Normans chevotafire pickup

Bob did you use 3" corner posts as well or something else?

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Yes. The front corner trees are 3" but the back corner trees are 2" to go down into the corner bed pockets and behind the tail lights.
Bob

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Marcus, I canā€™t help smiling - pure recognition joy - watching your video :smile: But that sure is a lot of soot. With your driving habits, make sure you have a huge garden in the future :smile:

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I would be overjoyed to have one like Kristijan has, small scale farm would be about right. Thought I have always wanted to play around with aquaponics, I donā€™t know how soot or bio char could be used with that though

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Just off the top of my head, a drain back system pumps water from your tank into your grow beds where the majority of the nitrates are absorbed, however not all and the remainder get back into your tank. If that water were drained back through a char filter it would capture the rest of those nitrates resulting in cleaner water for the fish and a charged bio-char for your garden.

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Thatā€™s what I was thinking too. Basically using the water as a replenishing compost tea for your regular soil gardens. Iā€™d rinse the char really good so there isnā€™t any loose dust that could hurt the fish, I donā€™t know how sensitive most fish are to gilling up ash and char particles.

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That shouldnā€™t be an issue Cody. When I built my system I put a large drain back reservoir in the floor where the drainback water goes before it is returned to the tank. Simple enough to have the char in a replaceable container like a five gallon bucket with a paint filter in it before it reaches the sump. No particles need go back into the fish tank. My greenhouse is a study in chaos right now. I accomplished just about nothing this winter because of what they call long term covid which sucked about every ounce of energy out of me. I had big plans for redoing the GH with different trial systems. Aquaponics is still not something Iā€™m ready to jump into but all the components are built in. Iā€™ll try and do a video of this stuff as soon as I can get back in there to work. Unfortunately we are going back into winter for a while.

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I have seen Wayne say many times, just when you think you got it figured out, you donā€™t. I donā€™t think I am even close to having it figured out but here is a story
Got a call for another damage control beaver removal, and set it up last Sunday while driving my dodge. Gasoline guzzling beast it is, I am trying not to commute with it but the now 100+ miles round trip to work was a little intimidating for the woodburners operater. Monday I drove the Dodge, Tuesday I drove the Toyota. Like minded redneck like myself, the land owner was floored by the truck and how it worked, brought his wife and kids out to look at it. Now on the way to his house which is on my drive home I was experiencing some high vacuum readings, knowing full well it was about time for a char dump and leaf blower back blow through the rails which Wayne suggested a few weeks back and has been working like a charm to keep things good and cleared and running good. After checking traps and showing the truck, I flared gas off to show operation and the gas that runs the motor. While flaring I could see my low flow condition again, not thinking anything of it since I had seen the high vacuum readings. So conversation subsides and I load up to head home. Start driving down the road and make the switch to woodgas. Truck is running fine, as fine as high vacuum can be. A mile or so down the road slowy start losing power and vacuum climbs higher, pegging out rails gauge. I go for my standard air valve shut down to suck start after sitting for the hour the conversation lasted. Hopper gauge starts to climb, cool itā€™s breathing. Temperatures start coming back, but vacuum stays high. The more experienced operates can guess by this point what I had done. Truck still running good, but both gauges now pegged out. I bring truck up to 50mph in third and close down the air valve completely to free up the clogged from sitting smoldering char bed. No change. Hmmm. Pull over and discover after show and tell the 230lb gorilla behind the wheel forgot to open the air intake. A pure dumb moment. Open the valve and drive home, vacuum moderately high it drives fine. The next morning I go out in the dark and light up, nothing out of the ordinary, I go back inside while system warms up to get the oldest son ready to go to work with me, kids are on spring break and driving momma crazy at home so sharing the parental load. I come out 5 minutes later to truck BILLOWING smoke out of the hopper, now what in the world? The lid is on and clamped down? Truck is shrouded in smoke with no wind to carry it away and in the dark I canā€™t see what is happening. I turn off the pusher blowers and smoke stops and clears up. Did the char bed plug so badly it canā€™t push air through? No haze coming from vacuum blowersā€¦something is wrong. I shut down everything and hop in the Dodge, frustrated and head to work. Thinking on it all day. Wife sends me a picture about 2:30, hopper is trailing smoke and I canā€™t see where from. Told her if itā€™s not blowing like crazy not to worry about it. I get home 6:30, as I pull in the drive I see wisps of smoke coming from the hopper. Hmmm, what the hell did I do? Walk around and inspect and puffer lid is leaking all the way around the gasket. Thinking I cooked it somehow I remove the puffer lid assembly and Inspect it. Nothing seems out of the ordinary, gasket is fine and covered in tar that is liquid from the heat all day long. Now why isnā€™t this sealing up? How is it leaking air so bad as to keep the fire going all day long, the fully loaded morning hopper is down to the nozzles with char and slow burning still. I set it to the side and inspect the hopper top, which appears nice and flat. Then the lightbulb came on, I over pulled the system with the air valve closed, I bent the lid. I flip it over and eyeball level the filler lid and it is sitting down about 3/4" lower then it should be. Flip it over place a foot in the filler lid and lift on the out edge of the puffer lid. BOING! Spring tension releases and lid pops back into shape. When it sunk in it rolled the gasket surface out far enough the gasket was not making contact with the upper barrel lip and air was able to freely slide past the gasket. Put the whole thing back together and in seconds smoke stops. Ok, I did a dumb. Lesson learned. Drove in to work today, the slow burning all day fire had loosened up the char bed and had perfect vacuum readings all the way into work, but cost me an extra bag of wood for the drive being so loose.

