I am pretty excited. I after nearly a year of working on or thinking about working this wood eating conglomerate of cast off things, stuck together with countless kwh of electricity, pounds of wire, bottles of gas, burnt fingers, and sleepless nights . IT had it’s first taste of it’s diet of birch and cherry. details of the guts are on the premium side in an old post titled Jim’s Junk. IT at this time has a 4 1/2" restriction about 8" below the nozzles. her are a few pics of what it looks like, it’s diet and a few pics of it’s first flair. I would love to hear your comments and suggestions . This is my first wood gasifier so I am not sure where to go from here with fuel size and restriction size and location. At this time I am not liking any of my options for a host vehicle but will probably try to run my old Caddy with it in the driveway next. I know the gasifire is a little large for it but it is my easiest to kill the gasoline. It is a 90 fleetwod with a 4.5 liter , 9.5 to 1 cr, MPFI. Enjoy
Good looking flare!
TerryL
Looking good Jim !!
How all the junk that everyone uses to build their gasifier always comes out looking like fine art in my viewpoint. Good on ya
Tomw
thanks guys I couldn’t have ever gotten this far without you! I burned her some more tonight. I let it burn a little without the fan before I closed it up last night , not good. seems she burned up a lot of my char bed. With a little huffing and some stirring I got her going pretty good again. It seems to have a hard time digesting these sized chunks at least with this little power vent fan from a water heater. I have to give here a poking now and again to keep things flowing. I’m not sure the road bumps will take care of that or not. I do have a grate shaker but I think the problem is not enough distance between nozels and restriction also my fuel is pretty big. I would like to burn up to large fist size chunks. from that stack of pattys you see in the pic behind the gasifire…
Tom building from junk is my passion. Here is my first simple fire. this one was built using only things I had on hand. I never left the homestead. Not only can I ride it but it is a grate 12 volt dc charging system. It also has a mount to run my junk lawnmower. I only call it junk because that’s where it came from. one mans junk is another’s treasure or art.
Lookin Good Billy Ray … Feelin Good Lewis … From the end of “trading places” (Eddie Murphy and Dan Akroid) … BTW, I had to deal with Eddie Murphy when he was a punk kid in Roosevelt, NY … I was working on cop and bus radios there. It was the first job of the day and then I worked swing shift at Aurora Plastics … I made the metal strips that went into the HO race tracks … Glad it’s built Jim … I usually build in the winter but I got slowed up a bit and haven’t run the one from last winter down the road yet … I have burned it in though and it is ready except for a Chinese trailer tire that barely made it home from Argos 2 years ago. It’s OK on the short trips here but forget a 1200 mile jaunt … Mike
Looks like a good flame Jim. Looks like I need to run one of my trucks over there to taste some wood gas.
Not sure Jim. If I stopped driving my lawn mower, it would start getting sluggish. If I kept driving, even on asphalt, it ran fine.
That’s a sweet bike jim! I would ride that in any parade.
I too have been building from junk for most of my life. there’s a lot of satisfaction in making something good from what others call junk.
Hey Jim Have you been keeping secrets from us? I never heard anything about a “motor cycle”. That is really interesting to me right now. What kind and size of bike is it? I see the gasifier is mounted on one side and you have a car battery mounted opposite---- is that for counter weight. Does that work. Have you driven/ridden it?
I have a bunch of charcoal in my barn so I started building a Gilmore Simplifier. Got a couple of lawn mowers that would make good candidates, bbbuuuutt; I have a 350 or 305 Honda scrambler hiding out there too. The last couple of trips to the barn, I took a flashlight and scoped it out. I think it is going to get the Simplifier. You are inspiring me TomC
Nice build. Motorcycles are fun, and I’m sure, funner, on charcoal.
