Thought I would post a little FYI that I use when welding aluminum sometimes you get soot or carbon on the welds. used to be a pain to remove until I found use some acetone on a rag and wipes right off…so this morning I put some on a rag and wiped down the inside of my wood stove door…you could put it in spray bottle and soak down an intake and use compressed air to blow it out…Just a thought easier than trying to burn it off, especially with plastic intakes.
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Heat it in a BBQ at 450 for an hour or so…
Watch to see if it smokes.
Sometimes aluminum ( mostly automotive castings ) absorb oil and it make the welds porris
A good bake and clean makes the welding easier
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Dennis, the idea is good but unfortunaly doesent work. I tryed everything on my chevys plastic manifold. Acetone, alcohol, petrol… even boiling water. Everything just making things worse.
Seems that, althugh solvents do a good job at disolving/softenigh the crap, they cant flush it. Not to mention high vacuum that vaporises any solvant preety much imediatly in there
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Oh, l shuld mentiin l tryed those things on a running engine. Pulling off the manifold and cleaning it there will work
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That my friend is the key…you probably can soak it then also it is like any important maintenance projects like changing oil some things can not be done with engine running
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Ha! Ha! Another late model engine selection criteria:
How quickly easy the plastic intake can be removed for flush cleaning.
Seriously some I-4’s and V-6’s this is only a 20 minutes job to be off.
Faster once you’ve done it a few times.
Regards
Steve Unruh
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If l culd get it off it wuldnt be a problem at all. But in case of my Chevy it wuld require pulling out an engine. Im not keen on doing that every 3 or so thousant miles…
Steve, there is a nother problem. In Waynes colourfull wood gas vocabulary it is called “the event”. Its when soot in the manifold catches on fire by its self. Maybee a flashback from one of the valves or whatever… makes for a nusence and a lot of smoke and usualy happens when you need it the least, but with a metalic manifold thats about all thats going to happen. Im preety sure a plastic manifold will be gone before you can even realise whats going on.
But the fact is, the key to the problem is even simpler. Dont have any soot in your gas in the first place! The reason most guys dont focus much on filtration is because there is no need. Soot is harmless to the engine and with a metal intake manifold there is no problem. But if one hasnt got an option and has to use a plastic one, he needs to invest in a better filter. Simple as that
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Yes. I actually do understand the dilemma KristijanL.
Many of even the I-4’s like my 2005 Toyota Camery jam its long pathway plastic intake down between the engine and the firewall. At least two hours with hand tools to remove working from the top, the bottom and one side. A real pita.
Also many of the all metal intakes are no joy either. Look at the pictures JanA put up on his top removed Chevrolet 4.3L V-6.
So yes a complicated, large many socks soot filter like VesaM does. PatrickJ. did when in South Africa.
Or an over-cool, reheating gas condensing, washing-filtering system like MaxG says is absolutly needed.
I’ll still say those who can fabricate a complete gasifier system and one of these complicated filtering train systems should seriously look to make up conversion steel tubed log-ram intakes.
Use only an engine with no coolant passages in their intakes.
Use only engines where the intakes base is not used to oil seals off the camshaft area.
Make up your own burnable metal intake.
Not going for tuned air ramming effects . . . but going for direct runners access to flexible tube vacuum it out.
Do this vacuuming of the intake-in-place; weekly, religiously, to prevent “a burn-off event” from ever occurring.
Soots vacuuming and then the soot’s-carbons not having to pass through the cylinder at all. I learned I was only safe doing “Plenum Cleaning Services” just before a time-milage spark plug changing out. The carbons fouled spark plugs took mile and miles of hard loaded driven to burn themselves clean. And on some systems like GM’s never would running clean back up.
Regards
Steve Unruh
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Kristijan, how do you explain the wear and tear that they measured both during the war and the tests they did during the 60’s then?
The first values here are on pure diesel, the second values are on diesel with gengas, as you can see the wear is 0.016 on pure diesel and 0.05 on diesel and gengas, it’s quite a big difference, and it’s not just in the cylinders it will wear?
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Steve, even manufacturing a intake manifold isnt ideal. Here for instance it wuld stick at anual inspection… they do look under the hood too. Well, not ideal but doable.
Not nesseserly. We all focus so much on making gasifiers better, trying to discover warm water. Our gasifiers are GOOD. As they are. Had been for over a hundred years. We shuld focus on things that arent good right now, filtration being one of the biggest.
Filters being large, not nessesery. Complicated? Not at all. Any filter will do the job as long as one criteria is met. The gas must be dry. Its childplay afterwords.
Options again. Do it MaxG way, cool, condense, reheat, filter. Complicated.
What l like to do is not make water at all. I mix charcoal in my fuel.
Jan, l can not answer that. Too litle info. What kind of woodgas? How clean? How dry? What kind of cylinders? Pistons? How was the engine run?
My logic is if the gas is dry and clean its probably better for the engine thain liquid fuel
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Yes, I agree, but I do not call the gas clean if a lot of soot builds up in the intake.
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Exactly. Thats why l proposed we make it better.
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The lower picture shows the wear with cloth cleaner, number 03 is the same tractor as 03 in the previous picture I showed, it was driven with wet cleaner.
As you can see, the wear is less or equal to pure diesel.
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We must also take into acount, soot is’nt to bad for an engine, but microscopic charcoal particles containing minerals, ash=minerals, charcoal particles that brings acidic “moisture” with them, with old times scrubber/washer filters alot of that slip through, all of it soaked in that acetic acid water mix.
Even with the best of filters some soot “recreates” due to temperature/pressure-drop in intake, but that should be next to pure carbon?
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Yes Goran. Dry gas is key here it seems, l have tryed everything from water scrubbing to cycloning wet gas, and while that all works on solids, it seems microscopic droplets will carry soot trugh any filter l tryed, and dump it in the low pressure intake manifold. This is why gas shuld be dry. Then, something called “cake filtration” occurs. Pores in the filter get filled with a layr of dust and it acts as a filter by its self. Finer the particles finer the cake, better filtration.
The usual hay filter technicly isnt even a filter. Its a coalescer. Collects dust containing water droplets and it works to some extent but its never gonna get all of it.
Jan, then these resaults only confirm my thods.
I now remember reading a while ago that candle soot contains tiny nano size diamonds. Carbon crystalised to diamond along with many other forms . Not a lot but over milions of pistons travels it adds up… but probably Goran is right, inperfect filters pass a lot of minerals trugh. Moisture does a great job at carrying them!
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Kristijan, yes, just my thoughts, cake filtration is probably the best way to go, filter fabric is only there to support the “cake”, cake doing the real filtration and maintains itself.
Interesting you mention those nano-particle size diamonds, i remember reading about them too, appearing in acetylene flare with low oxygen, that soot i think is called “lamp black” maybe same as candle soot?
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Wallace. I do a lot of New aluminum welding it is when I use the harder alloys the 7029 and 7045 alloys when soot developes as I mig weld it and it is when I use a soft alloy wire to weld a harder alloy piece as I believe it is the silica burning off that creates the soot.,
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