Hello I came across this website http://www.himacresearch.com/letters/feedback.html It talked about vapor carborators that you would heat up the gas add you use a catalist and water, and it would transform the gas into a real gas that is more effeint. That with this carborator instead of the engine being 7% or 8% effeint it would be much more effeint, and with these carbs people can get 80 90 and even 100 miles per gallon, cause the motor would be 200 times more effeinct. These were also with relitivly big ingines 300 cubes and more. Im not sure if it is true or a myth, that these people make make it up to go against oil companys. If anyone has any comments on this site, or has treid it right it down i am interested in this idea.

Hi stereodud. If you're interested in "alternative" fuels and possible adaption to cars etc,etc.,check out this website. <a href="http://www.keeleynet.com" target="_blank">www.keeleynet.com</a> . It is loaded with info on all sorts of "interesting" patents and ideas, on "suppressed" technology. Some of it takes serious thinking to get your head arround. Good Luck ???. Cheers..........Barry.M

It's an interesting concept,that's the principle a Coleman cook stove works on. Smokey Yunick developed something along the lines in the '80's. He used 2 "turbos" he called homogenizers that kept the vapors from coming back through the intake ( a simple description) and had several manufacturers looking at it. I think it didn't pan out for reasons of liability, a vapor burns easier than a liquid and I think they feared that if a poorly maintained vehicle with leaking ignition wires developed a leak in the intake it would go up in flames. I think that the problem you would need to overcome is transition circuits. I think that's what killed off so many of the so-called "suppressed" technology carbs. A lot of those were wick carbs (much like the way an oil lamp works) and operated o.k. at steady state speeds but lacked any transistion circuits that made them pretty un-driveable, and since a lot of them were developed in the "T" and "A" days that's saying something.

Yep there have been hundreds of patents taken out and many were of the "wick" type,hence the term "runs on the smell of an oily rag ". I hasten to point out that just because some of it is "old" technology doesn't mean its redundant. If you go to the website,check out Gunnermans ideas, it's definately food for thought. Vapour type carbys like the "Pogue" developed way back in the 20's 30's don't use wicks. They used exhaust manifold heat to "expand" the gas vapour and it was contained within the carby in a chamber so as to provide a small amount of supply on demand. The metering of the "vapour" would be like any LPG-Propane carby,it's the generation of the vapour in the first place thats the trick. As a point of interest,the Pogue carby was used on many WW2 US Army vehicles in Europe and Africa. They were also used by Australian and British Army's in Africa.

Apparantly the "additives",particularly in unleaded fuel can cause serious operational problems in vapour carby's and the oil companies know it .

I think your intial assumptions are a little incorrect. ANY fuel source will not burn unless it is gassified. Coal, wood, straw, gasoline, etc., all must be turned into a gas that is mixed with oxygen before it can burn. Once gassified, maximum possible efficiency of any heat engine is a function solely of the temperature difference between the ambient low temperature and the peak process temperature. Thus, you want to heat a gasoline/ air mixture only hot enough to prevent condenation of the gasoline vapors to liquid which won't burn. Barry touches on the subject of th LPG, hydrogen, natural gas engines. If the fact having a fuel that is in a gasseous state at ambient conditions is the key to a super efficient engine then these fuels should do the trick. In actual fact, they are no more efficient than gasoline and are theoretically less efficient because they contain less carbon, more hydrogen molecules that turn to water when burned. Gasoline has more carbon, less hydrogen and combustion product is CO2. Water vapor carries more heat than CO2 thus the gasseous fuels result in more unused heat in hte exhaust gasses of the engine than high carbon fuels.

The legends of the super efficient gasoline carburetors that are surpressed by the evil auto makers and oil companies are just that - legends. If you believe them, you are free to build and market them to your heart's content. Most of the designs have been in the public record for many decades and U.S. patents only apply for 17 years. No one can stop you from making them. Unfortunately, if they gave the performance improvement they cliam, they would be creating energy, in effect becoming a perpetual motion machine. That can't be done or the second law of thermodynamics would violated. Don'ty count on it.

I thought that heating the fuel would help to increase vaporization some time ago, so I built what I thought was a safe way to heat the gas as it enter the carbs on my 260z. I used a can filled with antifreeze and used a 12v heating element to heat the liguid. I then ran a copper coil thru the can that I ran the gas thru. I was trying to reach the vaporization temp of the gas. The engine ran like crap and I didn't see any improvement in fuel economy.

I was able to get about 60 mpg on a trip from Spokane to the West side in the Z. I had just had both carbs rebuilt and it was on its maiden run. I couldn't believe that I drove half way across the state and the gas gauge barely moved. I think I used 1 tank that whole trip. I never got that kind of performance again. I don't know what it was but I wish it would have kept on doing it.

Just a theory here but if water turns into ice faster if you use hot water wouldn't gas turn into vapor faster if you used cold gas. By using hot water aren't you speeding up the cooling process which acts like a flywheel and the momentum of the cooling process makes it turn to ice faster. The old hotrods used what was called "cool cans" that were set up very similar to what I did with my "hot can" but used dry ice to cool the gas to get more hp. I figure more hp more efficient engine.

If vaporized gas going into the carb is more efficient, why then are propane powered cars not getting higher milage that gas powered? How much more vaporized an you get?

As a young inventor type, I did all the research into vapor carbs, the Pough and the like but never could make anything that would improve mpg. I tried a device like the tornado by making one out of hobby shop propellors, nothing. I think I still have the plans for the 200 mpg carb.

