I stand by my statement. Maybe the standard, complete burn happens too late, or too early. Maybe a complete burn with more air mixed in will generate more force. Maybe a more complete mixture of air and gas molecules will produce way more force on the piston as it expands. Maybe this more complete co-mingling of molecules can produce a faster burn that expands more rapidly. The pogue carburetor did improve mileage, it was just unsafe as stated earlier by both me and Dan. But it does prove that there is more energy in the fuel than we get out with our current technology. I am not going to close my mind to this possibility.

Will I be disappointed? Maybe. Will this bother me? Yeah, some. But the thing that has made this car so stimulating to me over the years is the process of trying so figure out how to do something that was either very difficult, or was new, or at least fairly new in concept. It's working out the problems as the project grows that is fun. I go to bed at night visualizing how my next step in the project is going to look and work. And over the years I have not only had a ball, but the car has kept getting better, and better, in every way.

I believe that the guys who have claimed to improve their mileage with ideas that are out of the mainsteam are not ALL liars. I'm not trying to prove anything to anyone. That is not my job. I am not trying to convince anybody of anything. If anything, I am trying to share a philosophy that has worked well for me over the years.

I am having fun with my car, and this challenge is just one more in a long line of them I have taken on. Some of them have proven futile in the past, but I dont; t hink I have failed because a particular idea was completely out of line. I think they failed because I gave up too soon on some of them.

The most notable failure, or I should say quitting too soon, was trying to get a big block Pontiac to beat a small block Chevy, dollar for dollar. Everyone else drove Chevies, so I had to be different and drive a Pontiac. I thought I saw potential there, but It didn't yield fruit at the time, and I never built my Pontiac so it was competitive with the Chebbie guys. But, I had fun trying. My car was too heavy then. So now I would lighten it. My car had a bad head design, so now I would get good aftermatket heads, Etc.Etc.

If I didn't have this attitude, I would not be toying with a slant, or even a Mopar for that matter. And, another thing: The guiding principal here is not what is the quickest, and cheapest way to get something done. If that were the case I would have walked into a Toyota dealer 15 years ago and bought the cheapest Carolla on the lot. And chances are it would still be running today.

Sam

_________________

Well, about all I'm going to say is have fun and I'll be interested to hear your results if you care to share.

_________________
David Kight
'62 Valiant Signet, White
'98 Dodge Dakota
'06 Jeep Liberty

Growing older is unavoidable but growing up is strictly optional.

Well...very small in up-to-date systems with port fuel injection and carefully-designed combustion chambers. Older systems with carburetors and "as-cast" combustion chambers actually kick out a significant amount of unburnt and partially-burnt fuel. The tailpipe readings for the stock vs. ultrasonic '72 Duster illustrate that point nicely. If the test data were expanded to include cold-start and hot-soak emissions (tailpipe + evaporation), the comparison would be even starker. Same goes for the pre-catalyst tailpipe readings of a current-day 3.7 litre V6 vs. any year's stock or fundamentally-stock 225 (3.7 litre) slant-6. So for most of us slant-6ers, there actually is a significant gain possible by improving the induction, as for example by converting to port fuel injection as Sam and others have successfully done, or by ultrasonically vapourising the fuel as that Florida duo did, or by thermally vapourising the fuel as Smokey Yunick did.
Yes indeed, with the proviso that if there are other inefficiencies in the system (e.g. carbureted induction, a restrictive exhaust system, a problematic combustion chamber, a not-very-effective ignition system, etc.), fixing those inefficiencies will also yield more usable energy.

So...ways to capture more of the energy rather than releasing it as heat: Piston-top coatings, thermal wrap on the headpipe (which then leads to a turbocharger, which is a device specifically designed to capture and use what would otherwise be wasted thermal and kinetic energy), friction reduction (real friction reduction, not the pretend-magic-in-a-bottle kind), and maybe that "outside the box" waterless coolant.

