Just wanted to coment on your truck. I had a 93 that I stuffed an SBC 283 into. Advanced Adaptors makes everthing needed for an SBC conversion and it can be done in a weekend or two. When I did my conversion I actually got better fuel mileage believe it or not. It went from 18 mpg’s to 24 mpgs. So if your going to run syngas in this puppy the larger engine will help make up for the power loss. With that little 283 I could light the tires on fire!!!
I havent gotten into producer gas in a vehical yet. But I will soon, as soon as I have time I will be developing a unit specific for vehicles and farm equipment.
Here is a Honda I shoe horned a 350 in a while back.
Hi TerryG
Good progressive development you are reporting. Keep it up. Ha! Ha! Good proof that the restriction entrance will show you where it wants to be. Could you repeat again your fuel type you’ve been using? Screened chips? Chunks? Or pellets?
Hi MattR
Nice conversion on the Izuzu SUV. If this had one of the earlier “clackty-clacker” double rocker arm SOHC V-6’s engines originally, than yes, a vast improvement. I only once saw a small block Chevy in a Ranger - unfortunately an ugly hack job. Any pictures of yours? You do clean work.
Your pictured avatar gasifier system appears to be small engine size.
If you have actually small engine ran with this Please do post up some of your results in the Small Engine Corner Section.
Hi Terry ;I dont know as much as some of the other members here,I cant tell by the pics what your whole hearth and reduction look like. maybe if you leave the oxidation area straight and not bell shaped, and use a stainless flat plate for the restriction let it fill in with ash for insulating, it would work better staying cooler from my reading and experience, the ideal angle from the nozzles to the restriction is 60*.
You have already have good success with your design it just needs some insulating at the lower hearth.
Good Luck!! I hope you can drive it to the meeting in May, Ron L
Terry, Take it easy on it so we can check it out in Argos. I’m counting on you being there with a truck. Make a funnel insert to stick in there over that thin stainless with a little bit of a lip at the restriction to hold back ash and tack it in there. make sure you tack it between the nozzles so the blasts don’t cut through it. Maybe 1/8" steel or thicker if you can cut and bend it ?? If it is tacked below the nozzles some it will accumulate some ash at the upper edge as well and divert the blast a bit. Just a thought … How is it holding together at the restriction ?? I will call Jim Mason tonight and leave a message in regards to this as he has many units out there that could do similar. It has been a concern of mine. The only thing I have seen my rotors do is get minor cracks over the holes I drill through the drum part … They accumulate too much ash to warp or the such … Mike LaRosa
Yes Mike, I remember your concern about these stainless hearths. I built this one to be a larger version of the lawn mower(which is holding up great). I am constantly suprised on the differences between the two.
I updated a couple of my threads at GEK HQ about 3 wks back. It’s kinda quiet over there.
Making it to Argos is my main goal. I built the Ranger to use, and I can’t say no to her if the weather is dry. Otherwise it’s mudbogging out to the main road and I want to try to preserve car&producer. We go through brakes quickly in this household from the grit that coats our undercarrages.
Take care Mike,
Terry
(p.s. I’m anxious to show a paticular aspect of this producer at Argos)
Matt Ryder, Terry, Mike L.
Matt, the Toyota will keep its 4 cyl. Naturally if you could drop a v-8 in there she would haul, but you wouldn’t have room for much else. I looked at one prior to this one that had a v-6 and there was next to zero room under the hood for anything else let alone pipe work and mixing valve. There were alot of specific reasons I went with the 22re 4 cyl. Durability, resale value, and the condition of this paticular one to name a few. Terry, thanks for the advice. I think the way I have mine might allow for the 1in of char like you mention. Like I said my 60deg cone comes just under the nozzles. My cone is insulated on the back side with perlite. So who knows. It will be a learning thing. Keep yours together, I can’t wait to see it in Indy. Mike L , sounds like your making good progress getting ready for Argos. I hope all goes well for your trip, and everyone else.
David S.
John Stout–You are a Hoot!!! Love the song and what a cool dude you are!! Keep it up bud. I will watch and read what ever you, or probably any other woodgas lover, prints or vid’s. I REALLY want to get my project started!!! Thanks for the laughs and smiles!
Dang, It’s been a full year since this link was updated!
