Your figures apply to myde preety much spot on. But the thing is l only have 13 miles to work…
Exhaust, no… Not much to harvest from this tiny 1.3l engine. For the sake of simplicity l dont even have a heat exhanger.
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I would love to have a short commute like that again haha, way less wood production! But the chunker is coming along pretty quick. So with the changing weather has your batch times for charcoal changed? Still have plenty of motor fuel after sales?
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Hi Kristijan,
well, in your situation, I would go for the proven gasifier. Experiments are good, if you don’t need to rely on them.
So despite to WK-style heart zone, you have problems with steamy gas. And because of the big mass you need about half of your commute way to come to good temperatures.
For the temperature, maybe a thin layer of ceramic insulation might help? There is not only ceramic wool, but also a kind of ceramic plates or felt which are not as thick as wool. You may just need to slow the heat transfer down, not to stop it. So the big mass is not a strong heat sink during the first miles.
Here are different kinds of ceramic shown:
https://thermo-fb.com/ceramic-fibre?noredirect=en_US
The problem with the steamy gas. Joni suggested an air leak, and I remember that you stated your air mantle for the nozzles is your most ugly metal job. Is a leak possible here?
Second possibility: You mentioned your problems when you first lit up this gasifier after the changing to WK-style. Wet, unburnable gas. Problem was too much slipped char. Maybe you still slip more char than necessary?
Well to me, insulating a WK defeats the purpose of it. Plus, l then run out of space in this tiny 7" WK.
I do have heat shealds on the inside, 6mm stainless plates with a gap behind so the heat doesent need to heat the whole thing first. Or shuld l say, steal too much heat. But it takes a long time for the true shine of the WK to show, and insulating it only makes things worse…
Ha, lm glad you remembered 
Well, the mantel is ugly yes but lm preety sure the wealds are tight. I was reffering to the mantel l hammered together out of old sheet steel being ugly. Plus its all burryed in ash.
Either way, generaly leaks on the upper part dont matter much. Leaky hopoers still make good gas, its the hopper puffs that usualy tell when something is wrong on the up part 
After the restriction, there is only one place where there can be an air leak and that is the barrel lid. But gas is preety cold when it comes to there. I did test for leaks but you never know.
The grate actualy slips almost too litle now. Needs a occasional poke every few hoppers to pass any “kidney stones”.
I do think all thats neaded is tuneing the fuel a bit. I must try and run some wood in with the char. But the thing is l dont have a fancy chunker to brag with as do some of our members here lately
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2 days back l did my first cleanup. So far all looks great. I expected a load of ash in the sack filter/cyclone but apart from a few spoons on the bottom and a thin dusting on the sack, all was still good wich tells me the barrel dropbox works good.
There was quite some dust in the firetube, and lm not exactly sure if it acumulated or poured in when l emptyed the hopper. All l know is the gasifier ran good when l parked so l dont worry too much.
Under the grate, there were two bucket fulls of sliped char/ash and only an occasional small bit of slag, wich tells me its sliping just enaugh to keep the charbed clean.
I did however notice the air jets has been plugged with porous slag, so it seems l need to focus more on periodicly checking/clearing those rather thain anything else.
No sign of degradation of the hearth, so it gets my proofmark for even useing pure charcoal.
Allinall l am wery satisfyed.
I have now driven this thing enaugh on moistened charcoal to get the performance consistant. I got my baseline. Now, l move from here!
The optimisation is now slowly under way. Time to throw in variables, one at a time.
Yesterday, l mixed tic-tac box size wood chunks with engine grade char for todays drive. What Bob wuld call “Rocket fuel”. I dont like to jump to conclusions but it seems this is a superb fuel for the sistem, power wise. Had my first “ITFSO” (is the fuel swich on?) moment this morning. Great power, breaths good, hopper gets a tad hotter but still wery litle positive pressure at shutdown, with just barely noticable hasitation after a long red light. Means the massive WK and charcoal mixed in are doing their job.
I will know more after a couple of hoppers, namely if any tar or condensate are created. I must avoid this at all cost as the sistem is not build to cope with any of the two! Having no coolers and condensate tanks…
If l manage to maintain this performance l am more thain pleased. But there is one thing l realy dislike. For some reason its wery picky on air fuel ratio. Wich is strange, l basicly took the mixing part from my Mercedes so l know it works.
