auto enthusaists hack Toyota Prius, get 250 MPG

[skroo]

one thing mentioned that i had not heard of before are NGK spark plugs. some google searching yields a hell of a lot of pages where i can buy such plugs, but most do not have a decent summary of what they are. from what i can tell on vendor pages, it looks like these are the plugs where the electrode has a two-pronged V-shape. is that all there is to it? are NGK plugs something more than that? how much of a difference do they really make in an engine?

There're a few spark plug manufacturers out there making plugs with more than one electrode - NGK, Champion, and Bosch all have their own. One important thing to remember is that in 99.9999999% of cases the spark will only ground to one of the electrodes, not two or more. However, as these plugs are generally made of materials that conduct, resist, and/or insulate better than the 99c standard plugs, you may (or may not) notice a difference.

anyone see this Montreal Gazette article that was posted on Fark today? it's about a simple, relatively cheap electrolysis module that makes hydrogen gas from distilled water and injects the gas it into the combustion chamber, thus upping a vehicle's efficiency greatly with limited alteration of the engine and no changes to the drivetrain.

Hm, interesting article. Before going any further, though, I really should point out that this isn't something I'm really all that clued-in about - I've known about propane injection in diesels for some time, but have never heard of using hydrogen in one, and quite frankly putting hydrogen under that kind of pressure worries me from the standpoint of exploding the engine unless it's seriously reinforced to cope. Hydrogen in gas engines has been a brass ring for some years now, so it'll be interesting to see how this works out.

My gut feeling is that while this is a good proof-of-concept (assuming it works as stated in the article), the price means that on an economic level it's really only suitable for fleet use. Using their stated economy improvement of 10%, at current gas prices this would save me around $10/week. Given that the unit itself would cost around CDN$7500 (about US$6400 at today's rate), that's 640 weeks or 12.3 years to recoup the cost in a passenger vehicle averaging 15mpg and doing around 25000 miles per year. I don't plan on still having my Jeep when it's 17 years old :)

Now, if this were used as the main fuel-generating catalyst for mass-produced (Otto-cycle or otherwise) engines specifically designed to run on hydrogen then it'd be an entirely different proposition. Certainly the lower emissions from the gas/hydrogen mix are a plus, but, again, ultimately economics will dictate whether or not people actually start using this technology.

[Deviant Ollam]

i did the acetone routine in my GMC (1 ounce per 5 gal. of fuel) and the difference was immediate and astounding. idle is unbelievably smoother and (eventhough it should have little to do with this) the automatic tranny makes shifts with greater precision and less horsepower hiccup. on the weekends i do a lot of driving and my truck usually eats a lot of gas since i'm hauling gear and people all over the place. so far, i've driven in and out of philly like three times since gassing up on friday... each time transporting huge, heavy boxes and numerous people. my needle is still floating around the "F" marker on the gas gauge. that is unprecidented for me.

i plan to do the acetone number in my g/f's car, as well. (a '94 ford probe that we got from a relative as a spare vehicle. it's never run outstandingly well and i'm eager to see what improvement it shows.)

on a totally different note...

well, maybe not totally different since this involves engine efficiency, too... anyone see this Montreal Gazette article that was posted on Fark today? it's about a simple, relatively cheap electrolysis module that makes hydrogen gas from distilled water and injects the gas it into the combustion chamber, thus upping a vehicle's efficiency greatly with limited alteration of the engine and no changes to the drivetrain.

functional or fantasy? skroo and others with great auto-fu... i beseech your wisdom and insight.

[Deviant Ollam]

the acetone info page (which was indeed down when CotMan mentioned that earlier but which seems to be up now) mentions a few things in addition to breaking up fuel surface tension that drivers can do to their engines in order to increase efficiency. one thing mentioned that i had not heard of before are NGK spark plugs. some google searching yields a hell of a lot of pages where i can buy such plugs, but most do not have a decent summary of what they are. from what i can tell on vendor pages, it looks like these are the plugs where the electrode has a two-pronged V-shape. is that all there is to it? are NGK plugs something more than that? how much of a difference do they really make in an engine?

(bonus points for our experts if they wanna tackle the issue of synthetic oil for me. way back when my GMC pushed past 100,000 miles i switched to fully-synthetic oil. am i making a difference in the vehicle's performance and longevity or am i throwing away money? would a blended oil be just as good? i run the truck pretty hard and want to have it for as long as possible.)

