Originally posted 8/12/2012
Just thought I’d start a blog page to have another place to post some pictures and the such. Time is flying !! I’m glad to see so many folks actually building something. There are many ways to skin the woodgas cat but the bottom line is to get it done. I still laugh my ars off every time I’m cruising and see that the fuel pump and injectors are turned off … SWEM, Mike
PS, I think I was able to upload my most recent picture here but not in the main site …
Mike, I got to tell you I just installed a big new fire tube And I used your re-bar fixed grate at the bottom. I almost called you up for hand holding, but finally just built it. John
I don’t know how many of you know Bruce Jackson who now lives 100 % off grid and uses woodgas to run some of his stuff and biodiesel and vegi oil to run his big equipment but he sent me this story several years and he told me it was OK to send it to others. I asked him how he got roped in the latest Iraq thing and here is what he wrote to me … You can find his videos as buddasdad or something like that on youtube. I can’t do youtube here … It’s a good read and Bruce is a great guy … ML … He has Lake Superior on both sides of him and converted a Toyota truck to woodgas at the Abu Graib prison in Iraq … !!!
"I looked at your website and it spun me into a bittersweet place that I mostly keep to myself. My wife has seen this place manifest itself last summer when I broke my finger changing tires on the semi. Its a place where pain is recognized then disconnected and in its stead resilience and strength are drawn upon.
You asked how I got roped into going to Iraq. This is that story and its also the story of a place I found. A place with no borders or boundary in which the clean shining face of strength can be seen, touched, and drawn upon.
And I stood among the captives by the river Chebar…indeed it felt like Ezekiel. After the hasty departure, the tears, the pain of leaving, we traveled. Fifty seven men and one woman traveling 8000 miles away from all that we knew. Only one among us held against his will. One kept because of “critical need.” I alone, who should have been long done with the Army, the National Guard, and serving my country, still kept a smile and an unwrinkled brow. For we’d mounted our vehicles and made our way four hundred miles north out of Kuwait into Iraq.
The journey north began with one of the most serious questions I ever asked a man. I went to Charles Huhta a man I respected but no longer worked with, a man who I watched cry when he left his family to board the plane out. I asked Chuck if he would mind taking a ride with me to Iraq. He was my superior in rank, he had a family, and he could fly safely to Iraq and he could have said no. I told him that I didn’t trust anyone else with my back. I said I understood if he wanted to play it safe, no shame and all that. We were really past shame. I told him I could probably convince the Commander to let me go it alone. At that point no one wanted to make any hard decisions about other peoples lives. You see I had pull, I was a detainee, a draftee, disenfranchised by a man and a government that wanted my brain. The commander would do what I asked if Chuck didn’t want to go.
So it was, in the dying light of the Kuwaiti sun, a Desert Storm Veteran, a former Gunnery Sergeant, a mensch turned and looked at me.
“I’ll go with you Sarge, I’ll get my Ruck” he said.
That simple statement saved my life and cemented a bond that can’t be broken.
We traveled by night. I drove. I kept a 9mm. Chuck kept a SAW (squad automatic weapon). My SAW actually. That SAW is a fearsome weapon throwing its drum of 200 rounds down range in 3 or 4 seconds. Chuck kept that SAW polished, loaded, and finger on the safety. He couldn’t understand why I never put the magazine in my pistol. It bothered him that it was empty so much, finally in the middle of the Kuwaiti desert he asked me why. I told him…
“Sarge there’s only one way out for me, DRIVE!” I barked.
“I can’t screw around trying to shoot a motherfucker while you are toting the big gun.” went my reasoning. And so I drove.
We went north with the Air force women, in the O’mara Guntruck, guarding us. They were Valkeries. They lit the night magnificently with their 50cal tracers. They were beautiful and when they dismounted to pee, we gallantly stared straight over their heads, protecting the protectors.
The thud, thud, thud, of the BOFORS lobbing grenades at some unseen target, made my lips curl in a vicious snarl. I was getting angry. Chuck fidgeted, chain smoking. I kept waiting for fear to overtake me but instead it was as if the more dangerous it got, the steadier I got.