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

So the fuel is burned completely. What would completely vaporizing the fuel gain if the fuel is already completely burned?
Maybe doesn't make my engine run.

Lean burn does work. It's proven. The main reason we run 14.7:1 air to fuel ratio is for a relatively cheap catalytic converter to work properly and reduce emissions. Stratified charges work too, but it's much more difficult to make them work across all the load and speed ranges of a vehicle engine.

Again, if we didn't have a relatively homogenous (uniformly mixed) mixture that burned completely we would see unburned and partially burned hydrocarbons.
The theory under which the Pogue carburetor works is not valid. Simply vaporizing the fuel and making no other changes will not make a 20 MPG or 30 MPG car a 200 MPG car. It can't because we aren't sending 80% of the fuel energy out the tail pipe.
Sam, I'm going to be a bit mean here so you can forgive or condemn me. What I've seen you do with and for your car has been completely within the box of well known and understood automotive principles. I'm not saying what you've done has been poorly executed or ill conceived, but nothing has been ground breaking.
Of course you want to believe the miracles, but miracles do not and will not move you and your car 200 miles on a gallon of gas.

Philosophy? You only appear to be sharing a philosophy of believing in miracles and not being able to prove one idea that is outside of the mainstream of technology.

Sorry to be such a wet blanket, but the scientific method demands repeatable results under controlled conditions.

_________________
Joshua

Sam,

As the one who's advocating a heated fuel system, the burden of proof is on you to demonstrate that there is something to gain, either with a sound theory of why this should work, or good, controlled test results from someone who has tested this and found it worked. Several people have cited examples of hot fuel devices that completely failed to work. I was able to dig up EPA test results, and Josh mentioned Tony's Guide to Fuel Saving, where the author has personally tested vapor injection systems and reports the following results:
The trouble with citing Pogue is that he made completely fantastic claims that nobody's ever been able to duplicate, whether using his own carburetors or applying the same principle to far more fuel efficient engines later. I think it's more likely that Pogue was a con artist than that his results were for real.

_________________
"Mad Scientist" Matt Cramer
'66 Dart - turbocharged 225
My blog - Mad Scientist Matt's Lair

This thread got really wierd. I don;t remember advocating heating the fuel. I simply said it was one of Mike's theories. In a later post I did say I was considering trying it. At that point some pretty insulting language came my way. From then on, I was trying to simply advocate keeping an open mind. Maybe there is another way to look at things; maybe we don;t know everything, etc. When do we decide we know everything there is to know about everything? When should we stop looking for answers? Remember IBM's advertizement that asked the question "What if"?

I really felt attacked, and quite misunderstood, and I simply succeeded in furthering the misunderstanding with each attempt to explain myself further. I said it is not my job to prove something to sombody because I am not trying to get anybody out there to accept, or try something they don;t want to do.

Thanks for the links that were provided, and thanks Pierre for your story. That was instructive. I am now taking a vacation from this thread.

Sam

_________________

OK, not quite retired completly.

Joshie225 wrote:
Josh, I was not talking about my car. Now I am retired.

Sam

_________________

Hmm. The best mileage I ever got with the car I put the most miles on, over 200,000, was seen towing in the desert. I did it often, it was very hot, 110 to 120 degrees and very dry. This was a fi turbo car. I always have believed that the high heat was the biggest factor. Hot air, hot engine, hot drivetrain. Less drag in hot, dry air. After all, as already touched on, it is thermal loss that needs to be decreased to get better mileage assuming the fuel is all getting burned already. By running an engine hot and having it breath hot air the thermal loss goes down. The most obvious mod to get this otherwise would be increasing the compression ratio.

