I just use what ever is to hand to cover the hole in the pipe in fact i have used polythene shrink wrap , mud , and clay and then found a bolt that was a near enough fit, don’t worry about a bit of flame coming out as soon as you cover hole it will go away ,.
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Attempting to attach refractory to the ceramic wool failed. It would stick and then a layer of the wool would peel away. Ripped it all out before it clogged my grate. In a way to keep charcoal from slipping past the flutes I’m going to tack weld some plates in to force all coal to go between the nozzles.
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I’ll just try to let the void of charcoal become my burn tube I guess. But at least this will keep char or wood if I mix a little from slipping past.
I put that charcoal back in the drum with the rest. When it cools down I’ll spread it all out on some window screen to dry in my shop.
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Heres what the flutes looked like after today’s test run.
Can’t tell if it’s build-up of crud or if it’s scaling off from the heat.
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I’ve been trying to find my old milk can to use as my refill lid, would be perfect for the occasion. If all else fails I’ll do what Gary did for his Ranger and use a coil spring and bar to hold the main lid down for faster opening.
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Cody is this the 55 gallon standard type oil / chemical drums with the locking ring and lid that you are using ? if so then just unclip the ring lid and take lid off and refill , no need for coil springs or other fancy stuff , i have a updraft and have only ever used the standard locking clamp on mine to seal and it takes 15 secs to take lid on and off .
Do you have a engine you can run the gas on while you are testing or are you just using a flare for now ? only i have found that you cannot really test how well things will work unless that gas is doing some real work , be a terrible shame to do all this work and find out it fails once used as intended .
Just my 2 cents is all .
Dave
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The locking ring is the bolt type. The guy I bought the barrels from didn’t have the lever type rings unfortunately. Also I don’t have a cyclone or filter built yet so I don’t want to crud up an engine via testing.
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I understand i have a lot of those locking rings that use bolts as well and they are useless for what i need , so if you just use the lid and grab 3 or 4 springs off a kids trampoline and fasten them to the lid that a quick fix and works well .
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If you are using a big barrel like that does the charcoal just burn up the center? Do you have to shake the barrel to get the stuff around the perimeter to enter the burn zone? Aren’t concrete blocks made to hold down lids? They look damned professional on my charcoal burning barrel.
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A brick would be well and good but I think it would fall off when driving my truck 
Yes I’ve noticed it wants to burn in the center and without any agitation it will pile up around the perimeter but I think the bounce of the road will solve that.
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Hey Tom yes , yes and yes again , you got it spot on there 
charcoal gasifiers work best tall and small .
Dave
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Truck is at the muffler shop. Should be done by the time I get off work. Next will be to take off the intake manifold and plug the old vacuum lines and modify the EGR port to fit the carburetor I have, it’s a 30mm flat slide carb and it’s a cheap Chinese clone so I don’t care if it gets crudded up. Might even be able to use the intake off of my honda clone engine that I had gotten it for, that would be nice but I think aluminim brazing a tube to the intake would be a better idea.
Carb just clamps on using a rubber coupler, and what I like about it most is it doesn’t have a choke butterfly, I guess it had a choke circuit to run richer. Supposed to be for a 2 stroke bike.
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What fuel size did you use this time?
No dubt the condensation was due to lack of firetube but a firetube can be many things. Eventualy the sides will plugg with ash but l usualy cheat and add it there my self. A bit of waterglass helps solidify it too.
Or, like you proposed, add a kinda restriction in. It will allso act as a ash trap to form a firetube.
Unfortunaly the flutes seem heat scaled to me. Not good… Not good… Keep in mind you are a pioneer thugh. This was never done before. To get it to run as good as in a updraft mode might require some head scratching on your part.
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If all else fails I’ll abort mission and make two updraft flute reactors at least we know those work exceedingly well.
Also my char size was not great. Right now I’m putting char in a bucket and crushing it with a baseball bat like a pestle and mortar. Lots of fines I found in there.
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I think heat management will be harder to do with the flute holes facing downwards. I noticed the drops I would add barely had time to vaporize and would slide out to the other end. Very serious leidenfrost effect going on. The whole midsection of the flute was glowing a medium orange color when i shut down and maxed out the thermometer gun.
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Also HOLY COW my dad’s friend really hooked me up! He put in a new resonator and a magnaflow muffler with brand new pipes all just for 60 dollars. Bottom end is better than with the stock exhaust.
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I would screen out the fines through 1/4 inch mesh.
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If I were to change my system to an updraft flute using just one of these giant tubes, do y’all think adding just one more 3/8" hole would be sufficient? I know Bruce has four 7/16" holes in his flute. Or do y’all think expanding the 3 current holes to 1/2" would do the job? I’d like to keep it open ended and hopefully it will be long enough to go through both ends for me to weld it with some meat leftover to attach a surface for valves during shutdown mode.
Edit: I just did some basic area math and adding a 4th 3/8" hole would make for the same surface area as expanding the current 3 holes to 1/2"
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Hi Cody, have you tried sizing your charcoal into different sizes yet. Also mixing different ratios of water to charcoal. My charcoal gasifer hat had a fire brick nozzle with a bell nozzle inside of it worked differently according to the size of the charcoal and moisture in the charcoal. I also used exhaust to control the heat. Do not give up to soon on this, remember you are the first in pioneering with this double flute tube down draft gasifer.
I might be the second unless Matt makes one ahead of me or someone else.
Bob
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I’m going to give her one last test after I sieve out the fines. Need to get 1/4" and 1/8" screens though. Also need to make a drip apparatus so I can have a constant drip to try to keep temps down.
I’m wondering if the fines are choking up the grate and not letting the hot gas exit fast enough, making it eventually dwell at the nozzles.
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