The second night they blew up the trucks behind us. Coincidence really, it should have been us. Up until then, I could have conned myself into believing that it was just night target practice. Chuck and I looked at each other nodding, as if to say this is real. It was real.
We waited six terrifying hours on that road. Waiting for the Calvary to clear the road ahead. Chuck turned to me and said
“Sarge you lean over and sleep. I’ll guard, you’re no good driving if you are tired.”
It was there that I learned what sacrifice is. He wanted nothing more in the world to have me awake, keeping him company during that terrible wait in the Iraqi dark. Instead, I slumped over, immediately unconscious. I’ll never know what my friend went through that night. A man away from his family, alone with his fears, doing what he believed to be his duty. Even from the distance that time affords it still seems one of the bravest things I have ever seen done.
I came awake with a start, and I swear to God there were five empty cigarette packs lying on the radio in the Humvee.
“We’re moving” I heard Chuck’s rough voice say.
It was a series of high speed blackout chases. Chuck and I keeping on station behind the O’mara Guntruck. Devil take the hindmost. Only the next night as we were nearing Bagdad, the Devil came and took the fuel tanker in front of us. There was a fire in the sky. There were tracers, there were the Cavalry Scouts in their Bradley’s making sparks on the highway. And there was Chuck smoking butts with that SAW at the ready. He was ready, I was just smoking his butts and wondering why I wasn’t feeling anything.
It became a blur of catnaps, urine filled daycamps, peeloffs to refuel, and food that Chuck brought me because I refused to leave off guarding my ride. I didn’t trust anyone but Chuck. I’d been to too many rock concert parking lots to let some dumb shit happen just because I was hungry. During the daycamps while Chuck slept I constantly checked the Humvee, or I would walk around and check the O’mara Guntruck. I checked bearings and tires, I looked under for leaks. I caught some stuff and fixed it there. I was driving a brand new tool shop that had more stuff on it then the poor convoy mechanics could ever dream of carrying. So I got into it and helped.
After eternity passed, we came to place where there was concertina wire along the walls as far as you could see in either direction. There were guard towers, armored patrols, and a big gate. We went through the gate and drove down a lovely looking typical army base type paved street. We turned into a parking lot by a PX and suddenly the ground in front of us erupted as a mortar round exploded. I cramped the wheel and floored the truck, leapt a curb and wedged the Humvee between two buildings. Chuck and I turned to each other and in chorus said “Welcome to Anaconda!”
Anaconda brought god’s will to my attention. Perhaps it sounds as if I became religious. I am far from it. Regardless, I believe I have a higher power and at Anaconda he came whispering one night in a dream. He told me to remember the dream I had had twenty years before, during basic training. Then, he brought the knowledge necessary to teach my hands how to disassemble an M16A2 with my eyes closed. This, before we’d ever seen our weapons. So when we were first introduced to our weapons I won all the competitions at first, because I would just close my eyes and my hands would do all work. The reason I could do that was I had dreamt that I was an old Man with tall sons living in the Keweenaw and I was using my M16A2 to defend my family. During the dream the weapon jammed and I had to disassemble, clear, and reload the weapon. I was an expert. Somehow that knowledge got sent back to myself in a dream during basic training.
The remarkable thing about this was the gradual awareness of what this meant to me at Anaconda, and in Iraq in general. I truly believed the prayer, “Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil…” And I didn’t.
Anaconda was a strange contrast that steadily dismayed me and tore away my faith in the United States. I began to be repulsed by eating in the mess hall. I spent my time fixing broken trucks. I began to really despise what we stand for. We had a crew of young guys from Bangladesh assigned to our porta potties and shower trailers. These guys cleaned the facilities night and day. It was the rainy season and these guys lived in a tent right next to the latrines. Their tent was knee deep in mud.
We were mortared daily. Sometimes it was close, sometimes far away. Every time, we were required to leave off what we were doing and go to these concrete bunkers. The bunker I was suppose to go to, was in sight of the wretched tent, the Bangladeshi guys lived in.
