Another beautiful day to go driving on wood. Haven’t taken the truck out since my last over excited post. Been chunking wood and trying to fix my gages. It was cool today and we have had some rain but now mostly big puffy clouds and now and then sun. I “fired” the truck up and took the wife for an enjoyable ride around some of the local dams and back waters and followed along the river. The truck ran beautifully, as it had last time, and I was just smiling. My wife enjoyed watching what I was doing and what the gages meant, but most of all she just enjoyed getting out for a drive where we weren’t on a schedule to get some place Some day I would like to make a movie of my “dam” ride. TomC
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That reminds me of a little saying my dad used to say. “I went to the dam to get some dam water. The man at the dam said I could not have any dam water. So I told the dam man to keep his dam water”. That was as close to swearing as he got.
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Had to set my alarm this morning. The weather man predicted sunny day and NO showers. Had to get up to uncover my wood chunks for drying. With the truck running so well, I’m finding I am burning up all my bagged wood.TomC
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Tom, I’m really glad you have your truck running so well. I can see your excitement in your posts. I can’t wait until I too can feel that joy.
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What Bill said (exactly what Bill said)
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Cutting - drying wood is the devils pay for having fun! Glad to hear it is working so well. I thought you were going to say “had to set the alarm to get up and drive more”!! 
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Yes Carl, I kind of wish that was true also. The truth of the matter is I don’t leave the farm for weeks at a time. Having trouble making excuse to go drive some where. My wife did enjoy the ride the other day when we had no place to go or any time to get there. We just don’t normally do that. ( you will find out some day how busy retirement is ) TomC
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OK Tom
Sounds like I owe someone a cup… Members of the forum make your nominations. The one with the most likes gets the cup
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Hi Tom,
Just read through the more recent postings this afternoon. Air leaks used to plague the performance of my GMC. The most damaging stemmed from my attempts to stick weld brake drums and rotors together to get my hearth to what I considered proper dimensions. The welds held for a while but later cracked. Maybe if I besides using nickel rod I also preheated the drums and rotors I could have avoided the cracking. I used to cover all my hearth welds with furnace cement which masked the problem for a while but eventually would flake off and expose another leak. Symptoms while driving were extremely high hearth temps, sometimes pegging the thermocouple readout at over 2000 F, plus weak performance. Never melted the drums or rotors or anything else, though. When all the leaks were at least temporarily plugged, performance was sweet.
Hopefully I have avoided these problems on my WK. I have installed a mechanical timing advance and am waiting for my long cable to come in the mail for the back butterfly in my woodgas line under the car. My trailer brake controller should be in later this week but I’m not holding my breath for the digital readout. It’s supposed to be here by August, I think.
Hope your truck continues to run well,
Rick
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I got my digital volt meter with in a week or so. It is very small and they just throw it in a padded envelope. I never did receive my trailer brake… I have to reorder. PI TA. This is the time in the year when I was going to get some work done on my truck— maybe some body work. All of a sudden I took on painting the house and fences and the lawn needs mowing every 4 days and the lawnmower broke down yesterday. So my truck sits there asking “when is it my turn? Summer is fleeing and you promised a new paint job.”. That is retirement life.
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Yes, I am mostly retired now, too, and feel busier than when I was at a full time job. Yes, the grass, machinery and house chores plus helping out friends. My wife has rental properties and I do some of the work on those as well. I am also a wimp when it comes to heat and try to avoid working in it when possible. So it all adds up to not so much time and progress on my woodgas projects, at least when compared to what I anticipate I’ll have wheb planning in the winter!