Bill all my trucks still have carburetors but my van and it is tbi. The Caddy and Buick are mpfi but not gonna carry this heavy pig nor pull it hard enough. I never dreamed I would be looking for a computer infested anything, my how we change. Thank you Andrew and thank God for the Dumpstore! Tom yes I am guilty of holding out on you guys. The Simple fire was used on an old lawnmower first. I used absolutely no gasoline at all for mowing all summer. Late in the summer I built another larger Simple Fire, Put it on an even older mower, yes guilty again. That is when I put this one on the old moter bike I put togather with junk. It is between a 1948 and 1953 CZ125. That engine and trans came very incomplete in a bucket. I was looking to put it togather with a lil Clinton or something ole and small.I had an old Clinton stuck and missing parts. I knew I had this old Briggs but thought it would never fit. I didn’t turn nothing else up. I measured this old briggs and it was so close to impossible I took it as a challenge and crafted it in there I then knew these two projects had to be merged I did ride it a few miles this summer. It was still at 6 to 1 geared way too high for ease of operation or safety, It still has one original Checkaslavocian tire I machined a new drive pulley installed it. Then I found a leaky carb gasket , pushed it back to the shop and have not touched it since till last week I put ot back up on a bench. still did not get to it I guess it is 8 hp I say do it Tom . From my experience making the charcoal is the hard part, and you have that done Very easy to build and even easier to operate.
This article appeared years ago and appears to have been modified since but is still there
http://www.motosport.ch/artikel.html?id=5456
Looks like you have to go through the photos manually but it’s worth the bother.
Mike L
If anyone dose build a bike keep your gasifire up a little higher, mine is below the axel centerline a bit. I kept all the weight as low as possible for the best balance but on tight turns (u turns in the road) the gasifire will scrape). This would be very dangerous at any speed. I built this as I did to drive in the staging lanes at the dragstrip to charge batterys on race cars without charging systems between rounds. It has not been taken out in public yet, but will see some promo use this summer.
Yes Carl motorcycles are fun, but I wont’ be going to far or fast on this one. It is more of a mini bike, rat rod style. One of those things a guy just does cause he can.
Been a while since I been here, Having a hard time getting used to the new format, I hate change. Just wanted to give you all an update. I have done a complete tear down and inspection of the gasifire. repaired some internal leaks and believe it is ready for a vehicle. I am now working on a 74 Ford F250 highboy. I am trying to get the 366 vortec and 4l80e from a late model motorhome for the power plant. Hoping to see many of you in Argos next month but not planning on bring the truck but who knows things have been going my way the last few weeks.
I could not take being without the internet any longer. Time for an update. What I was told was a td 366 turned out to be a 454. I have extracted it and transplanted it into the old Ford. Along with the engine and trans I used the entire electrical system, including steering column, cruse control and intermittent wipers. I am also using the motorhome cooling system including engine oil cooler and trans cooler. the engine was lowered in the chassis enough that the belt driven fan is to low so electric fans must be used. The cab has been gutted wipers modified to accept the Gm motor and the heater box cleaned and is ready to reinstall but not until the fire wall soundproofing is upgraded. The engine and trans are tacked in place but will be raised slightly and moved forward slightly now that the mechanical fan has been omitted . This will help with distributer and fuel line clearance at fire wall and help with driveshaft alignment. It was tight but I fit the gm instrument cluster in the original Ford bezel. The wiring harness was used as a guide to place the computer and cruise and it looks as though it was engineered for this truck. I have mounted the remote ps reservoir in front of the core support. This truck had no ps originally but will soon. At this time it may go together without just for the sake of getting it running but then it will get one ton axels ps ,cross steer and hydro boosted brakes. Sorry tried to add pics but it says file is to large. never had this problem so I don’t know what to do.
Wow Jim that sounds like a pretty wild machine, more power to ya!
I hope you figure out the picture problem, looking forward to seeing them!
You are a pretty handy guy, way to go! Herb H
Jim are you using a PC or a Mac??TomC
Hi Tom, I’m using a pc, it was good to meet you in Argos.