hero 4 or newer is what I’m told takes good enough video and decent sound quality. I’m going to go the hat mount route as well when I get one, I like the first person perspective. I got a chest mount for my phone but its to shaky and cant see what I’m working on, so tripod for now
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I need to grab a big memory card and just film with my phone. Won’t be able to film any of my welding so I don’t repeat what happened last time. Spatter bbs and phone glass does not a happy screen make.
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I’m wondering if there’s a durable tape that I can stick to the edge of the lid so I don’t tear up the RTV. Gorilla tape maybe? I’m going to try to find some really small diameter rubber hose and see about gluing that. Or finding some solid silicone like Jake North uses and putting that in the rim of the gasifier.
Okay, so.
For my cooling rails, since it’s getting close to that time.
I have this sheet metal square tube stuff given to me, looks like 4" on the flats. Not sure how long it will last but it doesn’t look terribly rusty on the inside. I’m going to have 3 of these posts up front as my headache rack. On the headache rack portion I’m going to use as many 1" EMT tube as I can fit. This will go to the height of the cab just about. I’m building it so I can later expand upon the other areas, but for now I’m going to only have one run of 2" EMT per side. Keep in mind I have a Long Bed so that’s 8 feet of 2" diameter pipe.
I’m banking on the headache rack to be enough and the 2" to finish off the cooling. I am going to make it coupled in for the 2" side and solid weld in the 1" for the rack. Since the sides will be coupled I can add more later on. Even flow just like a WK cooler, two pipes running into the filter body. Only going to use a single 2" gas exit for the filter however because I don’t have room for two on the snorkel. I think for this engine size it will be fine. I have some smaller square tube and some flat sheet for a platform that I’ll use to insert in the post holes of the bed and use some tonneau clamps to hold it down until I can get some good bolts.
It’s dark out so any pictures I take won’t do it justice while mocking the layout up.
I think the combination of a wide center post, then going to a serious row of 1" pipes, then expanding again on each corner will help. I’ll have to mock up the center post and front corners to see how many rows of 1" I can do but I have 3 10 foot lengths of it laying around. Should be enough.
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2 to 3 rails down each side should be enough cooling for your gases. I have 4 on a 6’ bed and just one 3" header across up front going to the side corner post trees. I put them on a down hill slant the direction the gas is flowing. So no cooling condensation juices stay in the piping, high acids.
Bob
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I’m going to cut the corner posts so I can add one or two more shots. Only thing holding me back is the price of 2" EMT. 50 dollars after tax for a 10 foot length yikes!
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I used fence posts that were galvanized. Bought them at Lowes box store on sale. You can get them in 8’ . They 1 7/8" I think. I found radiator hose that fit over it.
Bob.
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Geez I wish I knew about these being available at Lowe’s or Home Depot before I got this EMT.
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I not sure how long they will last, I might use 409 stainless steel exhaust piping next time when these rust out, they are the third set since 2012 original that Wayne built. Chris built the second cooling rail set. Everything else on my cooling rails are made of the 409 stainless steel exhaust piping.
Bob
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Just checked with Koen’s spreadsheet calculator and it appears that at 3000 RPM with my 2 inch nozzle, I should see somewhere in the range of 11.5 m/s; at 1800 RPM I’m looking at 6.9 m/s.
That seems incredibly low to me.
Maybe I should switch out for my 25mm ID hexoloy nozzle? For reference, at 60mph I’m in the 1800/1500 RPM range in 4th gear OD. 1800rpm on the hills and 1500 on the flats if I’m smooth on my pedal. At 2000 RPM with a 25mm nozzle I’m looking at 30 m/s air velocity and I vaguely remember Kristijan advising a 25m/s goal. Just checked it at 3000RPM for the 25mm nozzle and I would have a velocity of 46 m/s but I’m rarely in that RPM.
I can get up to speed fairly quickly without getting past 2500 RPM, and even if I get on the pedal it never takes too long to reach my desired speed and I then lay off. Do you guys think it would be worth it to have the higher velocity nozzle and use throttle sparingly?
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Center post for the cooling rail. It’s 3" on the flats, never trust me to measure by eye I always need some sort of metric even if it’s Cubits and Hands. I had enough 1" conduit to make 6 pipes on either side of the center post, so the flow shouldn’t be slowed down too much until it bottlenecks into the single 2" pipes on either side.