One night we were cowering in our bunkers and I saw a match flare over at the Bangladeshi tent. I snapped. I told my bunker mates I was going to have a smoke. I got up took off my armor and strolled over to the Bangli tent. I hunkered down on the pallet everyone was perched on and motioned the guys for a smoke. They were shocked, but quickly handed me a smoke. We watched the sky and smoked.
Soon their curiosity got the better of them. One guy asked me why wasn’t I afraid and he motioned at a bunker. I asked him did he believe in god. He didn’t get it ‘til I said Allah. Then he nodded vigorously. I told him god told me it was OK. They thought I was nuts. His name was Islam Islam. Another guy’s name was Mohammed Islam. We talked through sign language and an interpreter fellow. Turns out they thought the US was in Iraq to make it the 51st state. I laughed at that. Perhaps I tainted myself by going out to them. In everyone else’s eyes they were pariah, untouchables. To me, they were symbols of the contradiction the US was fostering in Iraq.
The attack ended and I made my way back to the barracks only to be confronted by the first sergeant and our captain. They were amazed that I wandered out of the bunker and started in on me for endangering myself. I am known to be quiet at times but when things get to be too absurd for my sarcasm to mask, I tend to snap. This time I snapped. I started yelling about setting the example for these potential terrorists, while pointing over at the tent. I asked both of them if they’d ever read Edger Allen Poe’s The Red Death? “No man is safe if one is left unprotected” I screamed.
“Look at them, are they protected?” I growled at the first sergeant.
“Is this what America is all about?” I pointed again at the muddy tent and its occupants. I was getting white hot. I remember the Captain put his hand on my shoulder. He could see I was really hurting inside.
“Bruce, you know that’s not who we are,” he said “go get your shit and take a break.”
The next day our company went out and built a deck and mounted the Bangli tent on it. We were an engineering company and we brought our loader and dump truck over and made gravel paths around the latrines. A colonel came to see the action and I’ll be goddamned if my captain didn’t go over and demand a bunker for the Banglis be put next to their tent. The colonel was shocked at the demand and the fact that these guys had been overlooked by their Halliburton (KBR)bosses. About an hour later a big civilian wretch came down the street carrying a brand new concrete bunker.
I realized I could make a difference here because this was chaos and no one really had a plan or a clue. They merely reacted when you pushed their buttons. Man, did I get on that!
It was coming on to the first week in April. We had been hood winked. They had pumped us up, telling us that our company was urgently needed in Iraq but when we got to Anaconda there was no mission and they didn’t have anything for us to do. My moral plummeted. Two things happened to change that. I found the junk yard and we found our own mission.
I got busy in the junk yard and pulled out three M35A2 “deuce and a halfs.” These were Vietnam era army trucks. Rudimentary but they are the toughest machines the army has besides the Browning 50cal. I put my crew on rebuilding these trucks. I realized early on that the name of the game was transportation. We had 58 people three humvees, three dump trucks, a cement truck, and a semi. We needed wheels.
Once again, I had to lose it in a staff meeting because the entrenched powers that be thought we didn’t need this stuff on our books. These were full timer NGs (National Guard) who survive by being beauracrats. Perhaps I was simply the first to recognize the situation, namely that it was chaos, you could cook the books, and basically do anything you wanted as long as it wasn’t criminal.
Again, my Captain came to my rescue and said, “Bruce put together trucks for whoever wants them, I’ll sign for them if you need it,”
And away I went with something to do.
Word came back from an advance party sent out to reconnoiter a mission for us. We’d found a home. They’d just lost their Air force engineer company, and they’d survived an attack by 150 insurgents and a septic truck full of explosives. That home was Abu Ghraib.
Abu came just in time, I was getting ready to volunteer to run convoy duty. I found that I was an adrenaline junky. I felt alive on the road. I hated the prison that Anaconda had become. So we packed up our game and headed out west. This time we flew on the jolly green giant. Man, that thing is the Shovelhead of helicopters. Nobody got hurt on the flight from Anaconda to Abu, BUT the pilots launched flares and banked so steeply I thought I was going to fall out the ramp. The sixty gunner on the ramp opened up during the bank and lite someone up down on the ground. Of course we only flew at night so I couldn’t what was happening.
