I have a chevy engine in the garage that needs to be re-built. I took it out of my 2006 Chevy 1 ton when I found a replacement engine that did not require a core deposit last year. It might as well be converted to run on wood.
My husband has a Monster truck chasis and who knows–maybe the two misfits may come together at some point.
Has anyone on this site converted a Chevy to run on wood? I really need testimonials and proof and then maybe I can get my husband to help me.
We did have a monster truck but sold it last year–Hawgwild–and you can find pics of it and the build history if you check out my husband Jim Mace on face book and flicker.—Yes it was years in the making–but it wasn’t until after he met me that ‘we’ finished it. Behind every man is usually a determined woman wanting to see things come to life.
Please let me know–and since this is in the beginning stages–all suggestions are welcome from what type of body, etc.
We usualy deal with old school BBC engines but the one in the garage is newer.
Thanks in advance for your contributing comments. Vivian Monica Mace—aka Monica
My husband still thinks we are not converting anything to run on wood–I plant all the gardens, brew the wine and beer, can the food storage, I guess this will be something else I will do as well. I just do not see the economy allowing normal people to thrive on gasoline run vehicles at an affordable price. We need to do things differently.
Does anyone burn biodiesel and wood as well? I was looking into biodiesel before running accross the article in Mother earth news and I am just wondering if anyone has combined the two. It would mean complete independence.
Most of the work actually happens before the engine, normal gasoline engines can handle woodgas just fine. One thing you can do to improve the engine if you are so inclined is to raise the compression ratio. Woodgas will tolerate up to 16:1 or so, and if you stick to 12:1 you can dual-fuel with ethanol or CNG. You mention biodiesel - many older diesel engines make great conversions, but you have to provide for ignition of the woodgas, either by keeping a little diesel for a pilot fuel or adding a spark ignition system. Some of the newer diesels have more compression than is usually advised. It’s relatively new territory though, and experiments are welcome.
you have some great suggestions. We had a 13.5 commpression ratio for our Hawgwild Monster truck and even though we only ran a BBC and did not have a blower motor, playing around with the gear ratio made our truck perform as well as many monster trucks we competed with. The difference was if we blew a motor it would cost us about $1000 to fix—we were cheap. Other monster trucks had blower motors that cost $10000-$25000. We were low tech but high speed.