Still need to drill in the 2" hole for the center post gas entrance.
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When these rot away I’ll probably go for all stainless cooling rails from exhaust pipe. I can weld that up with some stainless flux core wire.
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That’s one interesting work area Cody. You can never tell when you might need an old bicycle seat on that gasifier. Or hand brake levers. And what’s that vacuum cleaner hose going to on your drill press. 
Ahh. I got no room to talk. That looks like an operating room compared to where I work.
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The vaccum hose thing is actually a stupid work light that never worked since I bought it. Supposed to turn on when you turn on the drill press.
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Well here’s my revised nozzle. Side entering, diagonal down draft. Going to try to find a non cast iron coupler at the hardware stores tomorrow. Either that, or I’ll use a 1.5" conduit coupler and a reducer bushing. I have some of what I think is either brake line or some other hydraulic line that was thrown out at work, I’ll use that for a water drip line and weld in a nipple to the system to thread it in. No more shadetree drip tubes, hustling to shut everything down and close up caps when I arrive at work.
This is a shop press fit hexoloy tube sticking inside 1.25" plumbing pipe about a quarter of the way. I can’t pull it out. I hope it isn’t too tight and cause it to crack from heat cycling.
I also swapped part of my gas exit piping on the inside with a shorter length to exacerbate the diagonal direction and lengthen char bed.
I’m thinking of using a flapper valve, probably just a brass plumbing one. Either that or make a tractor flap that I open up when running and latch closed when I’m shutting down.
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Silicon might be more temp proof than bondo, and bonds well if all is supper clean and or ground before glueing, I would try and build up the welds, and tap down untill fully welded, you dont want any smoke signs, driving down the road, Or you can reweld later if it leaks.Then you be better off with less leaks too fix later. ARE you useing mig welder or stick welder, with a stick welder i use 1/16 or 3/32 rod 6011 for sheet metal down around 60 amps +or - 15 amps range.
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I’m using a flux core welder with .8mm wire with it cranked all the way down. .8mm wire is the smallest you can get for these welders.
I’m just not going to use a barrel hopper and use the rest of the tank as the hopper.
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Welded my 20 gallon and 30 gallon together, it’s about 48 inches tall. I’m going to keep the propane tank gasifier body for the generator, it’ll be perfect for that. This tallboy will be the gasifier body for the Sierra. If I reserve the bottom 10 inches for active zone and place the nozzle just above the 10 inch mark I’ll have roughly 44 gallons of hopper space. That is much more comfortable to me, I hope and pray I get at least 2 miles per pound of charcoal. Which at my density of 1.2lb/Gln I’ll have a distance of 100 miles per hopper. Would take me about one and a half bags to refill that much. Assuming I stay in that range, start with a full hopper and have 3 sacks of coal I’ll have 300 miles of range. Not too shabby I’m pretty sure that would get me through the week and then some.
Here’s some crappy night time photos. It will sit slightly proud of the cab but I’ll take it. I never go faster than 65mph in this truck since that’s the highest speed limit on the way to work and I avoid the faster highways like the plague.a
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@Bobmac I’ve thought of another addition to a modified LaRosifier. Welding heat sinks to the outside of the hearth and adding a baffle like a certain other design we know to add dwell time for preheating. I would weld in my air inlet valve on a tangent to see if that would help go all around to get as much heat as possible. Little swirl action couldn’t hurt.
Personally I would still use Imbert/Ben Peterson dimensions, or go for a happy medium between WK dimensions and Imbert. Maybe half distance that a WK does from nozzle to restriction and a half length Reduction zone? Would probably depend on how much more heat exchanging you went with.
Is this for a charcoal gasifer or a mix wood chips/charcoal gasifer. Yes storage exchange of any extra heat in the firetube and preheating air is good. The extra thicknesses of added steel helps draw the heat away from the really hot zone lobe just below the nozzles. By this continue action of heat transfer to the out side of the firetube to the incoming air is very beneficial. Extra waste energy moving away from the 2000°f to 3000°f lobe of white hot charcoal that is needed to strip away the Oxygen. The cycle of gasification with out melting down in the firetube core, toals helping keep the reaction stable is the reduction open used when wood is introduced into the gasifer. The increase of velocity/heat causes any last stripping of the Oxygen away and burning up of tars that might try to make it though.
Coupled up with Matt’s saw dust filter design you should be good to go with the GMC Sierra DOW.
Bob
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