Paul; My gear ratio is 3.27 and with that low number ( high gear) I have to slip the clutch to get it rolling. Then I can run it up in 1st gear and shift to 2nc and then shift to 3rd ok; But when I shift to 4th it may hold speed but it wont pick up anymore. Shifting to OD and I will lose speed because of the lack of power. If I go to a 3.73 gear, it will start rolling better and 2nd and 3rd gears will not get me the speed I have now, but I’m sure I will be able to use 4th and increase my speed. Then I feel that on the road I can shift to OD and hold my speed and at a reasonable rpm. If I pull a hill I can down shift to 4 th and probably hold my speed. If not, I can down shift to 3rd. Where as now driving in 3rd and I pull a hill I have to go to 2nc and if that doesn’t pull the hill I have to go down to 1st. I don’t expect to see a big increase in top speed just more choices when the circumstances start lugging the engine.TomC
sorry tom I didn’t realize you had a getting to go problem also . it probably was mentioned I misted it sounds like a 350 would cure both problems.
paul
Tom and Paul. Don’t know that a 350 would do it. I have a 1993 4.3 V6, 200 hp vortec that will run circles around most stock 350.
steve I believe toms is a 94 with a 4.3 and a little weak in the knees sounds like most 4.3 ive come acrost. this wood gas just seems to like cubic in the bigger the better.
Hello Paul, Steve. and all; Yes a 350 would be better, but; when you get too high a gear it takes a lot of power, which we loose with wood gas. A NASCAR car has bocue power, but I would bet that the first time any of us drove one of theses cars we would stall the engine. They don’t burn rubber out of the pits to show off. Anyway I am just a V6 fan. When I was young “they” said it was impossible to build a V6. I’m a sucker for the under dog. Have you ever seen an early Buick V6 engine with the off-set crank journals?? Interesting design.
Steve; Not that I would do anything about it but; is your '93 engine stock or did you hop it up.TomC
Final statement about grounded TC ( I think). You all should be aware about grounded/ ungrounded TC by now and I hope you have learned from Carl Zinn’s report how to check them to save your self time and trouble AND how important it is to understand what the seller is selling and what you are buying before you spend your money. I would like to say “thank you” to Mr. Hightower for his solution to the problem if you do find your TC don’t work when you get them. I went to Batteries Plus yesterday. They have a great supply of small 12 volt batteries. I went in looking for what Mr. Hightower used but found they had so many others. They had 12volt sealed liquid batteries that could be recharged that started at 1 amper-hour on up. The 1 amp-hr was the size of two 50 box 22 shells set end to end. That sold for $20. I bought a 6 amp/hr battery because it was only $6 more. It is the size of 2 boxes of matches set on top of each other. I thing that the gages use only mil-amps/hr so even with out charging they should last a long tim. Thanks to all I have a solutionTomC
Tom, It is a stock 4.3Vortec V6 came that way in 1993 a 200hp and a 220hp for the GMC.
Thanks Steve; I didn’t know there were so many changes to the 4.3. I have a 4.3 in a 2003 Silverado which must be close to what you are talking about; Question now is do I pull the engine out of the 2003 and put in the '94 or pull the woodgas generator out of the '94 and put it in the 2003. Hmmm?? ( I see the next project)TomC
Just an update. I see Paul McCombie has a video of a neat clean out with a pan to shovel the ashes out right inside the ash pit. I changed my ash “door” to an ash “drawer” a while back. Mine is not as good as Paul’s because he made his big. A couple of scoops and he is done. Good job Paul.
In the “hangout” the last time I was there, I was asked why I was burning all the wood in my old barn instead of using it in my truck. My answer was because of all the nails and how hard it is to pull them out without breaking them off. But, the other day I had a lot of studs which didn’t have so many nails. I chunked them up for the truck. These were old rough cut 2 by 4&6’s. They were so dry the wood shattered when chunked. In a pile of wood I ended up with about 1/3 chips, 1/3 assorted pieces, and 1/3 chunks about the right size, that were so shattered that I could break them with my hands. Not good. Today I had an occasion to drive to a neighboring town (about 25 mi. away), so I took the truck. I put a bag of the chunked pine studs in the hopper and a second bag in the box of the truck. It was hard to get the truck up and running and all the way up it did not have as much power. I had a hard time getting it rolling in low gear. It lugged the engine and the engine would go to chugging about 100 rpm. Finally got out on the road, but I had to keep my foot right in it, and the cooling rails were pulling up to 30 inches. The hopper went to about 15 but dropped back to about 4. The grate was running about 1400 degrees. Then about 5 miles out of town coming home, she couldn’t pull herself. I pulled over and stoked the charrbed and realized it was out of wood.(that was about 30 mi. on a hopper that I have gotten over 60 on before.) With a reload of the hopper, I was able to drive home but again with low power. As a final note to this I need to say that the chunked studs weighed about 2/3 of what a bag of cut/chopped oak weighed. I find this 75% thing to really be true.