[Deviant Ollam]

We have some guy here in Colorado showing people how to use/convert the waste oil from places that have grease fryers to fuel diesel trucks.

i've heard that greasel engines sometimes smell nasty but other times smell like you're making french fries. there was even a story a little while ago of a guy whose car (converted volkswagen diesel i think) was attacked by a bear during the night since it smelled the odor of cooking. i'll google for a link.

UPDATE: found it. pretty funny.

[Ridirich]

Or pussified

So, it is methane powered? No surprise. Farmers have been fueling tractors and other farm equipment on methane for years. All dead things give off methane, all ya gotta do is wait till it rotts, or simply fart in it a few hundred thousand times.

[allentrace]

New meaning to 'Tiger in the tank'

Or pussified

[renderman]

Just read about a guy who powers his diesel on dead cats. Sure to be a hit. Google it if interested.

New meaning to 'Tiger in the tank'

[lil_freak]

Just read about a guy who powers his diesel on dead cats. Sure to be a hit. Google it if interested.

We have some guy here in Colorado showing people how to use/convert the waste oil from places that have grease fryers to fuel diesel trucks. The only bad thing about this concept is that your truck gives off this really nasty smell of death and rotting food.

/me wonders does dead cat fuel smells like dead cats or something worse?

[astcell]

Just read about a guy who powers his diesel on dead cats. Sure to be a hit. Google it if interested.

[skroo]

no responses on my earlier comment about the use of Acetone as a mileage booster. i'd really love to know if there's much truth to this or not.

Oops, I must've missed that earlier.

I've been running acetone at a concentration of 1 ounce per 5 gallons of gas in my Jeep for about six months, and in my car for about a month. In both cases, I have seen improvements in fuel economy (typically about 10%) and the idle is noticeably smoother. I tried different concentrations, but found that this seemed to be about the sweet spot for both vehicles. Apparently (and I am *not* a chemist, so take this for what it's worth) it improves fuel economy by weakening the surface tension of the gasoline, thus leading to better atomisation (and combustion) of the fuel in the chamber. Sounds reasonable to me.

Both vehicles are MPFI, and the Jeep runs about 8.5:1 compression on regular unleaded with the car at 10:1 on premuim unleaded. No idea what would happen if you ran this in a carburetted vehicle, but I'd imagine the results would be largely comparable. One other nice side effect: it has a cleaning effect on the fuel delivery system from the tank to the injectors. Even if you're running on a tank of 'pure' gasoline after a couple tanks of acetone, the difference is noticeable.

[TheCotMan]

no responses on my earlier comment about the use of Acetone as a mileage booster. i'd really love to know if there's much truth to this or not. googling turns up a good number of pages where it's discussed on forums, etc... but very few knoweldgable-sounding articles or sites whose authority jumps out. thoughts?

My thoughts:
Assuming it really worked...

If it was a great value as an additive to improving gas mileage well beyond the cost of acetone, then the gas companies would consider it as a marketing ploy to get people to buy their gas.

However, they would probably not consider it, if there were environmental concerns

Using the above two as guidelines, I suspect it is either not as great a value (cost of acetone as an additive considered with cost savings with gas) and/or adding it causes more harm to the environment.

BTW, the link to the article appears to be dead.

[Deviant Ollam]

no responses on my earlier comment about the use of Acetone as a mileage booster. i'd really love to know if there's much truth to this or not. googling turns up a good number of pages where it's discussed on forums, etc... but very few knoweldgable-sounding articles or sites whose authority jumps out. thoughts?

[John D]

I've heard about this (and admit that I know relatively little on the subject), but it does sound interesting.

And now you can use dead cats for biodiesel!!!

A German inventor has angered animal rights activists with his answer to fighting the soaring cost of fuel -- dead cats.


http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/europe...eut/index.html

JohnD

[Deviant Ollam]

Fuel cells can be upwards of 60% efficient compared to the 25% efficiency of most internal combustion engines.

what is the efficiency of a typical diesel (and/or a turbodiesel) ?

[Deviant Ollam]

Glad ya liked it :) This is one of my favourite topics, and it's really nice to have had a thread like this here - for once, we got into something that didn't go way off on a tangent (sort of), or end up petering out.

there's another bit of data that i saw today (caught it from a link posted on fark) which described use of Acetone as a mileage booster... and a whole heck of a lot of other fuel and oil discussion.

the piece can be found here (it's not super long... a couple dozen Q&A style points the author makes)

i'd love to hear people's thoughts and comments regarding this material, as well.

This is a tired argument against ethanol-based fuels... and every time I mention E-85 it's inevitable that someone brings it up.

there is a lot of that sort of FUD in the above-mentioned page. does it discredit the other things the author has to say? makes me wonder.