A woodgas meetup / alternative energy meetup took place today in Tidaholm arranged by Niklas who also hosts Omställningsresan on youtube, we went with two woodgassed cars with two ppl in each from around here loaded with chunks from floor to roof to be able to make the return trip.
Snapped some photos for you guys.
I’m sure there will be more pics added made by a few other participants
Under the hood pics on some are already documented here so I didn’t snap those and most are interviewed with a show and tell on Omställningsresan.
Yeah, it was close to a 500 mile roundtrip. Just short of it for Johan and me and a little longer for team Per/Lars in the BMW. Refueling every 40 miles or so, and a lot of woodgas chit-chat Everything went surpricingly well and two cases of light bridging were the only hickups along the way.
2/3 down there we all met up with Göran in his white Volvo. Johan’s first pics are from grossery shopping 20 miles from Göran’s place. I doubt there’s been three woodburners parked outside that store at the same time in 80 years
I managed to snap a few pics as well. First one is chasing a BMW woodburner down the road. Next ones are Göran in action, demonstrating some of his old chainsaws. The rest of them speak for themselfs I think.
I can see that I was a little tired when starting the topic yesterday, it could have been a little more text written
There were also a few woodgassers that drove there on dino that we could also chat with, unfortunately not with their gassed vehicles but the best thing is that they came.
All in all it was a great trip, the only thing that could have been better is the weather. It was the coldest day in late may that I can think of in recent years, not many degrees over frost at night. Even though I was fully dressed in my sleeping bag, I woke up in the middle of the night because I was very cold, and it was hard… Of course my air mattress was completely flat so I was basically sleeping on concrete in an unheated workshop.
Luckily there were a few couches there and one was not taken so I just moved there.
I completely missed the chainsaw show, that was a bummer, guess I was too deep in conversations.
There were business cards left with regular intervals all the way there and home, both in appropriate and in less appropriate places
We even saw a few spots where it looked like someone have had a couple of barbecues on gravel roads, weirdly just where we stopped
Very interesting. JO’s Volvo get the beauty contest prize. Barely tell it’s a wood gasser. The ugly prize goes to the Suburban. Most interesting is the van with the gasifier enclosed in the back. I’d like to have seen more pictures of that. Is there a bulkhead that totally seals it from the passenger area and does it get real warm in there? Anyway thanks to all for sharing this adventure.
Tom, I think if you can find my Swedish woodgas meetup 2017 there are more pics of the white van. I agree, it’s impressive - so is the owner. 83 years old - climbing the ladder fueling up. The van has a slant 6 with turbo on woodgas. The hopper holds fuel for 400 km or 240 miles. I asked him about the seal towards the gasifier compartment. He said it used to be air tight
Thanks for the video link to his conversion van JohanM. I had watched once. Now again. Impressive to me his conversion and controls stuffing that long inline six cylinder engine up front. Fact about the Chrysler auto transmission systems is not needing an engine vacuum input for control. TV (pump/system Throttle-Valve pressure) controlled by a position rod or cable instead.
Nope. No easy Google translate from Swedish. Actually that is good. Control the info world Google needs to know that some still wish to be independent and refuse their eat-the-world “help”.
Your countries’ COVID response; and all of you guys working around your mandatory vehicle inspections to be able to vehicle woodgas shows much spirit of independence. And the foresight of your history. Imported petroleum once went bye-bye overnight for years for you all. It will happen again.
Do what is hard today for the knowing you can do for yourself in the future.
Come, what, may.
Regards
Steve unruly
I do think Bernt is an impressive guy with an interesting mind
Adding the search on Niklas’ youtube channel to get the others he did videos of so it’s easier to find if someone is interested. Around 20 videos (the top ones, not sure why the algorithm adds more after)
I hope this works, I think it does
It has finally calmed down over here. Coming home from the meetup - Sunday was mother’s day here and the house full of family. Kids and dogs running around high and low.
Finally some time digesting travel experiences.