We got out of the helicopter and made our way through the dust to our new home. Prison.
It was here that I finally came into my own. Abu after the torture scandal and the big attack was a place that no one wanted to go to. It was simply too dangerous. Abu had nothing. Nothing came into Abu unless it had an armor escort. Sometimes armor and Apaches. The bad guys mortared Abu about three times a day. Sometimes it was a big mess of rockets, other times they’d launch a bunch of RPGs.
I had nothing to work with besides my toolbox I had brought with me on the JGG. Our vehicles and crap had to wait for a armored convoy of HETTS to come this way. Those vehicles were too big to travel alone, they had to have Abrams escort. They also had to travel at night. It would be awhile.
That was how I came into the Toyota. I was walking along the wall one day, looking for junk. This particular wall was about a mile long and the junk was stored all along it. I came to a ditch and tried to walk around and there in the water I found the Toyota. It had points and a carburetor. It rolled over and I knew I could get it going. I bagged a battery and a gas can. I filed the points, dumped in some gas, hooked up the battery, and Bobs your uncle! I had found wheels in the middle of the most desolate hated place in Iraq. I was outta there. I traded some near beer to the KBR guys for a torch set, tanks, and a ladder rack. Now I had a real honest to god scrap buggy.
From there I went out and started cutting up old steel guard towers, also I snagged a Listeroid powered cement mixer. It was about that time that the FOB commander saw my little parade going by the HQ. The Toyota with no doors or hood, towing a huge cement mixer. It was too much. I was told to park the buggy.
Now this is where my power started manifesting itself. The perimeter of Abu Ghraib was being guarded by some incredibly brave Marine humvee patrols. These guys would charge out the gate during a mortar attack and using coordinates from the Marine counter battery radar, they would try and catch the bastards launching the mortars. These guys were scary but I liked their stones. One morning after the Imam was done with his prayers, things started heating up outside the wall. Then the Marines roared out. Then things got really loud. Then came a call for an ambulance. I was watching all this and I was watching the Ambulance. It was an armored Humvee. The Marines jumped in, and cranked it, and cranked it. It wouldn’t start. I ran over and pulled the hood straps loose and jerked the hood open. I yelled at the driver to turn the power on and off. He did, and I heard the fuel shut off solenoid cycle. I had a hunch so I turned to the Marine standing next to me and yelled at him to get me a 5 gallon can of diesel from the fuel bowser, a few steps away. The marine disappeared, then reappeared, and I yelled at him to pour it in the tank. Then I poured some of the Toyota’s gas into the ambulance’s air cleaner. I gave the driver the nod and he cranked it. Vroooom! The gas made it roar! It ran long enough to purge the air out and after a tense little stumble, the engine idled smoothly. I slammed the hood back down and jumped aside as the ambulance roared out the gate.
It was later that day, I was standing around the Toyota, when a leather neck first sergeant came up to me.
“You!” he yelled at me. I tried my invisibility cloak (apparently it was jammed).
“Yes, first sergeant!” I yelled in my best Ft. Benning basic training voice.
It was then I realized this was the same guy I had yelled at to fetch me the diesel can. “Oh Shit” I thought.
The Marine pointed at me with his whole hand and said, “You saved a Marine today!”
I was stunned. I babbled something about it only being a bad fuel gauge sending unit.
“I could give a shit less, soldier! Without that ambulance one of MY marines would be dead!” he snapped at me. “Anything you need, anything at all…”
I’m not quick on my feet but for some reason I just said what was on my mind. “First Sergeant, I could really use permission to use this Toyota to tote my tools.”
He looked skeptically at the Toyota and walked off without a word.
It was later in the evening at the staff roundup that the Captain told me I had an appointment with the CID commander, the next day. “Hmmmmmm” I thought. “Busted already, and I haven’t even mailed home a jeep yet!”
