the blower is pulling too hard for such a small gasifier. This will suck some charcoal through and may be one reason your blower is failing. (It may also be ready to kick the bucket for other reasons too.)
The blower may be pulling some outside air in with the chargas. This will dilute your chargas so much that it will not flare. This happened to me when using a mattress infiltrator. I knew the gasifier was making good gas (from past experience) but could not get the flare lit. Very frustrating when you know what should happen and it doesn’t. The fan eventually failed and upon taking it apart, I found the problem with axilary air being pulled in.
Put the starting fan nearer the flare. Heat is not an issue but it allows some dust to settle out in the pipe before exiting the hose. Not 100% sure on this, but more of a hunch.
Hopefully your charcoal is sized between 1/8" up to 3/4". Size is critical, especially in a small charcoal gasifer.
Not a real issue, but next time place your screw heads on the inside of the gasifier. With the treads to the outside, they will not rust as readily and make it easier to remove the parts and place them on a new gasifier.
Be aware of air leaks around you lid. They don’t have to be much to frustrate your ability to run an engine.
You are definately on your way.
Welcome to the Dark Side.
Gary in PA
Thanks for all the great feedback guys. Just getting this far with the little time I’ve played with this stuff is a huge confidence builder.
I think the biggest problem with the whole thing was me trying to make things work faster than I should have.
After opening it up a little while ago I see that a lot of the charcoal is a little bigger than the 3/4" limit, with some nearly an inch.
I had taken a second hose with me to the shop so I could have one on each side of the blower, but that dadgum 1" coupler fit right on the blower AND the gasifier and I just couldn’t help myself from just trying it once. LOL
At the exhaust end of the flex hose I had slid a 1x4" nipple inside so that I wouldn’t be melting the hose.
NOTE TO FOLKS ABOUT TO TRY THIS…DON’T BE AN ALLAN! Take your time and do it right the first time.
I’ll work on it some this week and try to find a DC blower to put on it so I can control the speed some. In the mean time I don’t think I wrecked the little blower, I just went and plugged it in and it works fine, it was just damaged from the weight of itself and the hose pulling on it. I may be able to fix it, we’ll see.
Again, thank you all very much for the help.
Hahaha, We’ve been an Allan and a Bill and a Jeff, etc. That’s why we’re here.
If your charcoal was that big, you may want to peek down at your nozzle and make sure it didn’t burn up before you fire this back up again.
Although I only used up a small part of the charcoal, when I opened it I dug down to the nozzle and it had taken a bit of the threads off.
CRAP! Something else that I forgot was to put something over the end of the nozzle.
I second that, those blowers take about 3 times the air as a IC engine would, so, reduce the voltage.
At 12V it would burn out in no time anyway ( somewhere on the box would be a statement not to use it longer then 2 minutes or so )
I run mine either by PWM or at lower voltage, between 4,5 and 6 volts and they do great, lasting forever…
Silly question of the day…Will a heater control switch work the same as a blower speed switch? I can get one of these locally versus getting one shipped.
The one at the parts house here has three settings. 2, 2.5 and 10 amps.
What’s your thinking on using a higher blower speed to get things started and then to turn it down to prevent melting another blower?
Hi Allen, I used one of these on my 48 Ford truck when I restored it for the heater/defrost blower. As long as the volts/amps match the motor should work. The question is how long in that application.
Thanks Al.
I bought two of the Intek air mattress pumps, one 12 volt cigarette lighter style and one that takes 6 “C” size batteries. We’ll see what I can figure out.
Hi Allan, You can use your current start up fan even though it is too powerful. Just take the chargas hose from your gasifier and place it about 6" away from the intake of your fan. Place a torch in the nozzle opening and start moving the chargas hose closer to the fan intake. At some point it will start pulling some vacuum on the gasifier and start to light. It may be when the chargas hose is 5" from the fan, or 3" or 2.5" etc. This will get your gasifier lite and after about a minute or two should have good engine grade gas coming through. Put the chargas hose on your engine and after a few pulls, it should be running. Of course the downside to this start up procedure is you cannot flare the gas to make sure it is engine quality.
Gary in PA
Thank you Gary. I went ahead and got a fan blower switch.
I have a small generator with carb problems, but starts plumb fine on ether that should be great candidate for this project.
ARGH!!!
I re-did some stuff on the Simple-Fire today and was trying to seal the lid when I found this.
Take a look at the top few inches of the bucket. I don’t know if it sucked itself in like this cooling down when I shut both ports after running it before or I somehow I managed to do that today. When I went to seal it today what I did was put my foot on the top and tapped downward on the edge and bent the tabs over the rim with some channel locks.
Anyone else with this problem?
With patience and light hammer work you can straighten an edge like that out. Those pails can only take a certain amount of force.
Too bad the steel 5 gal pails have gotten scarce, I don’t know how many hundreds I threw away at work years ago. Incidentally, there are Chinese manufacturers advertising pails like that made with stainless steel.
I may have smashed it myself, but I sure can’t imagine doing this kind of damage to it without noticing.
I have several compressor tanks ranging in size from a 5, 10 and 20 gallon, plus about a 30 if need be.
What would you guys say would be the best for something I can run anything from a 3000 watt generator with a 5 HP engine to possibly a riding mower with a 17 HP engine, or are these two engines so far apart in HP that I can’t do that?
I opted for using the 12 volt blower and put the switch in-line that drops it down to 6, 9 and 12 volt settings. With the new blower I had everything sealed great between the gasifier lid and the blower, but still had a slight leak exiting it. It took some doing to even notice the leak and although I’m probably wrong, I don’t think it should hurt anything unless I had an engine that drew more than the blower produced. Am I correct on this?
I still need a filter and now I guess a new gasifier, but things are looking up.
I do have a drum that grease came in that I would guess is a 30 gallon…HMMMM?
My question on a barrel that big is do I HAVE to fill it all the way up with charcoal? It would be a nice easy switch from the 5 gallon to the 30 gallon though. LOL
Okay, another angle on this. What’s the smallest diameter you’d want to build one with and what’s the thickest wall thickness that should be used?
Will to much wall thickness affect how these things work?