Rick
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Yea, a full time job on top of all that s so much easier 
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It is hard to explain to someone who hasn’t gotten to that point yet. When your alarm goes off, you jump up and are headed for work be it at the mill or on the “honey do " list. When you are retired, there is no alarm clock. Get up at will and set and drink coffee with the “honey do” creator. Then you meander out to the shop and scope things out, about the time the wife is calling that she has lunch on the table. You go eat and after have to take that most important nap.( old age requirement ) Then you head back to the shop, and " Oh my God”, it’s almost 2;00 and I haven’t gotten a thing done. Now I am behind the “8” ball and have to get going. I really give’r and soon the wife calls to get cleaned up for supper. After a leisurely supper and watching the news------ oh heck. To late to go back out to the shop. So tomorrow I wake up with yesterdays work to do and the work for a new day. Oh man!!! With all this work, I will never get caught up. TomC
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I hear you Tom I am so far behind here I can’t even see all that needs to be done in one day. So I go back to the garden and graze. I have a knack for putting things off till I forget about them till they come back to bite me.
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The “fun and games” of woodgas driving may come to an end for me, and it may become serious. The main gas line that supplies most of the gasoline from Chicago to the eastern side of Wi. is shut down and all fuel is being transported by truck. They didn’t say when the line would be opened again or why it was shut down. I’ll be going to town to fill up if the price doesn’t go up tonight because of the announcement. Need petro for the chainsaws and the wood chunkier tractor. Other than that, I’m feeling pretty good no matter how bad the situation gets. TomC
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Tom, And it happens just like that, just think if a big Earthquake hit, the infrastructure would go down. We have seen it happen with flooding, tornadoes, winter storms, electrical outages or a war breaking out. I still remember the gas lines in the early 70’s and you could only by 10 gals at a time. I am to young to remember the gas rations coupons of WWII.
(Keep on working Bob on the gasifier and other related things.)
Bob
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Rick,
The way that I weld cast iron for applications like your brake drums is as follows:
Take your torch and heet up the area to be welded cherry red, almost to the point of melting. A “rose bud torch head” is also advantageous if you own one or one is avalable. Two people are better than one for this operation. It goes faster and easier if you have someone to run the torch while you do the welding, but it can be done by yourself. Just alot more work swapping back and forth. Use MG 600 welding rods 1/8 inch (a rod designed for disimilar metals) at about 180-200 amps, maybe higher. The weld will lay in like butter. Weld an inch or so. Stop and “Peen” the heck out of the weld with the pointed end of a chipping hammer, reheat and repeat. The weld will not crack.
I used to have people bring in cast items for repair from miles around. This is the method I used and I never had any complaints. Kind of expensive with the gas usage and the expensive rods, but well worth the time and effort if you have no other options and are forced to repair an irreplaceable cast item part.
I had an old time blacksmith show me how to do this. I never had any luck using nickel rod on cast. It always cracked. Finnally got with him after having no luck welding cast and never looked back. He used to repair (agricultual) combine final drives for practically pennys on the dollar compaired to thousands of dollars for replacemet. This technique may be useful for others here who incorporate brake drums or other cast items into their gasifier designs.
Bryan
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Thanks Bryan I do not anticipate welding drums and rotors together in the near future but I will remember your advice the next time. I do remember gas welding cast iron that was clean and preheated to the point of glowing red. It worked but required the whole object to be preheated and was uncomfortably hot to do. Your way sounds better.
Tom, to me it’s amazing how fragile our way of life is and yet it seems to hold together so long that people take it for granted (I get that way anyway), at least until a storm or some other cataclysm disrupts the power or roads or some other aspect once again.
Rick
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Well, I’ve been painting the house. Today somehow through bad planning, I ran out of paint. Nice day with plenty of sunshine----- so I told the wife I was going to take out my woodgas truck. I was going to take my camera and try to get you some pictures, but the wife decided since I had run out of paint, she would ride with me. With her in the truck and me sitting there talking to the camera, well, I didn’t think I would get away without a lot of harassment. Anyway the reason for this post is to answer Don Mannes question of some time back. I drove around the lakes for 1 1/2 hour on one fill up of good oak wood. So I am still able to drive and hour between fill ups. TomC
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