The thing is, heating the fuel will have little to no benefit and cause problems. There are real reasons. With a carb it will not be controllable, it will boil and the carb will not be able to control the mixture. Every boiling carb I have seen runs too rich. The fuel in a carb is already hot, unless you are in below freezing conditions. Carbs often need heat shields, because the fuel gets too hot already. Even if it does not boil in the carb, the light end of the fuel (gasoline is a blend of hydrocarbons) will separate from the rest, this will only hurt mileage. Sure it will get sucked back in as vapor, but it will not be helping to atomize the heavier hydrocarbons. It is easy enough to look at the weight of gasoline and the flash point, then look at the temp range it sees. How much hotter could it be? Not much.

Fuel expands when it gets heated. Having it already expanded will not help it mix better with the air.

A better and very workable way to get to where we are trying to go has already been done. Keep the fuel COOL and under control. Use heated air to vaporize it. This is the point of the thermally controlled hot air intakes on air cleaners. Sure this makes less peak power because of lower density, but it does increase mileage and lower emissions. Yes it may want to ping more, but it works. The cooler fuel will expand more when it hits the hot air. On fuel injected car, the injectors are responsible for the most part for the mixing. Letting the engine run hot, like 210 or more is one other factor that will help. Doing this you will really need to be protecting the fuel from heat, not trying to heat it.

This will all be counter productive to making the most power. With pump gas the octane is generally one of the big limiting factors, it will be more so running hot.

The amount of heat that can be carried in the fuel is almost nothing compared to what can be carried in the intake air. The fuel can get heated in the intake tract more than enough, and very quickly. Just hint of detonation and forget about mileage, so it needs to be right at the edge to get the best mileage.

I really do see a difference between unconventional or creative thinking and ideas that really seem to show a lack of understanding of what one is working with. My idea of the "keep working at it" theme is to learn more, not keep trying the same thing or something that I know will not meet the objectives.

That was such good content, I had to un-retire myself from this thread. My experience with the general heat of the engine compartment parallels yours. If I drive the car back and forth to work, which is only 4 miles, it never really heats up, and it gets only 17 MPG. This doesn't bother me too much as I can drive two weeks on 10 gallons of fuel. BUT, if I take the car on the road, it gets very good mileage. When I drove to Baltimore to see my Mom there it got 27 MPG on the 100 mile trip. I watched the AF ratio meter and could see the fuel ratio going down the entire time. It started out at 17:1 on interstate cruise, and ended up at 16:1.

When I changed over from a 195 t-stat to a 180, the around-town mileage dropped. I had put in colder plugs as well. So maybe the best of both worlds would be to put the 195 back in, and install a water injection system to fight the detonation if it comes back.

But here are a couple of questions, and these are not rhetorical questions. I am not trying to prove any points here, I really would like a balanced discussion of this: Does a liquid really cool off as it is realeased from pressure. I don't know the answer. The AC uses an expanding gas, which we know cools down as it draws energy from the atmosphere to change energy states. But a liquid is still a liquid when you release it from pressure, and hasn;t changed energy states, unless it vaporizes, in which case it is changing energy states. Just think about this. Does anybody know if a liquid gets cooler when you release it from pressure, and does anybody know for sure if the fuel does or does not do some vaporizing in an EFI system?

And finally, why do you think heating everything but the fuel causes the improvement in economy. How can you be sure heating the fuel is not partly responsible for the improvement you experienced as the engine compartment got warm? Again, I am not trying to prove aything, just looking for a balanced, thoughtful discussion free of sarcastic comments.

Sam

_________________

In your A/C system, the expansion valve is a variable orifice which sprays liquid refrigerant into the evaporator. It is the refrigerant's absorption of the evaporator's heat that causes the refrigerant to vapourise.

If you buy one of those "canned air" (R134a) dusters and hold the trigger down, you will find the can grows colder and colder in your hand...even the part of the can that contains liquid R134a. The same effect can be observed with other aerosol spray cans.

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

The can getting cold when the pressure is released is not so much a product of the pressure release but the fact that the liquid can now boil off heat because of the pressure reduction. Its the boil not the pressure. Change of state is where the "magic" is.
You may be saying the same thing. I didn't read closely.