The next day I reported to this guy’s office. You gotta understand how casual I got around officious bureaucratic crap at that point. I mean what the FUCK were they gonna do? Draft me, separate me from my kids, destroy my business, put me in prison, and throw away the key? Oops already done that. I was polite but not impressed with army BS anymore, the only people who got my respect were the warriors. CID is Criminal Investigation Division. They are the undercover cops in the army. The guy comes out, shakes my hand, introduces himself as Major So and So, then he hands me a card. He says that the FOB commander has directed him to tell me that I am officially authorized to operate the Toyota on FOB Abu Ghraib as I see fit. If I have any trouble, at any time, night or day, I am to contact the person on this card. I thanked him and left. As I walked away I read the name on the card.
It was CID commander Major So and So.
Jesus! That Marine sure had pull to get a full bird colonel to let me play with my junk Toyota on his FOB.
That was the beginning of my rise in power. I gathered power because I could see clearly what was highest priority. I also shed all bullshit and got the job done. I gathered favor because I put aside petty rivalry and made sure the warriors got supported.
I gathered a following right out of Apocalypse Now. All the misfits, all the losers, and the ones who didn’t listen. I wore a t-shirt, black shorts, and flip flops. I found an, out of the way, place by a wall and poured a slab, then started building a 50’by 50’ shop. My people worked for me because they wanted to. When I had discipline problems, I would take the offender out for a walk behind the carpentry shop. The boys respected me, they were scared of going for a walk, and they were really worried about my mojo. I never hid in a bunker when the rockets and mortars came. But I always made them don their armor and hid in the bunker. Me, I made a wading pool out of a water tank and would usually go dive in the pool for a cool off till the fun was over. They thought I was fearless, I just realized that god may have told me I was going to be alright but it did not apply to the guy standing right next to me.
The Marines wanted more Armor for their Humvees, we built Armor. When I needed a bigger welder, one suddenly appeared in the parking lot. When I needed an office for my parts clerk, an army wretch came toting a twenty footer around the corner and set it down where she wanted it to be. When the FOB got locked down after the perimeter wall collapsed and the prisoners broke out, I went out towing the welder with the Toyota and welded the hinges back on the prison gate while the bullets bounced off the wall next to me. I think I got a medal for that but I honestly was much more scared of that rickety frickin ladder, god do I hate heights.
Then it got surreal, the Marines were getting pulped because all the armor on the Humvees was making them too slow to get out of harms way. So, I put together a brain trust of two young mechanics and with the help of a Canadian diesel engine specialist on the Infopop biodiesel list, we proceeded to order crate engines, hop them up, and install them in the Marine’s Humvees. The Leather Neck first sergeant authorized the destruction of these engines. We built them up with little propane bottles and jacked up IPs, They’d last a month or so. It didn’t matter because if the guys riding in the things survived the day we were good. When I tested the first one for the first sergeant and I smoked all four tires on my concrete pad, he just chuckled and mumbled “anything at all…”
That was how I got my D-7 Caterpillar. Up until then I just wasn’t comfortable not having a tracked vehicle, I mean after all the whole place was a mud hole. So I mentioned that if the perimeter wall ever fell down again, we’d need to plug the hole fast. We all remembered the suicide septic truck back in April. I said,
“Give me a D-7 and I’ll show you how to plug a hole.”
Well somebody took me seriously because not long after, a convoy from Camp Liberty brought us a D-7 Caterpillar and someone from HQ told me It was mine and would I go start it and get it off the trailer for the transportation company. Cool!
So I became a regular sight at Abu Ghraib, riding the dirt perimeter road on the D-7. I pulled junk home with its rear winch, I recovered stuck loaders, I pulled trucks out of the ditch. I kept the D-7 parked next to my “bus” that I slept in. I had my own radio and was on call 24/7. I was “Scrounger” on the FOB commander’s frequency. It fit, why ride a Toyota if you can drive a D-7, they go about the same speed. That’s how I ended up “seeing fit” to convert the Toyota to gas.
