt gasifer I put the ash in around the restiction plate to seal it up very carefully. I then dump some charcoal in after that. OOPS⌠WRONG 5 gal. bucket. This bucket still had ash and black fines in with the charcoal. It had settled in the bucket. I tried to the light it up and get it to run. BIG FAIL
I had to dump it all out and start over, it was plug up REAL GOOD.
Bob
Mr. Steve, life is too short to lose and survive in a bad mood, itâs a waste of your energy. Your work and the contributions you share here show great effort and knowledge in various fields, thank you for everything and God be with you.
Be out on a slightly longer trip, to drive in the unit
almost at home, the car got worse, much like with the old unit.
I cleaned the ashtray and the cyclone, but think it looks good.
Looked at the fire pipe this morning, but sees nothing strange except the ash around the nozzles, should it be like this?
I know I would not touch things, but want to know what is wrong.
Hi Jan, it sounds like everything is running great at first, right? And then it starts to lose power? If what I see in the bucket is out of your fire tube? Where are the bigger pieces of charcoal that should be On top around the nozzles or tuyeres in the upper part of the gasifer. See a lot of smaller fines and black/grayish ash in the bucket. Looks like you are constipated or plugged up to me.
Next run use bigger pieces of wood mixed in with the same stuff you a using right now. If it improves add more bigger pieces to your normal mix on the next run ect.
When you get back home. Try to have the hopper almost empty. Shut it down making sure the intake air blocked off. The next morning look into the hopper and take a picture of it. Then probe into the hopper carefully and feel if it is lose or a tight in the charcoal bed. Poke down through the holes in the grate. If it is easy for the rod to poke down that is good.
I always poke 7 to 10 times through the grate in different holes checking my charcoal bed and checking my charcoal reserves out. Keep using larger pieces in with your mix. I use pieces the size of my fist and a little bigger. If you put larger pieces of wood in this will help free up a tight charcoal bed.
Hope this helps you out.
It is really hard to tell once the charcoal is all disturbed dumped into the bucket.
Screen all the fines out before you load the firetube back up again.
Bob
What is in the bucket is from the ash hatch, there were nice big pieces of charcoal above the nozzles.
I also think it seems tight, but can not find where it is, the carbon bed seems quite loose.
I thought it was tight on the grate, but see no faults there.
Jan, you really like digging, donât you? 
I really admire your persistence.
One day, sooner or later, you will read back and smile - asking yourself why you didnât install vacuum guages in an earlier stage. Instead of dressing up as a coal mine worker every day and play the archeologist, you could do the analysis from the driverâs seat, still dressed in your Sunday shirt.
Any difference in required air-mix setting? If the air-valve needs to be squized, itâs probably to compensate for high vacuum and a tight charbed. Also, suddenly letting go of the pedal will throw off the mix and stall the engine if youâre too tight.
Solution: Keep running pretty hard to get rid of fines and ash. Worst case - tap or wiggle the grate.
Losing power because if a loose charbed on the other hand, can be somewhat dangerous. You risk making tar or overheat the gasifier. Probably some bridging going on, the grate slipping too much or too wet or too big wood.
Solution: Give the gasifier some slack for a while. Worst case - poke down.
At light up I try to remember what the gasifier was like when I last shut down. If it was tight, I avoid to let the debrie in the bottom of my bag go into the hopper.
If it was loose, I first poke down good and then fuel up with debrie and all. I may also reverse the blower one more time to make sure I burned any raw debrie falling deep down.
You probably already know most of the tricks by now - I just didnât know how to sort them.
My oldest son is doing some vacuum sensors, so Iâm waiting for them. But anyway, now the car is going well again, but I have done so many things so I do not know what the fault was, hmm.
Hi Jan, do what JO is saying, he explain it very well on how he runs his gasifer. I didnât know you didnât have any vacuum gauges, I was wondering why you did not mention any vacuum readings when driving your vehicle In your conversations.
Now you know why we refer to gasifers with the female characteristics. You are not sure what you did, but everything is okay now.
But before YOU were doing something wrong, but not sure what it was. Now you need to figure it out so if it ever happens again, and it WILL you will know how, and what to do to fix it.
The wood gasification lifestyle is good, it keeps you thinking all the time. This might help, I had a log book at first to write down everything I did with my gasifer, and I mean everything. It really helped me when I trying to figure how to run my gasifer. Now I do not do this anymore. I now know how or think I know how to run my gasifer, but SHE does let me know at times ⌠well you know .
You are learning good things Jan, keep going, you can do it.
Bob
Having the proper gauges on a gasifier is like having some type of insight into the female brain. You have a little warning before she shuts down or blows up 
I try to read everything you write on the forum, and it helps me a lot.
Like now when I changed the cyclone, after something one of you wrote, now it turned out to work really well, the same when I changed the gasfire, tested a bit on the icy roads at home today, and at 110 kmh (68mph) my wife started screaming , time to slow down.
This time I think it was the mattress that started to get tight after the cyclone did not work which was the problem.
So thanks for all the help.
Hi Jan, one other thing that I have learned in running my gasifer is this. If I let one thing get to full like my ash below the grate and it starts clogging up in this area and I let it go on, my performance drop off but I can still go down the road but not at the higher speeds as before. If I continue and do not do thing about it, the ash and charcoal can and will move on through the system. It will move on down and clog up other things like piping. Before this happens I just do a complete clean out of the the ash below my grate. I do not touch anything above the grate. Leaving the charcoal bed alone. It will purge it self out on the next light up because it now has a place to go, down into the empty ash area.
One time I let it go so bad that the charcoal/ash moved into my drop box, and up into my cooling rails. It did not stop there, it continued to move into the piping going to my condensation tank and then traveling up to my hay filter. After Wayne and others convined me I was plug up. I had to do a complete clean out even the piping from the condensation tank to the hay filter had charcoal in the piping. The truck was still running on charcoal But not very good. I look back now and it was a great learning experience for me. I have never let my system plug up like that again.
One thing I did not touch was my charcoal bed in my firetube. It was fine after that clean out. My hay in my hayfilter was also changed out, it need it anyway. I had good power again after that going down the road.
I am telling you this so you will know I have been there in this kind of situation a time or two or threeâŚsomething just not running right. I know that you and I are not the only ones that have had things to work out in our gasifers from time to time. I do the maintenance work now more often, before I have problems. This just reminded me when was the last time I change my out in my Hayfilter. I need to check my log book. I do keep a log on maintaining things on my gasifer and truck.
Bob
How big is the difference usually in vacuum, between engine, filter, radiator and hopper at idle and 80kmh (50mph)?
