Hello, my name is Mike from Scranton, PA. I am new to the forum and this is my first post. I’ve been studying wood gasification for roughly over a year now and am still in the planning stage before I build my first unit. I must admit, I have read a few writeups on charcoal gasifiers and am slightly hesitant to go that route, but am still siding on the wood gasifier.
More to the point of the topic, I have a 1999 Ford Ranger with a 4.0 engine. Over a year ago I lost the tranny and have been hard pressed to find a cheap swap out. So my new train of thought is to rip the whole truck apart and make it into a trailer/cart with the motor relocated to sit above the rear suspension and just scrap the rest. I want to know if anyone has any experience or has seen others that have repurposed auto engines to turn any other devices? I’d like to pair the engine with a couple 10kw generator heads and a large compressor, and possibly other loads. Of course I’d like to feed the motor syngas, and I know there is a power reduction when using syngas, but the lowest spec I’ve seen for the 4.0 is 155HP, so with the power loss, I presume it would still give me over 100HP.
I am a widely skilled tinkerer. I can weld, machine and fabricate as needed. I am also into microcontrollers and can code in the Arduino programming environment. I have a wide range of tools and being in a small city have access to every type of specialty shop to fill in my blanks. Funds are always tight, but I have the will if there is a way.
For my gasifier, I have a steel semi trailer rim and a good sized brake rotor that conveniently fits snugly into the offset of the rim. The rotor’s pilot hole is roughly 5" in diameter. I am planning to weld the two together and build something of a firecone inside out of perlite and sodium silicate, and possibly a bit of fire clay. The specs I found on this site many moons ago for the imberts only calculate up to 115HP motors. Can I assume the largest specs will also produce enough gas for 155HP motors?
Any help directly or even indirectly related to my project will be most appreciated. Thank you all in advance!
Welcome Mike, best advice I can give is to buy the book, which gives you access to the premium side of the site. You will get a wealth of knowledge, and support. Al
Thanks for the Welcome Al! I will check out the book, but to be honest, my finances are brutally tight and until that changes, I will have to add that to my wish list.
Welcome to the group Mike; I guess, first I sympathize with the financial end of your project. Second as Al said, the book is very good investment to building a WK gasifier and the information of how he derived his method is very informative. Having said that, with research, you can build a Imbert style, but you will have to research.
If that Ford truck is not all rusted out, I would start my project with finding the transmission and saving the truck. The Ford Ranger with a 4.0 engine would be a great weigh to CC ratio for wood gas. The WK promotes the Dodge Dakotas with a 5.3 V8 as the optimum for weight to CC ration. I have a full size Chev Silveratoe with a 4.3 L V6. I can’t race with it but it gets me down the road a legal speeds.
I will have to go way way back in my notes to find the extended Impert tables. In the mean time on this forum J. O. Olson has just built an imbert for a VW pick up with a 2.2 l engine. His basic dimensions are close to what I used.
I have a set up like you are taiking about with a wheel and a disk brake rotor welded to the rim. I have pictures of it on here somewhere but I don’t know how to negotiate the sight to point you to them.
Finally, I will say, yes many people have built a woodgas engine to do many things besides move a vehicle down the road, but there is NOTHING more rewarding and useful than a vehicle. Anything else will sit for long periods of time until an occasion comes to use them. With a vehicle you will find reasons everyday to use it ---- it is fun and exciting and productive.
One last thing I forgot. You have to have a plan for a fuel source.
Good luck and I hope I haven’t dissuaded you from proceeding with a project. TomC
Too add to what the others have said.
Those horsepower ratings are hogwash. they are used solely for sales and promotion of that particular vehicle over another. If you read carefully, that rated horsepower is at something like 6000 rpm, a speed you don’t want to run in a production engine. realistically, for stationary power you will want to run a nice easy 1500 - 1800 rpm. So divide your rated horsepower by about 4. Then you will lose about 30% from the woodgas fueling.
Now with regard to the financial position, I too totally understand that problem.
Mr Wayne has spent ten years or more and build many gasifiers to get to the excellent design we now enjoy. You too could spend several years and many many hours and dollars to refine a system. OR You could buy the book and have all that knowledge and experience now. That $50 begins to seem like a heck of a bargain about now.
I’ll add my welcome to the DOW MichealJ.
On the 1999 Ford Ranger V-6 4.0L is that the cam-in-block pushrod version;
or the overhead cam version?
Converting auto based engines to other power purposed the bugger-do is adapt over the flywheel/flexplate end for power take off with good bearing support. The rear engine bearing is not desined for high contious side thrust.
Regards
Steve Unruh
My purpose for wanting to rip my truck apart is because it needs other things, tires, battery, muffler and now a fuel pump, not to mention tags and insurance. The truck belonged to my uncle who passed away a few years ago and it does have a lot of sentimental value which is why I kept it this long, but the longstanding trend in my life is that things are bad and the future looks worse. I have a job that I work hard at, but the pay is literally comparable to a good paper route, and until I can shake out a raise, I must perceive things as they are rather than how I want them to be. That said, I frequently entertain the thought of being without a home, and in such a scenario, I would like to have electricity and heating fuel. I do have nearby family, but their prospects are equally bleak so a little incentive on my part I hope may someday provide the bare essentials. I do not mean to imply that Wayne’s book isn’t worth the $50, but I do have other obligations that must first be addressed before I can justify such an expenditure. Also, if the contents of the book can be found anywhere else online, I confidently can say that I already have most of them as I meant it when I originally stated that I’ve been studying gasification for over a year. But please also believe me when I say, if I do find myself in better fortunes, I will pay my dues to Wayne as most of what I have already collected from the web likely originated from him. Heck, it was watching his YouTube videos for the umteenth time that I found this forum. So yeah, I will put forth when I am able to.