Longer trips are rare for me, but all in all I’m happy about how the car behaved long distance. Still, I remember when riding with Wayne parts of the distance from Alabama to Indiana back in 2019. He mentioned that for anyone used to short commute on woodgas, running long distance is very different. And of course, he’s right - as always.
First of all, on occations like this I wish I had some extra hopper capacity. On avarage I think we stopped for refueling about every 40 miles. I know I can stretch it to 50 if I really stuff it, but with hot refueling I like to shut the lid as fast as possible. No matter what direction the wind blows you will always end up somewhat smelly.
Secondly - bridging. We had two occations of light bridging. The hopper’s vacuum guage started to vibrate from gas burning in front of the nozzles but with only a light tap whit the poker, the gluey bridge collapsed. I’ve only ever had this happen when the hopper is fully stuffed. It seems the upper part of the hopper and the fillerlid’s bottleneck help hold the bridge intact.
Also, heat can be a problem in summer time. When the engine is hot infront of you and the trunk gets equally hot behind you, longer trips can be unpleasant - but with the weather we had tis time, it was not a problem.
That’s the negatives I can come up with.
Positives - has to do with heat as well. For the first time in a long time, tary debrie on the funnel started to soften and I was able to bust some loose when refueling. Also, the gasifier will breath more easily when it’s been able to run continiously for a while. After miles and miles, contantly running around 90 km/ or 55mph, pulling 5 inches on the rails is enough to maintain that speed. Driving 20 min at the time going to work and back, the gasifier is still not properly warmed up and only just about to start breath easily when it’s time for shutdown.
Just for reference, the best I can tell I slipped about 8 gallons of char during this 500 mile trip. A little more than I like, but acceptable.
Well, these were just some random thoughts.
A couple extra details popped up.
Intake backfires. We had a couple now and then accellerating.
I think I can rule out tary fumes by now. Ever since I installed the three lower nozzles last year I haven’t experienced a sticky throttle ever. But it seems backfires sometimes happens when giving too much throttle in low rpm - never if I stay above 2300 rpm. I’m starting to think that the open throttle position lowers the timing too much at low rpm.
Well, the second detail is completly my fault. For the first time I overfilled the area below the grate just days before departure. Char was dragged through the cooler and into the rear tank. I’ve never had problems draining the rear tank before, but of course during this trip I had to poke the 1/2" drain with a rod every time. Since the car sat so low this time (Johan’s fault ) I was lucky BMW-Per brought a flexy small ss stripe from an old windshield wiper
Thank you, Swedish friends, for sharing your experiences and the nice report on the meeting, I follow such events and reports with interest.
My experience with propane, regarding backfire in the intake manifold (I have not had this problem when using wood gas), the main causes of this are:
poor sealing of the intake valves
soot deposits on the valves and inside the cylinder, where soot particles glow
a poor gas-air mixture, which is difficult in the cylinder at high compression, and ignites when the exhaust and intake valves are opened alternately
bad spark plugs, use NKG LPG1 or iridium
It is interesting to see a large gasifier in a white van with a large fuel supply, this is certainly good for a long trip, since wood has time and conditions for conversion. In my tractor, the internal volume of the gasifier is approximately 120 liters, which allows it to operate for approximately 2 hours, but it is good to fill it every hour and maintain a high fuel level. For a car, I plan on a gasifier volume of at least 200 liters…
JO, i think you’re right about intake backfires, as we have the same, famous, Regina engine management system, it happens to me, not very often, i think the first time i had intake backfires this year was when we drove through, was it Tidaholm?, with 3 (what is a “rondell” in English???) after each other, i took one of them on fourth gear, and put the pedal to the metal when driving out of it-there: three sharp, fast, “bangs” like rapid firing with a ,22lr in the engine compartment.
Tone, I guess I’m probably guilty on all your paragraphs @Woodrunner I think it’s called roundabout - or thereabout.
Please report what you come up with in terms of your new onboard diagnostic equipment.
Everything went surpricingly well and two cases of light bridging were the only hickups along the way.