Well, I decided to take a look down the throat of the beast before gas-fest to trim down the reduction cone to 4". Yikes, the temp is still hot enough to warp. This explains why I’ve been only getting 57mph.
I had to take it completely down to take out the cone.
Grrr. I don’t need this 1 week from gas-fest!
While you got the cone out, I’d take it down to a 5" circle myself. You could use the extra char depth. Probably wouldn’t hurt to reinforce that lip too.
Thanks for the good wishes Wayne/Chris, I’m a little frazzled right now as to what to do. I’m thinking of doing away with the cone and just having a restriction and a grate.
Chris, are you talking a 5" restriction? You are a brave man!(with my producer! LOL!) That lip was reinforced!
p.s. I’m looking forward to picking up the book next week!
Terry, I said that based on the distortion (too much heat) and slow top speed. Bigger size should put you back into usable range and less heat.
5" IIRC is the Imbert recommended size for most V8s. You’re on a 4cyl but you’re pulling much harder than they with a similar load. If you’re putting in a choke plate type restriction, then you’ll be able to play around and see what works best for your setup.
Engine size is not always a good indicator of the gas required. An oversimplified example: If a V8 runs 1500 RPMs and a 4cyl runs 3,000 RPMs for a given load, you’ll use roughly the same amount of gas.
Chris, you are correct about the engine. I designed it on hp needed. Engine size is irrelevant.
This truck gets about 27mpg on petrol. I have smaller requirements than the Dakotas/full size trucks.
Hi TerryG
I’ve operated some actual GEK’s that you based this on and maybe can add some feedback that would help you decide which way to jump.
You are in a time crunch so gonna have to leave the nozzle heights and spacing just as is. Period. So you will have to make up/modify something to drop in back into place. Period. On this design like the original Imberts ALL reduction takes place below the restiction edge. Means this edge gets the absolute highest internal temperatures at the lower oxidiztion zone
On this design (hope Mr Pepe is reading) a significant % of the reduction zone volumn is going to be in this drop-in cone or tube. With the balace of reduction zone volumn stacked up in the the grate pile of char.
The edge of this tube/cone, since one of the design features of this design ash insulates this peice for its full length is going to be heat hammered with climbing temperatures with NO effective way to controlled bleed off this metals destroing heat out as in the later plate restiction designs like the Sweeds, Finns in the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s eveolved into, Mr Wayne and others now use, and even MikeL heats effectivly uses with his cast double brake rotor designs.
So just as Doug Williams found with his protuding tube Fluidynes with these charateristics you can only make this heat/temperature lip live is with higher heat resistant metals.
I’d suggest a straight 5" or even 6" stainless steel tube welded to your bottom plate if you can find one. 316 be the best common weldable. 304 would do for awhile.
On the bottom plate make the center hole a bit smaller to leave an inside ledge. Now down through this straight walled tube you could drop in min 1/2’ thick cast, plate cut out restictors as needed to get you back down to 4". This will also be relaceable to save your ledge lip.
This is actually starght out of the FEMA design papers and on a much larger scale what MR Wayne retained in his design evolution.
Later after reading his book you could decide whether or not to rejigger your air jetting, grate hieght and the important choker (restriction) ledge to rebalace your NOW above and below restiction reduction sections to turn your’s into his larger “char bucket” gasifer with his advanced metals cooling allowing back to common carbon steels and incorperated his more advanced thermal re-cycling ideas.
ChrisKY/Mr Wayne I trust I have not let too many cats out of the bag describing this.
Ha! Just a little more book interest teasing out bleed, eh?
THICK SS tube in this area works for a long tome see in my photo album. No speculation here.
Dakota only weighs 4,000 lbs to the Ranger’s 3,500, and gets 21 MPG gasoline to the Ranger’s 27. Its smaller but not by a lot.
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One more cat to let out of this bag. (This should make Terry want to read the book even more…)
Wayne’s Dakotas are running 7-8" restrictions, and 12-15" deep char. This setup will idle the truck just fine for hours, with no tar.
Steve U, Do you think the tube is even needed? The flow is going to find the path of least resistance, which should be a fairly straight path to the grate. The rest of the char should become insulative to the rest of the body. Grate is the size of the restriction to allow enough velocity to keep clear without a shaker(Thanks max gasman).
