I’ll have to let Jakob tell you about his run in with the law yesterday.
9 Likes
I was driving though portland. I had my upper seat belt strap thrown over my back so i could more easily reach forward and adjust my valves. A cop pulls me over and told me he had been been following me through town and had seen through my back window that i wasn’t wearing my seat belt.( I thought “that’s stupid I can’t see through my back window” I didn’t say it though) I tried to explain what was happening but he wrote me a ticket for improperly wearing a seat belt. Which to me is nonsense. When he first pulled up he was asking a lot about the gasifier. I think he was wondering what it was and when he figured it out, he had to come up with some reason for pulling me over instead of just letting it go. Anyway I paid the ticket and i also have too take a 3 hour online drivers course.
EDIT: sorry JO for cluttering your thread.
9 Likes
I won’t make things political but there are some down right rotten people down there and here in Washington always looking to make revenue for the state. Iv dealt with plenty of it, basically if your vehicle isn’t completely stock they will mess with you, I’m sure I’ll have some fun with the Chevotafire and the auburn city pd at some point 
4 Likes
Jakob, since it’s Washington, you should have told him it was all about making a sacrifice for the enviroment - running eco fuel. And that seatbelts don’t save the planet.
Well, maybe bad idea. In situations like that it’s probably best to stay as quiet and calm as possible 
8 Likes
It is a known fact the when you are out of state the police know you will just pay the fine. If you are checked out by another officer, up on their computer will print out if you have been stopped before. This software is nation wide by the way for all law enforcement agencies. Before they stop you they know who your are or I should say the owner of the vehicle and if there are warrants out on you. I have seen three enforcement vehicles pull over one car. So you are safe if one pulls you over three you are probably going to jail in Washington State.
This happen to me going through Montana on the way to Argos. He said I was going over the speed limit while I was passing a simi-truck going up hill. He just wanted to check me out and gave me a warning. Mike told him we were doing to Argos for the wood gas meet up.
Bob
9 Likes
So JO, we have not heard much lately about the Volvo. Any more videos? We like videos!
8 Likes
Don, I’ve been pretty busy filling up the freezers before winter and collecting firewood for springtime cutting and splitting. Also, taking care of the by-product - lots of limbwood for chunking. This is the latest batch from the other day. I’d better give Walter a call to come help me shovel 
I haven’t had much to report on the Volvo until now, except DOWing back and forth to work every day - 20 miles a day.
I’m working nights during the weekend, so I kind of follow your sleeping in-hours. I may be able to turn the camera on on my way there.
Until then I’ll copy paste part of the resent issues I discussed with Kristijan the other day.
“I’ve tried to find the time to make a Volvo update. I have a couple issues I haven’t had time to correct. Plugging is one. Grate shaking doesn’t seem to help. For some reason it runs pretty ok even with a 10:1 ratio or more. I’m starting to question the hopper guage. Or, my grate is actually too close to the restriction. The charbed feels coarse with the poker though, and char do slip But on the other hand I easily peg the rail guage
No2 is syphoning. I’ve had very little reason to hybride so far, but I believe I wasted about 30 l of petrol in 2000 km. More than I would expect only from startups and moving the car a couple 100 m now and then.
Time to hit the hay. Gnight.”
14 Likes
@don_mannes Here you go. Film-time
@Norman89 This is what I mentioned earlier on your thread - somewhat plugged.
9 Likes
Thank you JO for the informative video on your tight charbed while driving the Volvo. My was doing the same on the gauges and I had even less power. It was choking tight. Lol
How do you loosen up your charbed if it will not free it self up driving?
Bob
5 Likes
Bob, as I mentioned earlier I tried to shake the grate from both above and underneath several times. Maybe I chickened out and I wasn’t violent enough.
I may have to try bigger fuel, or maybe I finally have to actually lower the grate. However, that will require some surgery. We’ll see.
6 Likes
Thanks for the video! Are your vacuum gauges in milimeters or centimeters of water?
4 Likes
Don, they are in millibar. 100 mbar is about 40"of water. I guess you could say they show cm of water at 18C to be precise
7 Likes
I enjoyed the video JO but I’m not right in the head and anal about time and spend most of the time watching, worrying about you being late for work.