Thank you all for the kind welcome and the feedback thus far. I will flesh out what Steve said regarding my rear bearing not taking so kindly to side thrust and see if there can be any feasible work around to get me past that. Assuming I can get past that, do you think the engine can handle the loads via some form of direct drive, or is there specific need for some form of transmission to even out the torque application? BTW, my engine is an OHV which leads me to believe it has an inner cam and push rods.
Welcome, Mike. Use what ya have to start with. Even wood gas is expensive, welding rod, cutting supplies, hardware and etc. I’ve used a few adapted engine in the sawmill world. Best luck keeping the transmission that fits the engine. The transmission doesn’t have to work just locked up some how. Keep the front frame under the engine and weld that on top of the back frame.
Thanks Jeff. The forward gears still work in the tranny, but the reverse band tab snapped and is why I lost reverse. I will just try to link up after the tranny. Thanks for the tip.
Hi Michael and welcome to the site. Here is my philosophical bent and some advice. Although you have attachment to the truck selling the carcass would go a long way getting you onto the gasification bandwagon. From the sounds of it dollars will be tight so a full blown WK powering a truck is not in the cards right now. Aim smaller to match your minimal needs don’t try to swap out the exact life you are living for a woodgas powered version. A lawn tractor or smaller engine or generator or motorcycle have all been done on this site using low cost materials and minimal tooling. Build something, tweek it learn from it and all the while aim for bigger down the road. For me one of the hard lessons on site was figuring out I was trying to match the skills of lifelong makers with tools and resources to envy. Just some mid day thoughts. Have fun with it.
Hello, my 2 cents for what they’re worth. Trust me when I say you have not seen any of Waynes internals, the stuff that makes his system what it is, posted on line for the whole world to see. That is why this site existes.
That being said you can build a successful gasifier by doing some research. Just be careful who’s system you’re coping. I know I built more than z couple to get where my systems are.
Mike believe me I have been there raising 2 boys no money, but I never let it stop me from doing what I wanted to do. I have worked 2 or 3 jobs for as long as it took to gain the resources to do those things, sold fire wood all winter to buy what I wanted. Look for odd jobs in you skill range. This is the USA you can do, or be anything you want. the only thing stopping you is you. Sorry for the rant, but people in this country are not told this enough any more. Al
I found this old thread when trolling the web for more leads of this topic. Though gasification is not mentioned at all, it does give me a lot of literature to investigate, plus lots more ideas that generates other ideas like possibly driving generator heads from the front of the motor as I believe the front bearings should have been designed with side thrust in mind as it already powers other loaded devices like AC compressor, water pump, power steering, alt etc…
I think you are on the right track with the automotive alternators. You don’t need a car engine to run them though, that is way overkill. Find a junk lawn tractor or some similar small engine to run your generator. A few used car batteries, and you have the biginnings of an elecrical supply on the cheap.
You can easily run a small engine on a charcoal gasifier which is much simpler and cheaper to build. I would start out with gary gilmore’s simple filre. ( Plans free in the library section of this site) The waste heat from making the charcoal can help warm your shelter.
The main reason for my want of using my truck motor is because I already own it, and last time I drove the truck, the engine ran well. Overkill is fine, it’s underkill that worries me. I am still in the planning stages though so any detail of my overall plan is very negotiable, it’s mostly a matter of what I can afford from the scrap yards or other sources for parts. I own the cheap HF 90 amp flux core welder and have a nice snap-on MIG welder with argon at work (in a body shop). Also have a friend that owns a heavy duty Miller truck welder that he uses on his utility truck that I’m sure I can get my hands on every now and again. Once I peel some stuff off the front of the motor, I will have a better idea of what I need and how to make it work.
I’d look at finding the torque specs for your engine at the rpm you’d like to run… I beg you can find out how much torque the Gen head you’d like to turn requires to spin it.
Yes correct you can power off of the front crankshaft pulley arrangement. On that OHV 4.0L V-6 about 15 horsepower worth.
Note that Ford does try and take off powers on opposing sides of the crankshaft to equalize bearing thrust.
Use an auto alternator in the stock position up-sized to hopefully at least 120 amps. 200 ampere units available. 1500-2500 watts.
Use another alternator in the AC pump position. And another alternator in the powersteering pump position.
So 4500-7500 watts. Well within your available to transfer 15 hp through that microgroove flat belt.
You say that you can Fab . . . well these could be three AC generator heads.
The front bearing mistake would be to oneside pull a single big generator head. Been there. Done that. Guaranteed to make it into a worn bearing, noisy oil leaker out the front cover seal.
Take the recommendation of divide your 160 by four for 40 hp. Reduce ~30% more for woodgas = 28 hp. Then reduce that further for running at a maximum best torque speed of 2500-3000 RPM should sill give you your 15 hp.
Ha! Ha! What Andy and I, and others like MattR get out of aircooled V-twins on woodgas.
You will just use more wood to make your 15 hp.
Thanks for the info Steve, It appears I may have to give more attention to somehow taking the power from the rear of the motor as intended. Thanks for the heads up regarding the amount of HP that can be taken from the front.
