Good news! Started showing my wife the videos and explaining to her how everything worked and now she wants her own wood gas truck. she will mainly use it for going back and forth to a birthing clinic where she will be an apprentice soon. 57 miles. mostly interstate. I will keep the truck to be easily run on gasoline so that way she won’t ever have an issue getting there and back. she is very attentive on the road and I think she would operate one well if taught properly. Who knows after we get up and going she might run more interstate miles then me.
That’s excellent news! You may be the first couple to both drive on woodgas.
You can spend your time making fuel for her. You won’t read it in Mr. Wayne’s book, but HE drives the equipment and his WIFE helps make the fuel.TomC
I don’t think wood processing will be a problem. We enjoy doing chores together and an hour or two of wood chunking in the evening will be fun together. Also on the picture above where I show the surveyor stakes. This is close to where she will be an apprentice, so she will probably pick them up and bring them home whenever she is over there.
2 very important things. My extended cab 95 Dakota weighs 5000# loaded with comfort for 2 adults, and (if we had them) 2 small kids, or dogs. Build a WK to learn the ropes, go anywhere you want, save $, and enjoy doing it. I tell people it drives like a loaded semi, if you’re in a Civic, you know what I mean. A small trailer will allow long trips on wood. Wife and I are headed to Marshall in 2 weeks (350 RT) for the woodgas/fly-in. My rig, with 2 old folks, with the trailer, with Ark. hills, will require a pit stop about every hour, or 60 miles. I’m luv’in it.
Hi all, been reading a lot on here all this week. also been on youtube like crazy watching Wayne in his v10, really love that thing.
I've been thinking about taking new direction, and wanted ya'lls opinion. It's going to be about 2 months before I get my Ford back together, painted and sold. (mainly because of finances). I've been thinking that during this time I could build a small gasifier to run a few small engines I have around here.I do not want to spend a bunch of money on it,(except for the cost of premium membership)1 because I don't have it, and 2 I do not want the money I do have, taken away from the truck project.
I started rummaging around the garage to see what kind of material I had. I have 2 small engines to experiment with, one is a 5 horsepower craftsmen and the other is an 11 horsepower Briggs and Stratton. I found a really thick piece of pipe that might work for a fire tube. It's about four and three quarter inches I.D. I have 4 or 5 pieces of 2 inch black steel pipe that is about 4 foot long. I have at least two 55 gallon drums to mess with, a metal five gallon bucket, a couple old refrigeration cans. (a little smaller than a 20 pound propane tank). I have a set of torches and a stick welder that will weld up to 6013 sticks. I'm also pretty good at welding with a torch and brazing.
What do you guys think? My goal would be to build a small gasifier to run one of the small engines.If I buy a premium membership and scale down the WK gasifier can I build a tar free gasifier for these motors with the materials I have? (I know I don’t have everything but do I have all the expensive stuff covered?) Mainly doing this for educational purposes.
Robert,
It can be done.
Check out my thread. http://driveonwood.com/forum/1357
I haven’t tried any real long runs yet to know what size chunks are ideal or what any other weaknesses might be. I hopefully will get a long run in this weekend. 55 gallon drums may be a bit on the big size and you can save them for your truck. Maybe look for a 16 gallon oil drum. Ask for scratch and dents. They should be around $5-10. Here’s a place near you.
http://www.centurycontainercorporation.com/
I’ll give them a call Monday on my lunch break. I attached a picture of something I would like to convert for wood chunking. I’ll take one of the grinder wheels off and put on a saw blade, this will get me through a couple hundred pounds of wood until I can get a better chunker. I’ve been reading a lot in the small engine section and SteveU says it’s really hard to make something that’ll keep a 5 horsepower motor running, said it could be done but only 50% of the power. If I could hook my 5 horsepower motor up to this and get it to run at 50% I think it would be plenty of power to cut stuff up.
Ha! Ha! Did I hear my name mentioned??
Hey RobertS for your available engines, your materials on hand, and especially your want to conserve on time and expense to get your feet wet here’s what I’d suggest.
In the Links here on the DOW is a site link to New Zealanders Doug Williams site. He has a plan that really should be in the free plans section:
http://www.fluidynenz.250x.com/
Left hand side bar open up his “Anniviersary Gasifier project” for a pdf hearth plans download.
Build this EXACTLY by the revised red lines added in. His 100mm reduction tube will be close enough to your 4 1/4" ID pipe.
Now for your downstream filtering, cooling and an engine adapt go to youtube and look up the vidios of “GetSomeBass1”
This is Phil Covey. Use his propane can systems for this end of it. SEE and LISTEN to his engine running.
Use your larger riding lown mower engine LOADED to get this system UP, and HOT, and working well.
You will be able to dial it in with fuel wood chip/chunk sizing. Dougs Fluidynes have a kinnda small grate flow so you will do much better with a low ash conifier wood first. Hey. Then try an eastern hardwood too to slow down the production rate to match the small engine too.