I am up to about 400 gal. of charcoal in the barn and I hope I can stop myself from making any more, but I can’t stand to see those beautiful embers go to waste. I am working on a trundle to clean, crush, and sort my charcoal like one posted on here. Finding it takes a lot more time to build that I thought. My hat’s off to those that have done it already.
I still haven’t figure out how to post pictures on here using my Mac computer----yes I know I have posted some already but it took me over 3 hours each time to figure it out, and by the time I bounced around from one thing to another, I forgot how I got there. I really have wanted to post more on my buildTomC
thanks tom amo cans are great as long as you keep the seal kinda cool . I also have had similar experience with wood shattering making a lot of fines some larger chunks and lighting from the bottom like wayne mentions does the trick .now I have at least been lighting from the grate every other time .this seems to be a chunker related problem I’ll live with that. paul
Glad too see your info on wood size and the differnce in wood, im way behind you on the 75%, I am learning a little all the time , thats about all i can store. ARE you getting 2 pounds too the mile on your v6 full truck, how far do you think you could drive at 50 mph on a full barrow of cotton wood dryed out. Allso wonderd are you useing over drive , drive 3 or drive 4, THANKS.
Yes Kevin, I only got about one mile to two pounds today. As I said things were not running well today. I think back to when I drove to Green Bay and that was about 60 miles one way and I used almost two bags each way. I would guess each of those bags of oak weighed about 35# a piece, so I got close to one mile per pound. The bags I mean are “feed” bag from the local feed mill. Don’t know anything about “cotton wood”. Sorry. On the open road I use 3rd and 4th gears. Even on a flat I can not hold speed in 4th Overdrive. That is why I am changing rear ends,so I can use OD. My local junk yard is trying to find me a 373 geared rear end.
I have been thinking about my troubles today and I think I have an air leak in that “ash drawer” I built. I made some other changes to the door also. I did notice my incoming air heat exchanger was bring in air to the gasifier at over 500 degrees today. Before it only heated up to about 250. I think with an air leak in the ash door, I was “burning” the gas in the ash pit which caused more heat in my heat exchanger. That also would create some very weak gas— which I had today. Hope to look into it tomorrowTomC
THANKS FOR INFO ON HEAT UP THOUGHTS TOO KEEP IN MY MIND WHEN I GET WOOD CHUCKING.
I emptied all the wood/char/ ash out of the gasifier. I went slowly, looking for “white” ash. Particularly around the ash drawer, but I found none. After cleaning everything out, there was just a little “grey” ash in my bucket. The shovel part of my ash drawer was heat distorted (1/32 thick) And, my grate was warped ( 3/8’s rebar bent into an 8 inch circle with cross bars.)
Condition I noticed on the last drive;
1 Weak gas-- had to rev the engine and slip the clutch to get it rolling.
2 Use twice as much wood as usual.-- I did change from good oak blocks to chunked/shattered pine
3 I was pulling very high vacuum in the cooling rails ( up to 30 inches)
4 The hopper vacuum went up to about 15 for a while but dropped back to 4/5
5 The temperature of the air coming out of the heat exchanger was 500+ compared to 250 normal.
6 The grate temp got unto 1500 F-- normal is about 1300+
7 Two hours after shut down, I still noticed smoke seeping out of my lid-- I hadn’t closed the in and out valves.
The only thing I can think of now is it got constapated, between the restriction and the grate. But why the high temperatures?? TomC
Hi Tom , you won’t get high vac on the hopper if the fire tube is constipated .
There has to be a restriction between the nozzles and the air in let valve !
Hope this helps
Patrick
Hello Mr. Tom,
All of the above sounds like losing the char bed except for # 3 .
If you did temperately lose the char bed your gas would have been smoky and you would notice a sticky throttle after cool down . .
Patrick; I do agree with what you said, but it is hard to see how that could happen. The one nozzle that I light the gasifier through is in line with the air intake. I’ll have to keep looking, but it did return to normal which says what ever happened there is gone now. (?)
Mr. Wayne; Please don’t say “sticky throttle”. I know what that means and I have had to tare these V6’s apart several times in my “playing”. By “losing the char bed” do you mean from the nozzles to the choke or nozzles to the grate. You know I am running an Imbert type and from the nozzles to the choke is only about 4 inches. If “loosing the char bed” refers to this area, it seems my design is almost doomed and I would have to make major changes to correct it. TomC
Hello Mr. T.
I was thinking losing the char bed as maybe a temporary bridging ( before caving in ) or large wood. ( too slow breaking down ) Something that would allow you to burn char faster than it is replaced .
Mr. Wayne; That sounds like a simple fix-- just get out and stoke it if it happens again. It has been running good so I was quite stressed when it went south. ( no disrespect for the south; just a saying. It may have gone east ) TomC
Hi Tom
Sorry I thought you were running WK gasifier, you did not tar up the nozzles on shut down ? Ie hot hopper gas pushed back in to the nozzle holes and tared them up ?
Thanks Patrick