So I've read throug the whole thread and have started to create a list of things many people have suggested for better MPGs. I figure you guys can give me a yay or nay and anything else myself and others should do to their rides to increase fuel economy. So here it is:

Practical: (by practical I mean little to no customwork)

Super Six Setup
Lighten Car
Long Rods
Shorter Pistons (.5 inch shorter to decrease friction I suppose)
Front Air Dam
2.25 Exhaust (What about a 2.5inch?)
Dutra Duals (Would headers be better?)
Toothed Serpentine Belt

Little more difficult:

Electric Fan
Electric Water Pump
Clutched Alternator
Belly Pan

So what do you guys think? Is that a relatively good list to begin with. Once there is more and more interest we could even create links to websites that offer these certain things. Thanks for all your help!
jake

Worth saying that a gentle right foot is the easiest tweak of all. Otherwise, your list looks fine. I did note a device being sold that only flashed the alternator when the engine has high vacuum and the voltage is below a reasonable setpoint. Depending on your radiator size you may be able to find an aftermarket electric fan that will work with little or no custom work. A rear end ratio modification might be called for too, you really should use a tachometer and figure out just where you are in your power band before you choose a particular ratio. Range in the transmission is a good thing too, but that might be impossible to get without spending money on a new transmission or some type of O/D or gear splitter. I view bolt on modifications as the easiest, long rod/short pistons sound like an engine out of the car type of thing--if that is practical for you then you rock... I iwould take a swing at an electric fan first, if you do a bunch of highway driving you should notice it. The real mileage freaks block off the front of the car as well. If you surf ecomod and other mileage sites you can get some low budget ideas to try. I suggest doing these one at a time to see how they work for you...

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Slanted D150

Interesting thread here:

http://www.greencarcongress.com/2006/09 ... uces_.html

BMW apparently is cranking out tricked out alternator systems that go away when they are not needed and charge when the engine is loafing. Those Bimmers must be crammed with electrical gizmos because they state that the alternator is a 3.5 kW load, that is sort of on the larger side of things (they must be including mechanical losses, inefficiencies, etc). In any case it appears that the BMW alternator tweak is good for a 4% increase in mpg. That jives with what I recall us getting when I was in graduate school tweaking motors for a 48 VDC system and increased mileage.

The article mentions electric water pumps, etc as well. I imagine that going to BMW for such a part will cost more than any given Slanted car, but hey, someone else has done the math and engineering for you and it does work. This would be good for some ideas... I like the thermo-electric generator myself, direct conversion of heat to electricity. Expensive, not really efficient yet, but if it is waste heat in an open loop system it might be looking at.

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Slanted D150

this is a pretty good topic.
You look like your in the rite direction for mpg.
Even the simple ones. lighten up the car,
Exhause flow. Carburator choice, gearing
and easy on the foot alone will help alot.
Im building a slant six rite now for my 65 dart
I was forced to buy another car because my 69 dart has a built 440 and gears ect and its a street,strip car but its getting about 7-9 mpg around town and its kicking my ass so i bought a 65 dart for 100 bucks and got two motors and trannies for free with it and im putting a slant six in it,
All of your estimated mpg's for your slant sixes look pretty good to me ,about double what i get now.

Practical: (by practical I mean little to no customwork)

Super Six Setup
Lighten Car
Long Rods
Shorter Pistons (.5 inch shorter to decrease friction I suppose)
Front Air Dam
2.25 Exhaust (What about a 2.5inch?)
Dutra Duals (Would headers be better?)
Toothed Serpentine Belt


To the practical list, I would also add:
Overinflate tires
Lower front suspension
Low tow front end alignment
Skinny tires
Taller tires
Harder tires
Windows up - A/C off
Drive slower - drive smarter - predictive braking - coast in neutral

Kip on Truckin'

_________________
1965 Valiant wagon Turbo slant (work in progress)
2000 Chevy 155" cargo van - The Abductor
1970 Newport convertible
1996 Buick Roadmaster Wagon
1966 CruiseAire motor home
1990 Toyota 1 ton box truck TURBO slant (scraped)

This site talks about condensing oily funk from the PCV--they say it boosts mileage:

http://www.himacresearch.com/books/hydro8.html

Looks like this tweak can be done with what is in anyone's recycling crate and garage stuff bits and pieces. Sounds like the premise is on NOT burning oily pooh, but just the hydrocarbon vapor. The claimed mileage increase seems a bit optimistic but the emissions cleanup would seem to be reasonable, maybe. In any case, this thread has me thinking and looking so it is doing a good thing. Plenty of sites out there on upping mpg.