A WK-Mini like BillS and now WayneK has will commit you to near all of the same fabrication of a full size in time and work.
Fluidynes work just fine within thier wood fuel limitations. This was an intended build-in Use-Throttle by DougW. READ his words for this. He’s Real - not a geekster.
I have a few of these Fluidynes under my belt. Much, much better than most “better ideas” confused/mixed systems DYI’s attempts.
Do not let geeks say this will be too calculated big!! You can dial-in with your fuel! Get your initial Operator training doing this fuel dialing-in for preformance.
One of my favorite movie lines was Jeff Bridges as the Seabiscuit (true story) race horse owner saying,
“They say that my horse is too small. That my jockey too big. And that I am too dumb to know the differences. But we still keep Winning!!”
Steve Unruh
“Ha! Ha! Did I hear my name mentioned??”
Funny, you must be quite fluent in sarcasm. I would have to be blind not to see your name. Haha.
Thank you so much for all the great info. Going to do a lot of reading this weekend.
This is one of my favorite stories about Henry Ford
When Henry Ford decided to produce his famous V-8 motor, he chose to build an engine with the entire eight cylinders cast in one block, and instructed his engineers to produce a design for the engine. The design was placed on paper, but the engineers agreed, to a man, that it was simply impossible to cast an eight-cylinder engine-block in one piece.
Ford replied,’'Produce it anyway."
Speaking of cast, how was your 4ish inch diameter pipe made? A few years back, (when I didn’t know much metalurgy) I had a piece that looked similar to your piece. It turned out that the pipe was a cast steel. Because of the way the steel re-crystalizes in the casting process, it becomes almost imposible to weld.
To tell if it is cast, what do the surfaces look like? Are they bumpy? Maybe have a “mesh-like” imprint in it? If either of those are true, your pipe is probably cast.
You’re right, its cast. I can actually see the molding marks on the side. Guess I need another fire tube.
Was a little board this evening and decided to chop up some branches laying around the yard. Used a cut off saw and a hatchet. Loaded into a 55 gallon drum.
I was watching a video of Wayne in his 95 v10 the other day, and he said he couldn’t advance the spark with out using electronics. I’ve been all over the internet trying to find out how to do this but haven’t run across anything yet, it just so happened that there was a 95 318 RAM at my shop today. I decided that since I already had the computer hooked up, to look at how far the timing was advanced.
The truck came in because it wasn’t idling properly when coming to a stop and the check engine light would come on after the engine was warm and you ran around a little bit.
The problem was solved, it was the speed sensor in the transmission. It didn’t allow all the IAC valve to work properly when coming down off of a cruise and the transmission and the engine use the same computer, so it turned the check engine light on. this problem was non-existent when the truck was cold because the IAC valve would stay a little bit more open and set the idle higher when it was cold but after it warmed up it would idle much lower and since it thought the truck was sitting still, it didn’t compensate for when you hit the brake to slow down. (automatic transmission)
Watch “Timing is everything.” on YouTube
Timing is everything.: http://youtu.be/SjIzdPkH3sc
That is interesting indeed.
Great video RobertS
You should get your greatest allowed spark advance driving down the road 45-55 mph; in 4thOD; eased back, light throttle with a high sensed intake vacumn.
I figure you would see near 50 degrees BTDC indicated then.
Aught to be able to set up that SNAP-ON for at least a one minute trace graph.
Ha! A working Auto Tech at last!
I can go stove front snooze/read away now.
Regards
Steve Unruh
When I go down a hill with an OBD2 wasted park GM vehicle (on woodgas) it will go to around 45 or 50 degrees advanced … At some point it will sense that ignition is occurring again and maybe even a knock so will settle typically around 19 or 20 degrees advanced while cruising … Wes has all kinds of large digital displays on his truck. I have to rely on a passenger for the info off my diagnostic tool … It’s like texting while driving … My 2 cents, Mike L
Is this enough for wood gas? Can I do anything to the ECU to make it more advanced? The only cars I have found that I can change ANYTHING is a VW. $350 and a laptop and away I go. So much can be changed that the car will not run. I wish I could find this level of customization with newer Dodges.
Steve, I'm not really an auto tech. I am an A&P. Certified to work on airplanes. I just get paid more to work on cars. lolMost of the time an old timers 2 cents is worth a million.
I’ve got a problem. I haven’t even seen a gasifier yet and I cannot stay off this website. Every single chance I get I am on here reading a thred.
And now my wife is telling me that I'm talking about gasifiers in my sleep!!
I've got to do something!
ChrisKY, you should have some sort of disclaimer at sign in, about how addicting this stuff is.
Other symptoms I have are, frowning with every petroleum mile, getting depressed every time I stop at a gas station to fill up, and getting whiplash everytime I see a pile of wood by the road!
Robert
Ha!
Just scraped the money together today for the premium membership.