The carpentry shop was putting out too many stub ends, making their various walls and things wooden. Fires were verboten on the FOB, so at first I tried making charcoal for my forge. There was still too much of it, so then I built the producer and started playing with gas. I did this for my own sanity. You see they gave us a week’s leave. I was suppose to go to Qatar, but I raised hell about having to leave. And they couldn’t send me home to the states for leave, because we all knew I’d get out my sailboat and be singing “O Canada!” sixty nautical miles later. So I took leave in place and swam in my pool and built my gas producer.
This all worked because they didn’t raise hell about my “uniform” of T-shirt, shorts, and flip flops. And I didn’t raise hell about their exploitation of the Banglis or the local Iraqis. You see they had Halliburton out there running the mess hall and some of the local janitorial functions. One thing that particularly made me see red was the exploitation of the eight year old boys. The KBR (Halliburton) guys would hire a “pimp” who hired a group of boys to go out along the perimeter wall and pick up all the urine bottles that the guard tower boys threw down. These little boys were paid $10 per day and given a meal at the mess hall. The fucking pimp took $6.00 of their $10, so these little fellows got only $4 for picking up American urine bottles in 130F broad daylight. Sometimes I would see them go by on their humvee and I would slip my guard and think of my own little fellows. It was there right out in the open with tears streaming down my face faster then the heat could evaporate them off that I would jump on the D-7, set the throttle on its last notch, jam the shifter in fourth, and kick the delimiter loose and off I’d go to an empty part of the FOB to push dirt til my back hurt so bad I’d forget about how insane it all was. I bet the guard tower boys thought I was nuts.
The height of my power came when our company was tasked to build a huge extension of the prison. It was to house 3000 prisoners. I wasn’t involved until five days before the prison was set to open. Everything was done except these steel cage-like sally ports. My captain needed 53 of them. He sent out his welders to build them in situ. The company worked at night and apparently it just wasn’t working out. My captain came to me and asked me to help if I could. I worked by day, so I could have access to all the equipment. I took the brain trust out to the prison site and we tried to build a sally port. It was hot work. I sat down and started looking it over and realized that this was going to be a repetitive process. One of the brain trust mentioned building jigs for the welding, and I got an idea for a continuous rotary fence stretcher. So we packed up our game and went back to my shop and built a factory. We built fence stretchers, jig tables, the marines donated a Miller 2050 plasi cutter and we were off. Then I grabbed an abandoned semi tractor and flat deck trailer and brought that to the shop. The metal came in one end of the shop, got turned into a sally port, then the Bobcat loaded it on the trailer.
I missed that evening’s staff meeting, and finally about 9pm my captain came out to look in on us. We had our first trailer load of sally ports loaded when he arrived. He looked around and just stared. I explained that I thought we could do this pretty fast if we turned it into factory work. He said nothing, but threw his body armor in a corner and grabbed the plasi torch. We’d built more sally ports in one day then the welders had built in three weeks. That’s how it went, we worked for three days straight. And in the end, my captain got his prison built on time and he and I both got medals for that one.
And so the year went by. The sun burned me black. The rockets flew over me. The mortars landed around me. The “bus” took a few machine gun rounds. I walked straight through the middle never fearing for I had learned to believe, to have faith. I saw several men fall in disgrace. I witnessed the “mud wrestling” army female episode. I saw the adultery, the booze, the cowardice, and other things heinous. I stood on the watchtower parapet and gazed at UR and Babylon. I made my secret journey. I walked in the burning desert and I found out what is holy in a man. I am not a god, but pure fidelity to my wife, pure integrity to my word, and pure courage gave me the strength and honor that is godlike.
In the end, another Jolly Green Giant came and picked us up and took us out of Abu Ghraib, to another place and another airplane. Eventually these places and airplanes led back to the united states and an office where a clerk sat across from me and typed in the last lines of my HONORABLE Discharge: “held at the government’s convenience for 580 days…”
The clerk looked up at me and said, “580 days! Man, didn’t you try and fight it?”
I looked back at him through the swirl of time, through the tracers from the O’mara Guntruck, through the haze of Chuck’s cigarette smoke, through the dust of dawn at Abu, through the red pain of insanity, and I told him simply,
“Every day man, Every day.” "
Thanks much MikeL.
