A bucket vac is plenty of power, if you turn it up as needed.
We tell folks to go backwards and forwards to establish a char bed. Try adding in some reverse blowing (blow air in from the outlet, lid open) alternating with sucking the gas the normal way.
Don’t worry about the char, if it’s burning at all, it will take care of sizing itself. It will take some cycling to get things settled in.
From what I gather at the moment you are having a problem just getting your gasifier to make a flare at the moment , so i think what i would do is check for air leaks coming from the Gasifier up to your flare off pipe , the easiest way would be to use a small fan attached to your flare off pipe and blow back into the Gasifier and with a spray bottle filled with water and a little dish washing soap soak every joint and seal on the Gasifier and filter and pipe work and watch for bubbles , also try a tin can over the flare pipe, easiest way is just make a hole half way up the can and with both top and bottom cut out place the tin can on your flare pipe .
If all that fails then start looking at that BBQ charcoal and dump it out and make some good engine grade charcoal yourself .
Good luck
Dave
I’ve gone ahead and pressurized the system, looking for leaks with some dish soap and water in a spray bottle. What do you know, I found a few pretty good sized ones right where there would be hot woodgas. For those familiar with the design, it’s around a flange that holds the grate assembly into the gasifier body, page 84 in Ben’s book.
I’ll have to re-work this. I’m pretty excited, I love finding problems - now I know what work needs to happen. 
Good that you are learning from falling down. That is the DOer way.
Woodchunk/chip gravity feed drier is here:
www.fluidynenz.250x.com
L.h.sidebar list:
“Power Generation In The Hills”
Ha! made me really go notebook back to find that. Then i see my tricky memory served me wrong. Doug Williams is using producergas heat in this.
No matter. I will use engine exhaust heat in my BenBuilt early prototype chip bin drier. ( have to boot out the nesting chickens though)
The BenBook system as i said is really too shallow to allow agueuos condensate to separate out from pyrolosis oils.
You need the taller hopper add on to do this.
Differences of intents/opinion use here on the pyrolosis oils.
Some want to collect.
I want them to all drip down back into the “hot-furnace-hell-of destruction” just in front of the nozzles. More in system heat then made with these hydrocarbons. Less noxious wastes made.
If you ever go DOW Premium side you can see that Wayne in his WK system clearly recycles these again and again down to a Tertiary (Jim Mason) asphalt tar. Wayne removes from the system the mostly aqueous hopper condensate and the heavy asphalt tar separately.
Stationary you need a forced air flow past your extended hopper to do this.
Stationary you need a forced air flow past your system gas cooler tubing.
In the best Chicogo stockyard “turn a waste into an asset” tradition you will need some forced air flow past that water cooled Ford in a coolant radator at some times. Even a CHP system doesn’t need the “H” for months of the year.
Again a choice desision of how to flow these airs.
many would use three different electric cooling fans. Each with it’s own command/demand power system.
This Ford engine and it’s larger 300 CID brother used by Onan for big world wide use tow-able generators had a reverse bladed belt driven engine mounted fan. Hugh amount of air to be desert use capable. At least 10 engine hoursepower needed there.
Your engine already set up for this: a clipped blade reverse mounted fan ducted blowing first trough an engine coolant readiator → that warmed dry air then past the gasifier unit gas colis and hopper.
CHP? Your engine thermostat could be set up to offsystem heated coolant flow primary and only radiator flow in ecessive engine heat duening heat needed season. Full allow through engine radiator as thermostat regulated out of heat nneded time of the year.
I like see-do (or not do) systems much better than fritzing with DYI electronic control systems.
Just me. Too many years going behind real professional engineers, simplifying down to reliable.
J-I-C Steve Unruh
throttle valve 8 inch . What I needed was a flue damper . Have gasifier . I want to build new gasifier from existing wood gas boiler . At 170 degree water temp want it to change from boiler to gasifier at 145 degree change back to boiler or change back to boiler when engine stalls . Now boiler shuts down at 180 degrees by stopping forced draft .
Nice, that’s a big butterfly valve. Closes off well enough to stop the flow against the natural draft of the chimney?
I think I’m with you Steve on reburning off as much heavier-chain hydrocarbons as possible. My end game is creating wood gas, I’m not particularly interested in side products right now.
I do have a radiator with electric fan already that I intend to use. My thought was that with an electric fan I could remote mount the radiator in the future. I also had the same idea of using engine heat for space heating.
I also like simple, robust systems. Overbuilt. Big, slow, durable. These are reasons I opted for the ST head and old Ford I6 engine. Both of them are built heavy and durable.
That said, I do plan to do a clever trick with my air and throttle controls - I think I’m going to control them from a Raspberry Pi computer via servos. I’ll use sensors to get RPM and exhaust oxygen content to adjust as needed. A bit of futzing will be needed to develop the control algorithms, but software and math are my long suits. 
If/when I get around to that, I fully intend to open source all the code for the community.
I thought a regular damper would let in too much air . I will also need to seal blower fan , Thought I would use big tin box or popcorn tin . then I would need to open tin for normal operation .