All the more reason to get the electronic fuel management sistem project in gear. I strongly belive l will benefit big time from it on this truck.
@Matt, got any breadcrumbs to throw in the pot on the subject?
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Here the link to the Tutorial I did the. last code posted I think is still up to date. Its very fast and responsive. I can show you how to tweak it as well.
Yeah that is where Im going with the charcoal units to see if they will process a mixture of wood and charcoal. If they will on this fuel then they would be a Hybrid.
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It was a good video, even the wife became interested, greet and thank your daughter.
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Ha, Kristjan, this time I also understood commenting, thank you Nežika.
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Thanks for the video Kristijan. Also say thanks to your daughter .
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Yes what everyone else said and excellent work by the camera assistant!
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Thanks for the ride Kristijan. I wish I could understand the comments of your camera assistant with her sweet little voice. Did you have wood mixed in with charcoal on this trip?
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Thank you, thank you, Kristijan!
That was a relly good video. The young commentator did a good job, even if I wasn’t able to understand a single word Well, I did hear “Americane” or something, but that’s about it
What Don said: What was the fuel-mix at the moment?
The little Skoda seems to run very well. If the majority of your driving is on roads like those, you should be more than satisfied with power as well.
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That was fun ride. You apologized for the camera work but I thought she did a very good job of holding the camera steady and on target. Interesting constructions there== quite a few 3 story buildings and the thing I didn’t understand the construction of some. It seemed they were 2 or 3 story where the bottom floor was closed in but the upper stories had just studs going up to hold the roof. TomC
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Thanks for the kind words guys!
This time l ran only moist charcoal. I had a lot of starts and stops planned and while “rocket fuel” is better for power, moist engine grade charcoal is better for town drives. More constant gas quality and drag on the charbed, less fidling with the air adjustment at red lights.
I lit at 10 in the morning, with a full hopper, came home at 3 in the afternoon. A lot of errands, starts/stops and a couple of hundred pounds of roof tiles on the bed on the way home. When l came home l still had at least 10 miles worth of fuel in left in the hopper. Hope l get a reason for a long drive soon, to test the fuel consumption more realisticly but l like it so far! @Tone, perhaps you wuld like a woodgas ride some day? l need a reason for a longer trip you know
To sum the talk between me and Neža, she was confused why l suddenly started to talk in English. I explained its for my American (and everyone else) friends to understand. At that point she asked me “you have friends?” yeah, even kids notice woodgas people are strange 
Tom, lm not exactly sure what you mean but l think what you describe is our traditional barns. Usualy, they are built of brick on the lower part to house livestock, then the upper part is made of wood and left open for keeping hay, with a special porch around where people used to hang hay if it wasnt dry enaugh, or to hang corn cobs, beet leaves for pigs, it was also a threshing floor…
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This is a nother variant of the same thing minus the livestock part underneeth
And this is traditional to the region l originate from. The unpredictable Alpine weather makes hay drying hard sometimes so people used to stack moist hay like this to dry.
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Haha, that’s funny
This was our way. Similar to yours.
As kids we used to make tunnels and take turn crawling 100 yards inside the hay to see who’s the fastest, only to get yelled at if we got caught
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Back when I was little and we managed our own hayfield and square baled it, we just stored it in the top floor of our cousin’s barn. We also filled our own barn with hay but it only held so much for the horses. I would like to refurbish the Tackroom.
Maybe even refurbish the entire barn for a garage or better junk storage.
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Kristijan, Yes; The buildings you sent were the buildings I was seeing. We sure ddon’t have anything like those In Wisconsin. A few years back, when I was trying to be a farmer, I drove back to California during the summer or better known as haying season. It was amazing to see all the different ways farmers “made” hay. But all those ways that you and JO have shown, are again knew to me. Don’t know how they pack the hay around those posts. I did see a video by Johan (?–He drove the length of Sweden on wood) of how he draped the hay over poles that were set up like a tent. He also showed how he raked the hay----different from any of the methods that I have seen. I can’t believe how the farmer that rents my land “makes” hay. It takes millions of dollars worth of equipment. Un believable how fast they can clean up a field. TomC
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