_________________
67Cuda,FAST EZEFI,340cu,CR=10.25,RollerCam&Rocker (XR268HR,#20-810-9)(#1622-16)(EddyRPM#60779,#7576), (MSD6AL,#6425) A904, GearVendorsOD, 8 1/4,3.55:1, ClassicAir

Partially correct, but not alltogether. An expanding gas will also absorb a large amount of heat. There is a thing called the "Ideal Gas Law" which basically says that the Temperature of a gas is proportional to it's volume and pressure. If either the pressure or volume of a gas is changed then the temperature changes according to a fixed formula. If pressure is released then the gas expands and the temperature falls accordingly. It's true that the change of state absorbs much more but and expanding gas DOES get cooler. Just feel the temperature of an air nozzle when blowing compressed air. Also, the reverse is true. When air is compressed it gets warmer, hence the need for an intercooler on turbocharged and supercharged applications.

_________________
David Kight
'62 Valiant Signet, White
'98 Dodge Dakota
'06 Jeep Liberty

Growing older is unavoidable but growing up is strictly optional.

The gas laws do not apply to liquids. Refrigerants go from liquid to vapor and back, so they apply to them when they are in the vapor state.

Fuel does have light hydrocarbons that are very quick to turn to vapor, thats what you smell ans why gas evaporates so quickly. When you put gas in a can and close it, the pressure goes up in the can. Just a little movement and those light hydrocarbons are changing from a liquid to a gas.

Heating the fuel is not practical. That was my point. It is already plenty hot most of the time. Having it cooler will allow it to absorb more heat while it is turning to a vapor (gas). As it does this it will need to be absorbing heat anyway. No amount of heat that is realistic for the fuel to carry will amount to much compared to the heat in the intake air or engine itself. This is what will give it the best mix with the air.

All true, but my reply was in response to a statement about expanding gas, not liquid.

_________________
David Kight
'62 Valiant Signet, White
'98 Dodge Dakota
'06 Jeep Liberty

Growing older is unavoidable but growing up is strictly optional.

that was all good. If you could compress a liquid, which would be the opposite of expansion of it, then your brakes would not work. The liquid brake fluid would compress instead of transferring the pressure to the other cylindars. It is when it boils that the car no longer will stop with the brakes.

So, lets get back to the better economy when driving accross the desert. Why do you think this helps? Is this part of the principal of keeping the heat in the engine so energy is not lost to escaping heat. I have to say, I have not wrapped my mind around that one. How does keeping the heat in the engine improve the torque of the engine per given amount of fuel consumed. It seems as if once the fuel is burned, it is gone, and keeping the heat around is not going to affect the force inside the combustion chamber of the next burn. If the combustion chamber has a higher temperature coolant around it, is more of the heat transfered into the downward push of the piston? Maybe that one, I can understand.

And, does it seem logical that running a hot engine is more efficent for cruise, and then go with meth/water injection for when we need to cool down the combustion chamber for big power? Nobody has put forth a comment on the water injection idea in this thread, and yet it seems the perfect place to discuss it. How does injecting water effect the heat loss theories we are kicking around. I guess it cools down the intake charge and not the engine, or combustion chamber, or perhaps it does keep combustion chamber temps down. Would this improve efficiency, or bring it down? I understand that at that particular moment we are not too concerned about economy, but still an interesting idea to explore.

And while we are at it, how does EGT, Exhaust Gas Temperature relate to this? Is higher better, or is lower better. You see it mentioned, but haven't read much about how you use it in tuning. I think it must tell you something abut combustion. What are you looking for there, and why? I have a vague round number in my head of 1400 degrees, but no clue as to why this is important, or a good target temp. I do not have EGT installed, but have ben thinking about it as well. This is the all temperature thread now.

I am pretty close to buying a DEvil's Own kit if I can figure out where to put the resevoir. I think it will have to go under the fender as I did with the coolant can.

Sam

_________________