Make sure your proper air valves are open :heavy_check_mark: take it seriose when everyone says while your showing the truck is when it will do something you donā€™t understand :heavy_check_mark:

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Marcus, I like it. Good story.
Iā€™ve been anal about high vacuum. Started off with a plastic barrel for my hayfilter on the Rabbit. Same barrel on the Mazda bed now. I try never to pull more than 30" on it.
Alarming when even the hopper vacuum climbs, but always an indication of insufficient gasifier air supply. When I built the cyclone/heatexchanger for the Mazda I tightened the air path too much. For the past year or so, it has probably started to clog from tary smoke backing out the nozzles at shutdowns, making things worse. Hopper vacuum sometimes climbs to 10-12" during accelleration and power is reduced. I will have to do something about it as soon as weather allows.

Talked over phone with Jan the other day. We discussed opposite problems - not enough vacuum. Several times Iā€™ve forgotten to close the rear tank drain or forgotten to plug the blower outlet. Head scratching every time - just when you think youā€™ve got everything figured out :smile:

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Thanks for sharing Marcus .

It seems that if I am videoing or showing is when I will always mess up .

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Thatā€™s a good one Marcus, yup it will happen to all of us. This reminds me at Argos when I was letting people drive my truck with the new and improved auto mixer working in it. I ask Wayne if he would like to drive his old truck. In a heartbeat he said yes. So the truck had been driving great, I got it ready more wood in the hopper. We got into the truck and headed out, we drove through town something was now not working right. I had Wayne pull over, yup I forgot to open the air intake.
I felted like a newbie DOW driver. Wayne still had a SWEM on his face driving his old 92 Dakota truck. That was a great day to remember. Now you would think after that, I would never do that again right? WRONG.
Bob

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The new truck will have in cab controls, just so I can see and touch it and verify before I do something stupid like bend my puffer lid again :grin:

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Did your Toyota have the remote gas door opener lever? My Mazda has one and has a nice already drilled hole for the cable routing. Now that I only will have one hole for air to go in I can route through there with some bicycle brake cable or choke cable.

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I can now look out my back window and see if my intake is open or closed with the good old WK tennis ball valve and open or close from the cab.
Bob

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Cody no the Toyotas where all manual gas door until the third gen 4runners in 1990
Bob I can see my valve handle in the mirror, but in failing evening light it is not visible enough. need to paint it pink or something to make it stand out

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Ah alright. I know a lot of the old square body Japanese trucks borrowed each otherā€™s designs. No big deal to drill a hole and put in a grommet anyways.

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Yes at night that would be a problem, the same I can not read my vaccum and temperature gauges at night . I should put a light bar on the outside above the window to shine some light on things.
Bob

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Always have the led light on my hat bill, I quick flash to check gauges in the dark. Going to rig some small led in the new build

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If there is a big enough passage way for the gas and air to go through IT Will Run on wood gas, and maybe on gasoline.
Bob

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