Be carefull Chris, it looks that this guy is also DOW And Chopping his own wood…
The bigger the car, the more wood you need…
Don’t drive to much, you might get bald… 
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Well, while waiting for something to read here I might as well wright something myself.
My daily driver for the last four months, the Rabbit, is now at 2700 miles on 99% wood.
Did the 100 mile service today:
Emptied condensation, tank and hayfilter - about a gallon each. My little cooler seems to be able to revert half the amount of water back to the tank in winter temp.
Emptied a gallon of soot from the cyclone collector
A few weeks back I started to use a rubber band, cut from a wheel barrel inner tire, to seal my upside down coffeepot collector lid. It seems it used to leak a little air in and burned most of the soot to ash. It´s now all black and a lot more each time. Also rail temp is a bit lower now, a steady 300-400 F depending on load.
Flushed the cooler. Not much soot but I like to keep it clean since the area is a bit low.
All together about 10 min work every 100 miles.
So far i see no reson to go back to using gasoline. Never even in my dreams could I believe being able to DOW was this comfortable and trouble free.
You guys made it possible. Thank you.
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JO,
Its always nice to hear about your great performance. Your ease and practicality of DOW enspired my build.
Hmm interasting. Where is all the cyclone soot comeing from? If l combine my ash, sliped char, and hot filter dust at cleaning of 1000km l dont fill a gallon. Different wood perhaps?
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Kristijan,
It’s not about showing off great performance. I think the Rabbits performance is rather mediocre on woodgas. Yes, at full throttle I can reach 90 km/h on flat ground, but it likes 80 much better at half throttle and half the vacuum.
It’s the relaiable every day using possibilities that surprises me. Watching documentaries woodgasers often have sooty faces, hands and clothes, sitting at the roadside cranking in a cloud of smoke. Most reports from WW2 portray DOW as a pita. You and I and lots of others on this site DOW to work every day with little effort. Until I found out about DOW (this site) I doubted that would be possible.
I’m sorry, but I’m still in the excited state.
About soot.
Honestly I think you might slip a little less char and burn the rest to ash by dragging oxygene a bit lower by using bigger fuel. I’m sure I pull oxygene low too from time to time, but I slow down as soon as I see rail temp raises. Still I collect about ten times more soot/ash from the cylcone than char from the dump. Almost only char left down there.
Ash content varies between species of course but I doubt that’s the main factor.
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Jo ,
I know just how you must feel the thrill of being able to start your car and drive to work each day , on fuel that you have made , and knowing everyone else on the roads around you will have no idea about your car , with a part of you wanting to shout out to them and tell them, show them, convert them , I wish I could do the same here , but no way can I DOW here where I live .
So on my wet dull days I cant wait to get outside and start running my engines and making some electric , and on the sunny days I stand there wishing for clouds , while grinding my charcoal .
Dave
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This is what l was reffering to. The smoke and black hands repelled me from wood power to charcoal, but you and other guys here made me see the truth. And if every guy here is an inspiration to just one other guy, l think we might just have a bit more woodgas drivers in the future.
With different wood l didnt mean so much of ash content, more about the charcoal quality. When l made charcoal out of oak, the charcoal is hard and breaks without dust (soot). Charcoal from softer wood (spruse was the worst) makes lots of dust. Culd this be the difference?
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Thanks Dave,
You pretty much nailed the feelings about woodgas. Part of the symptomes being addicted I guess 
I´m sorry you feel you can´t DOW in your neighborhood. Where are you at btw?
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Hard to tell. I mix lots of species. Anything with leaves on. I try to avoid spruce.
I have no beech or oak though, but I know TomC uses oak and he reports collecting even more from his cyclone than I do.
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Hi Jo ,
I am in Victoria , Australia , and even though I am about 15 km from the site of
Kurth Kiln , if you Google that name you will see where all the charcoal was made during the war years , they have a lot of gasifiers there on show the last time I went there .
Where I live I am 2/3rds up a mountain and as I have said in the past going down would be no problem but getting back up would be pretty hard , and that’s not counting the fact that modern day laws would probably not allow gasifiers due to me living in the middle of a state forest , here every vehicle has to have a ID on the number plate to state if its duel fuel , be it gas or electric and I am sure it would be too hard for them to allow producer gas back onto the roads here , but maybe one day when the right car comes along we shall build one , Brian has got a Harley Servicar that we have put on charcoal for a short while , but the engine was so under powered even on petrol that it struggled on char gas , but we will try again when we alter the gearing on it this summer and try once again .