S.U.
This is a great read, I wish he would wright a book. It is so real seeing it though his eyes and filling what it must have been like. Thank You for sharing this with us.
Steve, Thanks for the nice phone chat yesterday. I have a lot going on right now. I ate a good lunch at 3PM and I did get my job computed yesterday. Sue and I went out to dinner last night. Still haven’t found the missing radio. Better keep things locked till the kids go back to school. August is the worst month for that. At least my loaded pistol didn’t walk off too. It is in plain site and within reach … Off to work now. Have to measure a highway and some fences … Mike
Sheldon, He’s quite the character and I look forward to spending a day or two with him and his kids again. Of course it will be on his turf as he rarely goes south of the bridge and I can’t blame him. Pure water squirts out of the ground at his place and I always bring empty jugs to fill when I get up to his area … ML
John Stout, I forgot to reply to your comment. You know what the heck you are doing now. I look forward to a meet when we can pull something together to the north. Bruce wanted folks at his place on July 14th but I couldn’t pull that off yet. I’m pretty sure my truck would make it but the gasifier on that needs some work and I have been running it with the trailer. Now the trailer is behind my 97 Cavalier. Both are really local rigs. I have my eyes open for a newer small pickup to switch the trailer to but nothing has popped up yet … I’d like to see your digs so if I ever get up near the Cities, I’l l try to get a hold of you first. Have you met Anthony Meschke yet I’m guessing you are an hour or two west of the Cities ?? Mike L
Finally got the new cyclone on the trailer … Waiting for RTV to cure and can drive it tomorrow … I can’t post pictures here anymore so color me gone. It’s rude. Here’s the link where I can still post real pics
http://www.intergate.com/~mlarosa/images/woodgas/new-cyclone-mounted.jpg
Maybe some of these young folks can buy me new computers and the new operating systems plus all the software I need for my business ?? After my new laptop did a windows update last thanksgiving I have no interest in upgrading anything. I just want to step on it every time I try to use it …
ML
"Maybe some of these young folks can buy me new computers and the new operating systems plus all the software I need for my business ?? "
I have a 10 year old XP system that I use and have no problem. Your links work fine and you don’t need to post pictures directly. perhaps after Nov 6 things may begin to change for all of us. You are the only one suffering. Here is picture of a classy lady of 75 years old.
Mike,
For the last time, it’s just your browser. Your Win 2000 computer will post pictures just fine if you move to Firefox 12. This is the last version which still supports W2000. XP systems can go all the way to the most recent version of Firefox.
Link to Firefox 12 for Win 2000: http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/products/download.html?product=firefox-12.0…
Current Firefox version, for XP and higher: http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/products/download.html
Mike, likewise I look forward to meeting. I took a spin today, 80 miles, out west to my son’s place. No problem whatsoever with the fixed grate. No condensate (1/4 cup). Very sweet.
Bruce’s story is very inspiring. I met with a neighbor in his wood lot two days ago. We spoke of the Dilemas of politics and of guns and of eating cornmeal. Neither of us wish to shoot anybody. Both wonder who the War Lords will be. Both of us continue to cut wood.
Thanks, Mike, for sharing Bruce’s story with us. I read it earlier and was numb struck; couldn’t forget it, so this evening went back and printed it up to read again and share with others. I think stuff like this ought to be required reading in high school. People need to know what war is really like and what it’s really all about.
I looked up his You tube videos (buddasdad)…remains a Very interesting person!
