JO I thought you might get a kick out of what kind of drugs people smoke in my area.
3000 USD for a 1992 Volvo 240 with over 100,000 miles(probably more if the odometer is broken).
If I didn’t have any expenses including food it would take me 10 paychecks to afford this car.
Cody, at 118,000 miles a Volvo is hardly even broken in. No wonder it’s still worth something 
Jokes aside, the old red block Volvos are getting expensive here as well. I’ve seen where they ask 10 grand if they are in extreemly good condition.
I payed $1,100. 10-15 years ago you could almost get them for free.
Sheesh, my buddy gave me 3 of them about ten years ago and I scrapped them for 150$ each. Maybe should have sat on them for a while…
I’m skittish with European cars that have automatic transmissions. Much prefer a manual or as we call them in the Carolinas a “straight drive” transmission. People here in the US hardly ever get regular servicing done to their cars.
I always have a feeling auto transmissions in Volvos and Mercedes cars were made for us lazy Americans 
Looking back at your build you have done something I now think is very important that are not in the normal WK Gasifier Builds. The area below the great, a big wide open area for catching the ash and soot. I was thinking on cutting mine down but not now. And this extends over to the drop box area. This is a much larger area them what is in my present WK Gasifier on the Dakota. Plus yours is all flat across. No up drafts being created at the bottom just dead gas space for collecting. It took me awhile to see this in your design even tough you have mentioned it. I will copy this for sure in my new build.
Bob
Morning JO!
I kinda expected you to have hasitation problems but silently hoped for some reason they decide not to be present in your build. The thing is l have had the same problem with literaly every sistem l built and since the Volvo sistem is similar in construstion as all my sistems l think its enevitable.
I belive the main reason is stored gas volume. No gasifier l ever had was hesitation free, had a WK, charcoal updraft, charcoal downdraft, lmbert… But l never had more thain a couple of liters of gas storage. Except the latest Škoda gasifier wich has about 120l of stored gas volume. Here hesitation is much less noticable.
I think there is not much you can do unfortunaly. High idle and slightly richer mix did it for me. Not ideal but gets you going.
Here is a thought, the Auto Mixer that I use on the Dakota was developed by people on your side of the pond. The way my works is it gives me a rich mixer when idling. When I take off it gives me a even more rich mixer, in 20 seconds it then starts to lean the gas out as I ease off the pedal. If I step down on the pedal it will give me a rich mixer again. This work up to about 45 to 50 mph. After that it is on the lean side. This is why I added a extra wood gas valve to open on the down stream side of the mixer for going up steeper hills that requires more gas at a wide open throttle. Maybe a auto mixer would work. My WK Gasifier system has a lot of reserves gases with the larger Hayfilter, condensation tanks, cooling rails, and drop box area, same as Waynes.
Bob
My opinion on this problem, taking into account the written facts: - The problem occurs when the engine is idling for some time - helps to manually enrich the mixture and higher engine idle (Christian), or turn on the blower (Wayne) - even a supply of gas does not help Opinion : at normal engine load, speeds and pressures on the mixing flaps are high, which is a condition for creating a good mixing ratio by knowing that the gas line is in a vacuum, with a short stop this vacuum even goes into overpressure and acceleration is not a problem. am I right? When the shutdown is longer, due to gas stagnation, production is stopped or reduced and, if necessary, a significant vacuum is created in the gas pipe, which means a poor gas / air mixture at low operating speeds. Perhaps a simple solution would be a spring-loaded damper on the air supply with a shut-off setting, or, more demanding, an automatic mixer, as Bob wrote.
Tone, your observations are correct. However, they apply on a gasifier that always gives off constant gas. Wich is rarely the case. Whenever load changes, gas qhality changes too. When you step on the pedal, gasifier needs a few seconds to expand the glow zone. Lean gas for a few seconds, almost unburnable. But when you go from full load to idle, the accumulated heat will still produce gas, even without air. This gas is too rich and can even stall an engine. In a large gas reseroir the two will mix, smooth out and THEN your theory applyes.
Automixer, for sure. But not a vacuum automixer. Im never puting that in again. Even if it working flawlessly, it doesent compensate for gas quality fluctuations, plus a number of other minuses.
I realy hope l get to building a O2 sensor driven electronic automixer. That shuld be a real deal.
I think that’s spot on, Kristijan. The charbed suddenly being overwhelmed with steam and CO2 and not enough heat accumulated for complete reduction. The bigger the charbed the longer it takes to heat it back up.
At the moment a typical accelleration looks like this:
With 1st and 2nd gear I reach maybe 50 km/h with excellent power. Shifting into third gear the motor starts consuming the bad gas made during the acceleration. In the next 5 seconds or so I may richen the mixture a little but still very little further accelleration. Then picking up speed again for the next few seconds and by the time I’m in 4th gear full power is back. Still accelerating when into 5th gear at 100 km/h 
I rarely see temps leaving the heatex above 150C. The highest I’ve seen is just above 200C when climbing long hills at 3000 rpm WOT. When/if I’ll beef the choke up I think I can afford to raise it a couple inches as well. With limited space I can’t do much about the amount of stored gas.