7 Likes
Ha, that’s funny, Tom.
But you’re right, I wish I left home earlier because the guy wasn’t home and I would have liked to spend even more time with his lovely wife 
6 Likes
JO, Watching the two vacuum gauges at the same time, it seems almost impossible for the charbed to be that tight and your engine is still running fine. are you sure you do not have a bad gauge or a plugged filter in the instrumentation vacuum path?? have you tried switching the gauges or checking for any fine filters in the gauge path that may be restricted? Mind boggling!! Challenges my concept of the physical world. 
(or your hopper is nearly at atmospheric pressure due to a leak) 
Thanks for the great video!! We all love those!
5 Likes
Hi Mike, but I think the meters show well, the resistance of filters and pipes to the engine is in my opinion realistic 100 mbar, and the vacuum in the boiler is small when the boiler heats up, because the gas expansion is large and relatively little air enters the gasifier , at least that’s how I notice it in my system
5 Likes
Tone, the 100 mbar is on the rails - actual pull on the gasifier. Downstream the filter and close to the motor compartment there’s even more vacuum.
Agree 100%. Looks like we share the same world after all 
Hopper leak.
I’m 99,9% sure that’s not it. The lid seals good and there’s no smoke coming from anywhere else at shutdown. Also, I read an extreemly high hopper vacuum if I suddenly shut the gasifier air inlet.
Faulty guage or blockage.
I was about to leave for an errand when I read your post. I knew it was not a guage problem, but I switched the hoses anyway before I left, and before that I even blew compressed air into the hopper through the hopper hose. There was no blockage.
When accellerating I had the same results as before, but on opposite guages.
I still share your amazement of how well the engine runs despite the high vacuum, but I believe I’ve accumulated enough time by now on my thinking pillow to have pin-pointed the problem.
First of all I should mention I put quite a lot of effort into making the air paths in the heatex areas non-restrictive. I’ve noticed on the Mazda build that I gain power by-passing its restrictive heatex. Rails run hotter and heat is wasted, but still more power.
Any restriction in the flow path of air, from air inlet via heatex and nozzles, adds to the actual hopper vacuum reading. With a wide air flow path I will probably never see a 3:1 vacuum ratio on the Volvo gasifier.
Rail vacuum.
The charbed feels nice and fluffy with the poker. I can maintain 50mph at 1900rpm on the flat, pulling only 8" and just barely touching the accellerator. (I know, I maintained 55mph under the same circumstances in my first driving video, pulling only 4", but there was nothing but pure fluffy charcoal above the grate at that point. Lots of ash and fines settled since).
My problem is probably I didn’t listen to Wayne’s recomendation on distance between restriction and grate. My obtainium at the time for grate material was only 6" wide. I was afraid I would slip too much char and the grate ended up only an inch from the firetube and restriction. Also, I run only a 4" restriction, but I doubt stepping up a notch would help much as long as the grate is not lowered. The by-pass csa would probably be smaller than the actual restriction.
On another note.
This is the liquid result from burning about 30 pounds of bone dry wood, chunked early spring and stored indoors. Air humidity is high this time a year though.
About a gallon in total. The ratio without WK tubes is about 4:1, hopper to rear tank.
8 Likes
I try to be content with such things as I have, as the Bible says to be. But I have to admit that every time I see JO’s rebak sitting on top of that trailer loaded with perfectly symmetrical chunks of limb wood, and knowing how fast that machine made them, I have to fight off the green-eyed monster.
Every time I top to shake the grate because It is plugging up, I end up regretting it for the rest of the trip. I seem always to shake out too much.
7 Likes
That works for me JO, I will dump or clean out the char under the grate and add larger wood and run it. If it doesn’t unplug I shake the grate and usually to much. Oh well I get unplug.
Bob
5 Likes
Oh, that’s what you call them
All of its brothers, sisters and cousins hunted me when I first layed eyes on the huge, sunny Alabama woodpiles of Wayne’s It’s the no1 reason joined DOW
7 Likes