Thanks for all the feedback amigos. I laid low here for a couple of weeks because my posts were being edited and deleted. I don’t have much new to report except the car is running real good when I use it. I am trying to work out the idle issue and have come to the conclusion that I will need to add a cable or solenoid for it. If I try to gimick the idle bypass motor the computer detects the high idle and then pulsates the engine to compensate and gives me an overspeed idle message. This rules out using a longer screw on the butterfly bottom setting screw. Guess I will have to use 2 feet to drive it until I find the right cables etc … This last batch of rain just missed us and the drought continues … Bruce posted today on the yahoo woodgas group. He probably won’t get back on until next month. I’m glad some folks showed up there in July. I could not handle 900 miles right then. I’m still dealing with collateral damage from the Lyme Disease relapse I had in April. Made things a bit tough in Argos but I think I’m ready to go into winter now … Mike
hey Mike, glad your back
Is it alright if I pick your brain? I’m having some difficulty advancing my timing with the truck I converted to wood, (1990 Sierra, 4.3l, TBI with OBD1) I know of the tan/black wire to disable the computer from advancing the timing. But when I disconnect the wire and then turn the distributor I get an increase in RPMs from 600ish to 1000 for a few seconds but then it idles back down again. I’ve seen pictures of your distributor mods, just wondering if you can think of anything I’m missing.
When I turn the distributor too much the engine sputters and will stall if not brought back. If I disconnect the computer wire and turn the distributor off TDC then try and start the engine it makes some distressing noises.
thanks for the help
Dustin
Dustin, I have a switch wired into that wire but never use it. I think it brings up a 43 code or the such. It is supposed to do this. The other thing is that if you throw the switch while you are driving it will not reset until you stop the car and turn the key off for at least a few seconds. I have hit the switch by accident a few times. I just use it for troubleshooting. That mode is used for just setting the distributor so the computer doesn’t make the timing advance to where the knock sensor picks up that racket. I advance the timing near a full peg on woodgas but let the computer listen for pings. Of course some times I forget to set it back at the gasoline setting and I have just been lucky I haven’t cracked the end off a starter. I have a rod that runs right straight to a lever on the back of the distributor. I use a bolt on the steering column / firewall connection to pivot a lever on and the rod runs straight to that distributor lever. The engine doesn’t move much so this has worked out well.
should be links to my pictures for the other folks but I would let the computer do it’s job. I’ve been very impressed. It should be near the same as the one in my 91 and 93 …
Mike
Friday … No reply from Dustin yet. It’s been raining here since this morning. A good rain. I’ll have no fears about lighting up over the weekend. It has been like the dust bowl here when you get out in the open fields … Had very strong winds for 2 days. Dust and leaf cyclones forming. It will take me a couple of days to get the crud from the last week out of my lungs. Oh well … Nobody complains about rain here this year. Trees are showing some stress but we might frost off tomorrow night so they can go into limp home mode. An excavating friend let me know he dug a lagoon 15 feet deep last week and it was all bone dry … ouch … ML
hey Mike, sorry about not getting back to you, I drove home yesterday from my parents and had to work today so didn’t get around to giving you an update. The engine seems a little sluggish lately. I don’t know if its due from me messing with he timing or just that I just have some weak gas and need to seal some leaks. I like your idea of the linkage, I tried using a push/pull throttle cable to move the distributor but it didn’t slide very well at all, I’ll put further updates on my blog.
again thanks for the tips and continued help
Dustin
Thanks for getting back to me Dustin. Are you running a gasifier like Wayne’s or an imbert type. Please forgive me if I missed your posts. I read all day long … Wayne has it maxed for his usage. I have followed it since we met. I can barely keep up with stuff and in fact had no phone service today as their equipment broke down. Either way I’m on a dialup so didn’t have internet either. Time for sleep … Plan to light the car off in the morning and go buy some veggies at the farmer’s market next town over … That’s my idea of fun … We expect our first frost tomorrow night and I have a pile of green tomatoes and peppers … Will have to play it by ear … Mike
Haven’t been on in a few weeks. Been busy and ??? … Had to take the trailer off my Cavalier today so the wife could use it. Her “new” car is giving us grief with the security system on it so she can’t trust it. She even re-programmed it today by herself. That poor cavalier hasn’t gone anywhere on Gasoline since March. It’s just been on woodgas. I hope she doesn’t blow it up … It has no muffler either but I don’t need one for woodgas. I like the sound the way it is … Hopefully the cops will leave her alone … Mike
Mike
I am curious how many miles did you rack up from March until now ? I know I sure put a lot of miles on my f-150 this year.
Sean
Hey Mike.
Get her all tuned and shined up, Argos will be here before we know it.
SWEM