I think you’re correct Bob. This dropbox works better than any of the cyclones I’ve built so far. The only downside I see is risk of elephant farts at lightup 
Do you really get no soot at all in the intake? I’m getting very jealous. How do I do something similar?
Jan, I’m surpriced myself. I’m sure there will be soot over time, but after only a couple months of everyday driving, all I’ve noticed is a few stripes of black color prior to the tb and some buildup on the downstream side (backside) of the throttleplate.
I flushed the rails for the second time the other day and they were covered in a fluffy thin fur. The woollen IKEA-blanket stuffed with hay seems to do quite a good job, as well as the dropbox prior to the cooler.
And the blanket does not get tight either?
One place I can think of is larger cooling tubes and more of them.
On a lot of the older gasifers pictures I see they put a water condensation tank on the front of the vehicles.
Bob
Here is a difference between gasifers. I might see over 400 °f or 204.4 °c in my heat exchanger dropbox before gases exit out. Also I know there is more steel mass in my gasifer that creates more turn down ratio to hold the heat up in the firetube area. Little things can add up to make a difference when it comes to gasification.
Bob
JO every time I look through your pictures I see something new, in a good way. Definitely borrowing your mattress blower tap point. It’s right after the cooler but before the filter, correct?
Not that I know of. I poured a bucket of water over it - into the filter bucket - when I flushed the rails. Don’t know if it was needed. What came out of the drain looked pretty clear. Why, is not clear 
Bob, remember we have winters up here. I would have to insulate most of the tanks and tubing
Correct. I borrowed the expanding plug from the Mazda. It will have to content itself with a wodden plug from now on
Good morning JO. Grab a cup of coffee, beer, or pepsi, this may be a long one.
First I would like to say what an addition you have been to this group. You are knowledgeable, a builder, and inventor. You are always helpful when it comes to solving any woodgas problem. You have built 3 different woodgas vehicles and you must be a great craftsman; I don’t think there are many on here who would make a weld and then cover it with .another component, knowing, if the weld leaked you would have to tare other stuff off to get back to the weld to repair it. And as far as “inventor” goes, you have not followed the “standards” for your designs. I just don’t know how you make things work when you don’t follow the normal design standards. Ok. Enough praise-- you can see the respect I have for you.
Now to this new Volvo build. I don’t have a clue about what path the air/gas takes in going through this gasifier. I get the nozzles/SS plates. The housing for the fire tube is a propane bottle with a 4" hole cut in what use to be the top but is now the bottom. You hung a grate just below the hole. Then it appears you cut the bottom out of a slightly larger propane tank. You also cut a large hole out of the top. Then you set the first tank inside the second tank with the tops of both facing down. The area between feeds air to the nozzles. Are there any fins or tube type channels welded to the fire tube in this space to direct the air, for more air heating?? You used a couple of pieces of a tire rim to make something to fix the hopper to-- don’t see how that was done to also seal the space between the two propane bottles. Now the next picture shows a large section cut out of the outside tank from the bottom up and a foot or so wide. Above that a couple of inches you cut two rectangular slots. The next picture is a sort of box container, that later I see has the fire tub set in the open end. There is a small canister sitting on the curved end of the “box”----The canister has fins welded circumferentially around it---- don’t know if there is a hole in the “box” below the canister, but it does not show one in the top, which later, I think there is one??? Now the next picture shows a second canister placed over the first. Then I see, the sides of the box have been welded to the fire tube outer shell, Another area is filled in with a tube or area that goes from the two slots cut in the fire tube shell above the large cut out, to the outside or second canister which I assume has holes cut in it like the fire tube shell. Then somewhere I see what looks like a piece of exhaust pipe going from the area under the fire tube, outside, to the second canister.
Ok! Now how does this thing work??? I don’t know where the air comes in but it travels from the second canister to the outside shell of the fire tube through a channel made on top of the “box”. It flows up to the nozzles through the space between the two propane tanks that have been set together. Then down through the fire tube, making woodgas, that comes out in the ash area of the “box” under the fire tube. The gas is then pulled out through the side of the fire tube/ box and up into the side of the outside canister. Inside this canister the gas swirls around as in a cyclone and then somehow comes out a pipe sticking up in the center of the second canister.
Question!! Where does the AIR come into this?? I can see it traveling from the second canister across the top of the box and into the air chamber around the inside fire tube. Then what is all the space below the stacked 2 canisters?? Next, the exhaust pipe must be carrying woodgas and going into the side of the second canister, could act as a cyclone; BUT it would have to pulll the gas off the top of the first canister. OK, ok! Please explain this area with pictures or sketches. I just don’t get it. TomC