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Slanted D150

If the engine is whipped (worn out) enough that there's a significant amount of oily funk in the PCV flow, time and money are better spent shopping for (or building) a replacement engine. On an engine in good shape, this kind of gizmo does nothing. On an engine in bad shape, it buys you a little more time to shop for an engine.

It really bothers me how readily people will believe in magic where none exists. This is not a pointed barb at you, Tirol, it's exasperation at how the magic spark plugs and super fuel catalyzers and fuel line magnets and ultramile PCV gunk removers and vornado intake vortex systems and Doctor Mo-Jo's Miracle Motor Treatment and all the rest of this useless crap show up each and every time the price of gas goes up. It bothers me even more that otherwise rational, smart, educated people fall for it...again and again and again.

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一期一会
Too many people who were born on third base actually believe they've hit a triple.

http://www.greencarcongress.com/2006/09 ... uces_.html

The article claims 2% improvement from the electric water pump, and 4% improvement from the wheel driven, regenerative braking, smart alternator. Those seem like journalistic hype. If BMW could find 6% that easily, we'd have already declared a holiday.

In my web pokings on all this stuff, I've found it's almost ALL hype. There is a blog that I can't seem to find the link for, where smart guys like us collectively tested all the gizmos and gimmicks out there. IIRC, they were unable to prove or disprove the affects of acetone, but everything else just flat out doesn't work. Propane does work for diesels, but it's really more of a power adder than a mileage booster.

The PCV thing claims 25%. Pure bunk, but not a bad idea. I thought crankcase vapors were BURNED fuel, not raw fuel anyway.

UPDATE: Toyota dealer claims all is good to go and I can drop the truck with them next week for head gasket replacement. I have a sneaking suspicion this will turn into a debacle. Like "oh, once we got in there we realized someone had replaced the timing belt, and that voids this recall and you owe us $2500". But you never know. I've been instructed to smear a little oil and filth on the engine to make it look more virgin. I could go the other route and pressure wash it saying "hey, I washed it for you guys!".

Generally I'm a moral person, but the recall text mentions that if other engine damage is CAUSED by the bad head gaskets, Toyota will replace or rebuild the engine. I'm tempted to pour a gallon of coolant into the oil, or a quart of oil into the radiator. Tempted.

Anyway, if it gets fixed and gets back on the road, I'll start experimenting with belt deletion.

Question: can I estimate the electrical load of the truck by simply installing an ammeter? If I'm using, say, 20 amps will this directly convert to the amp/hour ratings on the battery?

Kip on Truckin'

_________________
1965 Valiant wagon Turbo slant (work in progress)
2000 Chevy 155" cargo van - The Abductor
1970 Newport convertible
1996 Buick Roadmaster Wagon
1966 CruiseAire motor home
1990 Toyota 1 ton box truck TURBO slant (scraped)

Dan,

No barb taken--that website is mostly nonsense and charlatan babble. I was struck by a WTF view on condensing PCV vapors and realized as an experiment it could be done for nothing, or nearly so. There is no way the engine would be harmed by it and if someone cared to keep good records the PCV thing could be debunked or confirmed. Presumably some small amount of oil is in a vaporous state and gets sucked into the intake and burned. This might (maybe) have a small impact on overall spark efficiency. Perhaps there might be an improvement in mpg. Apparently, some folks have done this very odd tweak and at least report that they pour oily pooh out of a jar monthly--whether they get improvements in mpg isn't abundantly clear.

Trust me, two bachelor's degrees and a masters degree (all in hard sciences) make me roll my eyes at most of this stuff for improving mpg. However, working in R&D for the automotive industry educated me to the hard, cold facts of making money building and selling automobiles . Every system in an automobile is a compromise--every automobile built has been optimized to do one thing, meet the minimum standards while making make money. There is plenty of marginal and incremental efficiencies to be gained in the internal combustion engine--someone has to be willing to pay for it, either in the form of a more expensive automobile or in the form of aftermarket work and tuning. If cars were built perfectly out of the box then Slanters wouldn't be shaving heads, replacing camshafts, etc, etc.

I try to keep an open mind and debunk things based on the facts. The PCV thing struck me as "what is this new scam" and "where is the money for them." The money angle isn't in it for anyone, it won't harm an engine, so perhaps it has merit for an experiment since it is cheap and easy to do, I suspect that all it does is have the owner pour out oily slime monthly--what that does for mileage remains to be seen.