I just got Raspberry Pi will have to wait for expansion board , just wanted it for simple interval switching . . I was having discussion on wood vinegar PHD in Kentucky paid by EPA to work on project in African country . I don’t produce much condensates . I have a woodward governor … oxygen sensor is out maybe that is why engine started working
Raspberry Pi’s are pretty neat little computers. It helps if you have a background navigating around linux systems. For the type of work we’re doing here, I’d look heavily into writing your code in python, it’s an easy language to work with, and the GPIO library is great. Remember your GPIO ports can only drive 20 milliamps or so, you’ll want to buffer almost anything with an NPN transistor, and anything serious with a proper electromechanical relay after the transistor.
If you follow that advice, BE SURE to use an appropriate resistor between your GPIO port and the transistor!
I had the wood chip fueled generator for three years and just got it working . The thing I needed to do was restrict the air flow into the gasifier . I did this with a gate valve . I don’t want to think about programming the Raspberry til I get the expansion board . I thought I might need more parts to do such a simple thing as bypassing another computer .that wants a switch closed every five minutes or it will shut everything down .I think I can find a program I can set to close a switch every five minutes for 30 seconds .
Of course, you’re free to attempt that any way you see fit. And Pi’s are so cheap and powerful - it’s really not a bad platform to learn how to use. It could suit you well for a wide variety of uses. Additionally, I don’t know the full details of your circumstances, so my thought on this is based only on what you’ve told me in this thread.
Personal opinion… but if that simple automation is all you’re looking for, there are MUCH easier ways to accomplish it that don’t incur all the overhead of a full fledged operating system. You’re looking at running a full computer system, from the kernel right on up to daemon services to accomplish a simple autonomous control output. If I were attempting that, I’d look into delay relays or at a minimum, a 555 timer circuit running in astable mode. Cheap, easy, reliable.
Take a peek at these:
http://www.circuitbasics.com/555-timer-basics-astable-mode/
radioshack is gone . the only idea I had for a programmable device was the raspberry pi . I should get the 555 timer you recommend . I could probably get it before the raspberry pi expansion board . I could just stand there with a watch and click the switch myself . Back to the governor throttle body woodward is a local company I tried to get replacement from them , they had one but it had a different activator so I would need to reprogram to use it , so I guess I would have to lease their software and hire one of hire one of their software engineers . I just needed to replace roller bearings I got the parts from Granger .
About drive on wood I was looking at a vehicle to grid charger for Nissan Leaf . The part was used in military contract .
I asked them if a Nissan Leaf was included in the price for that charger . Last I heard from them .
I would like to build a megawatt size wood gas generator to level 3 charge electric vehicles and send power to electrical grid .
If you miss radio shack check out allied electronics.
http://www.alliedelec.com/industrial-automation/
They have all the electronics you could ever want for general projects. They where my first choice for this type of stuff in industry. I used one of their small plc to run the heating system in my old house. That had an oil boiler tarm wood boiler two zones in the house and a storage tank that acted as the last zone to heat and the first heat source when it was up to temp. Using one of their low end plc I was able to write all the code I needed including a couple of analog temperature sensors. That approach will give you a much more dependable solution then the pi will. Anything running on top of a linux or pc operating system will have performance issues at process control speeds.
If you are looking at a simple timer control, get one of these. This is what we use I have used these for a few years now and they work quite well.
I also have a timer code for Arduino, if you want something more integrated into a control panel. The code works off an input from pot you can wire remotely.
int pot_value = analogRead(A0); // select the input pin for the potentiometer
int pot_value1 = analogRead(A1); //input the off time pot is set too
int ledPin = 13; // select the pin for the LED
int sensorValue=0; // variable to store the value coming from the sensor
const int sensorMin = 0; // sensor minimum, discovered through experiment
const int sensorMax = 1023; // sensor maximum, discovered through experiment
void setup()
{
// declare the ledPin as an OUTPUT:
pinMode(ledPin, OUTPUT);
}
void timer1(){
int pot_value = analogRead(A0); //read potentiometer value
//isn't greater than the 60th part of 1023
int timer1_value = map(pot_value, 0, 1023, 0, 60); //Mapping pot values to timer
for (int i = timer1_value; i >= 0; i--){ //Begin the loop
Serial.println(i);
delay(100);
}
}
void timer2(){
int pot_value1 = analogRead(A1); //read potentiometer value
//isn't greater than the 60th part of 1023
int timer2_value = map(pot_value1, 0, 1023, 0, 60); //Mapping pot values to timer
for (int i = timer2_value; i >= 0; i--){ //Begin the loop
Serial.println(i);
delay(3000);
}
}
void loop() {
// read the value from the sensor:
int pot_value = analogRead(A0);
// turn the ledPin on
digitalWrite(ledPin, LOW);
timer1();
// turn the ledPin off:
int pot_value1 = analogRead(A1);
digitalWrite(ledPin, HIGH);
timer2();
}
Keep in mind both the Raspberry and Arduino both do one thing at time. So we use multiple Arduinos as slaves to the Raspberry that need timers.
Exciting news!
I spent some time repairing any air leak I could find. There were a few pretty good sized ones.
Gave it another test run. 20 minutes into operation, I got a sustained flare! 
After putting in quite a lot of work, it feels great to have seen this successfully operate.
Thank you everyone here for helping me get to this point!
Cool that you got it working!!!
Glad to hear it …
I was trying
to turn wood boiler into gasifier to run generator . I had fire , tossed in fir boards . got a big roaring gas flare . Could not start engine . switched back to flare and just had smoke . This might be something that can’t be done . That was the best it did . Get flare gas pull on it get smoke . Did best to totally seal boiler .