Krisijan , you are correct regarding the dust from softwoods , when I am crunching up my charcoal I get little dust from hardwoods , but the dust I get from softwoods like pine or Japanese cedar is terrible .
Dave
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Hi JO,
Did your keybord freeze yet up there in the northern lands of Europe? 
How did the “a bit open hopper lid” experiment came together?
I saw the pyrolysis zone gone higher and higher everyday on my gasifier. Today l found the cause. The handle on my lid had cracked off, leting air in the hopper and l rememberd of you.
Together with that, and mixing a few pellets with chunks, l got much better turndown ratio. So are we on to something here?
My thods are with a higher pyrolisis zone, l have more charcoal on hand at power spikes, and a muffer effect becouse the smoldering wood is further away from the reaction zone, so that the steam takes longer to kill the charbed temperature.
I am curious about your findings.
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Keyboard is not frozen - yet
Sorry, but I forgot all about my experimenting plans. Daylight is only a couple of hours now and I’ve been working OT lately, but I’ve been DOW to work every day
Two more night shifts and I then have a few days off - time for some a experimenting
Today was only -1C. I took the oppertunity to wash my cooler and hayfilter. Also I brought my plastic hopper can inside and warmed it up some to empty the tar. I’ve collected only a total of 3L so far, but running on a lot of birch lately seems to speed up the tar production. Alder contains very little tar.
About your pellets use I think since it’s a lot dryer, that may also contribute to less steam - less cooling of the charbed.
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I already collected more wood than I can handle, but recent storms seem to belive I need even more.
Girls riding their horses and walking their dogs reported a couple of dead spruces blocking the trail on our property.
WPRF (Wood Powered Rabbit Forwarder) came to their aid.
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Poor rabbit his back feet seem to be a bit flat
Will this be for firewood or planks?
Do l see a Hosquarna 061 in the picture? Good saw. We have two, just replaced thepiston and clutch a few days back.
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Those are dry, dead spruce logs. Goes on the firewood pile. Both swingmill and gasifier like a better diet. Boiler doesn’t care.
Husqvarna 242. I bought 2 of them used 25 years ago for 25 €/$ each. I have changed only ropes, chains and swords. Never even pulled the plugs. They run like clockwork. Fantastic saws.
The little Stihl was a present from my father in law. Very light veight, good for delimbing.
Any DOW news from Slovenia?
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Sthill realy makes some quality small saws lately. My brother in law bought one a few months ago, the new top handle, one hand model. Its so light and strong work is realy fun with it. Price not too bad either, around 400€ if l remember right.
News indeed. My computer is dead so l cant upload pictures, but long story short, my restriction plane (cast iron) broke in two.
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Oh NO! So no DOW at the moment then? 
Any solutions in mind?
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Ha us DOW guys dont give up so fast do we? l cut a new restriction plate out of a 8mm mild steel plate, shuld be a bit more crack resistant. This allso alows me to experiment a bit more now.
But it sure was a sad feeling driveing on dino yesterday aftera long time… waching the fuel guage go down and down… depressing
Hey JO, l just remembered now that you mentioned spruce being not a favorite diet for gasifiers. Did you ever try spruce limbs? Does your rebak eaven cut trugh that hard stuff?
I had a few hoppers of mixed spruce limb chunks and oak chunks, worked very well. Spruce limbs are realy dense too.
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Ha, I didn´t believe for a second you would give up
I did chunk some dense spruce limbs. Worked better than I thought. Both in the gasifier and in the rebak. But Iike you say, they are rock hard if dry. Alder and such can be shunked dry if you really have to but birch and spruce limbs get too hard, but no problem when green. I guess oak is even worse.
Right now I run on 50/50 hand chunked birch from firewood and chunked roundies from summer chunking. Works good. Only problem is I soon have to pull all the gear to go for inspection. Also I have a leak somewhere that drains my antifreeze. Always something.
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Wow!! Are you saying you have to take the entire gasifier out of the bed?? You can’t get away with just disconnecting the under hood stuff and run it on petro? With the US and China producing so much air pollution, why do the European governments feel they have to be so hard on their people? TomC
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Tom, every modification has to be evidented, atested and homologated here in the EU. My coworker replaced a bolt on a rear seat in his car, and the car didnt pass. If we show up with a gasifier&friends they wuld eat us alive (atleast thats the case here in Slo)
The most expensive part of my build was the homologation of the towbar
Sometimes l feel like we are zoo animals 
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