Given the nature of this thread as to what works mpg wise I believe that any reasonable notion for improving mpg should be brought to light, and then debunked or confirmed by examining the physics and/or experimentation. I might give this whacky idea a whirl once I establish a routine commute and gasoline fueling station baseline to get a stable mpg number. I can add the can with two hoses and see what happens...

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Slanted D150

Kip,

I am laughing. Why don't you hang a Mercedes-Benz marque on it and tell Toyota that it was a Benz until the head gasket blew, and then it turned into this broke-a** Toyota. Ha, ha.

I am putting money that Toyota will replace those head gaskets for free. I can pretty much guarantee that they will want to replace the timing belt and water pump at the same time, and why not do it. They will have that motor in pieces anyway.

I noticed the mileage scam stuff is back in spades these days--at almost $4.00 a gallon that is to be expected. At $5 a gallon we will be awash in that crap.

FYI, I have a friend of mine who does electric car projects for his local IEEE chapter. He built an electric Series III 88" Land Rover--great rig. It would blow the doors off of anything light to light and was simply amazing off-road. Granted, it could only go 60 miles between charges but hey, it did those miles in style. We penciled out that fuel needed to be over $3 a gallon for it to make sense to do this (it cost about $7K)--our payback was in five years. Well, looks like we are all collectively there. I wonder if you slant the batteries if you still can post in the Slant Six forum?

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Slanted D150

72DartSwinger,

You can move the electric fan up to the first group of simple changes.
I just did the mod and it was very simple and have realized some good benefits. Since it had been very cold this winter the electric fan mod has helped stabilize my mileage. Instead of varying a mile or two to the gallon, I have it down to .2 tenths of a variation over the last 300 gallons. By not having the stock clutch fan constantly blowing cold air over the engine, number one cylinder is burning better and the intake manifold warms up much quicker in the morning. To further help warms ups I also switched to a 1980's aluminum one barrel manifold.

I would say both of these mods shorten warm up time in the morning and help the engine run more efficiently. There has also been a big improvement in overall performance. The engine idle seems to have smoothed out to where it is perfect.

If any of you need help with wiring, I have made a simple diagram for using a standard 40 amp relay and a basic thermal switch that fits in the radiator where the pollution control sensor was installed. Total cost was under a $100 with a new Pro-Comp 16" fan. It works great and keeps the car nice and toasty inside.

The last aluminum one barrel manifold I saw on ebay went for about $40. These are very nice castings from 1980's trucks and some cars.

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Aggressive Ted

http://cid-32f1e50ddb40a03c.photos.live ... %20Swinger


74 Swinger, 9.5 comp 254/.435 lift cam, 904, ram air, electric fans, 2.5" HP2 & FM70 ex, 1920 Holley#56jet, 2.76 8 3/4 Sure-Grip, 26" tires, 25+MPG

Along the lines of electric cars, the Think "City" is slated to be available in the US this fall.

110 mile range, 65 MPH speed. Very cute.

http://think.no/think/content/view/full/290

-Mac

General questions:

Why isn't there such a thing as a non-linear electric fan. Fan on/fan off seems like a compromise that 50¢ worth of electronics could easily change. Or maye modern cars do have multispeed fans - what do I know.

If a "factory" type electric car only has a range of 60-80 miles, what stops someone from just adding a bunch of cheap used batteries? Is there something I'm missing here? Why can't a 3000# car have a 2000# battery? Why can't this hypothetical car carry a lawn motor engine welded to a couple of alternators for emergencies?

This is one that I don't know the answer to but you guys will: for fuel economy, do you want a hot intake charge or a cool one? Is this the purpose of EGR? Is this the purpose of coolant heated intake manifolds? Or is this an emissions consideration? My turbo /6 setup (from a 70s Buick V6) has provisions for engine coolant to heat the intake air. It's not hooked up right now; should I hook it up? If so, then what's the point of an intercooler (which I don't have)?

Kip on Truckin'

_________________
1965 Valiant wagon Turbo slant (work in progress)
2000 Chevy 155" cargo van - The Abductor
1970 Newport convertible
1996 Buick Roadmaster Wagon
1966 CruiseAire motor home
1990 Toyota 1 ton box truck TURBO slant (scraped)

I think the EPA has the say in that. Even those "safe" gel cell batteries must have some envoromental impact that is monitored by the EPA.

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Chris'
Autobody
Restoration
Service

People will correct me if I'm wrong, they're good like that, but I think you want heated intake air when the motor's cold, and using extra fuel, but then cool intake air once the motor's at operating temperature, for a denser charge . EGR prevents pinging from early detonation.