Hi Giorgio, sorry to say i have no dimensions on the Sperco, just by comparing from pic’s i’ll guess around 180mm outside diameter. I really want to find a Sperco gasifier or some drawings of one, anyway there is a car museum not long from where i live, they got a light-weight motorcycle with Sperco gasifier on display, im going to visit this summer and sneak a tape measure with me.
Bonus-picture, winner of Gothenburg’s first woodgas race 1940.
Henry Karlsson, Winner of class: charcoal, side-car motorcycles.
Harley Davidson with MB gasifier (Malte Blohm, engineer)
thanks göran for answer and nice historic fotos…we are also lovers of gasifying history, all fotos and history in this thread, please, so all is compact collected and easy to find!!
ciao giorgio
cody, thanks for the film also, i have it seen once, but not could find more…nice you have had it behind…if you have more material here is a good place for it
ciao giorgio
Very good material! Thank you Giorgio!
Edit: That very first link is a treasure trove, and many browsers will translate from French to English (or?) your preference.
Found some pictures
In 1987 the man on the pic’s wanted to attend a nostalgic motorcycle run on woodgas, he managed to borrow and get help from the old man that originally built the gasifier on the pic’s: master blacksmith Gottfrid S.
My dad had a gas filled balloon on one of his old cars , i don’t remember him ever telling stories of Kaboom to us kids but maybe people were a lot more carful throwing the ciggy buts out the windows .
PS we lived in the UK
Dave
travelling environment friendly and low cost with street view…no travel stress and sometimes interesting finds…seems a small motorcycle with gasifier…??
My experience with acetylene would make me pretty leery of using it as motor fuel. We used to turn paper cups upside down, fill them with acetylene and light them. Quite a bang. When I was a Ironworker apprentice I was once working in the yard gang for a steel mill project. Load the trucks and wait until what was on them got erected and rinse and repeat. A lot of sitting around time in between. I made a cannon out 2 inch sch 80 pipe. Filled the barrel with Acetylene and rammed pieces of coal with paper wadding down the barrel. Declared war on Canada because the mill was on the Detroit River with Ontario on the other side. Never saw any splash so I know that coal traveled farther than i could see, Maybe works different in an engine. The other thing you can use acetylene for is custom paint jobs on motorcycles. Used to paint tanks and fenders with pearlescent paint. Turn on the acetylene on a torch just enough to get the black stuff to come out in strands and let it settle on the fresh paint. After the base coat dried, clear coat the parts. Occasionally some really interesting effects.
Hi Tom, they ran engines on acetylene super lean, to not risk to blow the engine, acetylene have a very “wide” range of burning mixture.
The systems had a lot of flame traps, water bubblers and like, even often explosion relief valves up engine.
The gas producers was made so one could attach a vent hose when parking in a garage, or lift out the carbide box from the gas producer to leave outdoors.
We also have to keep in mind this was acetylene/air mix which is a little less explosive than acetylene/oxygen. But only little…
On welding class in auto-shop school we was told to NOT play by our angry welding teacher at the introduction.
When i sat there in the glass rain from the broken fluorescent tubes just over me, the teacher laughed and shout: i haven’t left you alone more than 10 minutes?
That was only a small paper “box” containing tobacco (snus)…
Worse was the bread-bag, or the 6,6 gallon plastic jug… the worst was the 52 gallon garbage bag, which blowed the door of a shipping container…