I don't put a lot of stock into the conspiracy theory. I do believe that Detroit has squelched some good ideas. (My dad developed a plastic for use in tires that would get them 100,000 miles and it was mysteriously canceled). I believe that they can produce cars that get better gas milage and when mandated to do so did, to a degree. The internal cumbustion engine is only so efficient and it will take a radical redesign to make it much better.

O.k. guys, I discovered where the money is in this scam. Like Rush says, 'Follow the money trail' if you want to solve a mystery that isn't making sense. Go to the website referenced in Stereodud's original post. The guy is selling books 'exposing' the conspiracy. That's where the money is being made. He has anonymous testimonials of poeple's houses being burned by oil companies because they dared to desing a super carburetor.

Think about it; If your engine is burning gasoline @ 14:1 air/fuel ratio and there are no unburned hydrocarbons in the exhaust (EPA would tell you if there were, trust me), how can you get more work out of that fuel? Yes, you can get better mileage by reducing the weight of the car, increasing compression ratio and a few other logical changes but air spinners, gasoline heaters, magnets, etc., etc., etc., ad nauseum in essence are claiming to add BTUs to the fuel and that ain't possible.

In view of big energy companies being run out of business (Enron, Global Crossing, Texaco) for playing with corporate books and bad employment practices, does it make sense that they coud get away with doing a Tony Soprano impersonation on some poor yokel in Outback Utah who soldered together some copper tubing on the kitchen table in his 10' x 50' trailer house?

I'm not sure about water freezing faster when it is hot. That's a new one on me. All I know is that to freeze water you must remove 1 BTU/#/F until you get to 32F water. Then you must remove another 143.6BTU/# to change phase from 32F liquid to 32F solid. The hotter the water, the more heat must be removed thus the 'harder' it is to freeze it.

I agree with everything you said, except the water thing. You are right about removing 1 BTU/#/F. I am talking about the rate it is removed. It seems to start out slow but develops a momentum, if you will, that ends up speeding up the process. Simple test. Get 2 ice trays and put warm water in one and cold in the other and see what happens. Maybe try real hot water in another.

If you put on a couple of magnets, it aligns the molecules and freezes even faster. (Just kidding on that part) This maybe something the kid can do when he is boared instead of those damn posts of his and report back to everyone.

What is being referred here in the vaporization of hot and cold is the sublimation temperature. This temperature is usually very low like -50 Celcius and is not practical for gasoline because gasoline is a mixture of chemicals, each different component will sublime at a different temperature. Sublimation of gasoline is hard to achieve accurately and consistently. Would be nice though.

One thing I might add to this discusion is the use of ultrasound to vaporize fuel, although the technology and compactness of size necessary (about fuel injector size) is not there...yet. I do think that a fuel injector that also happened to vaporize it into a super fine mist made complete with ultrasound transducers imbeddeded in the tip would have a use right now. Think of it, if you could provide completely vaporized fuel at the chamber your efficiency could gain by 15%, that's substancial. The other benefit of ultrasound that is rarely discussed is the ability to accelerate the medium across a valve restriction for a kind of computer controlled power boost. Of course this kind of ultrasound at the powers required are huge and unwieldly, a reduction in weight and bulk would have to occur on the order of 10 times before it becomes feasible.

Remember in the movie Red October they described the Catapillar drive instead of propellers. This effect is easy to do with vapours but difficult on heavy liquids. The name is magnetohydrodynamics and is done easily with any ionized gas. Maybe Nasa should build one for the space program, most technology today has a direct link to the space program and we would get it faster. Imagine supercharging the mixture into the chamber using high velocity magnetics to create the vacuum drop. It would be cool and fast, except for the weight of the electronics and parasitic drag of the increased electrical load you would have free horsepower.
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Mertz; Touche', you are right about hot water freezing faster than cool water. The phenomenon has been known since the time of Aristotle and is refered to as the Mpemba effect. I feel better that physicists don't understand why it happens, 'cause it is really counter-intuitive.

Here is a series of articles published by the physics dept. @ the University of California discussing what is known to date,

<a href="http://www.weburbia.com/physics/hot_water.html" target="_blank">http://www.weburbia.com/physics/hot_water.html</a>

[ September 10, 2002: Message edited by: willys36@aol.com ]</p>

Don't you just love physics!!!!!!!

It is true that the vaporized fuel would probably not have the transitional problems I referred to in my earlier post, and that it would act like a propane carb ( which could probably be adapted)but there is still the flammability problem you'd have to be ready to deal with if a leak should develope in the hot engine compartment. The purpose of the fuel cooling that was mentioned, I believe, had more to do with making the fuel more dense. The water heating of the carbs does work and could probably be fine tuned, but as the fuel got closer to a vapor it wouldn't function as well in a carb designed to flow liquid. Ford used for many years a spacer under the carb that ran the water for the heater through it to pre-heat the fuel air for better atomization in cold weather and could be adapted to give some effect. If you are going to vaporize the fuel a propane carb would be a good place to start, at least to see how they are constructed (I have one off an old truck I owned and you'd be surprised at the simplicity). I remember one guy I knew ran a piece of copper line from his pump to the carb and had it wrapped around one exhaust manifold and claimed it improved his mileage, but didn't talk about the potential vapor locking problems he probaly dealt with in really hot weather. I'm interested in any type of fuelingdevice that would give good economy/performance with out the complexity of the electronic injection.

My 1928 Franklin has a system called a primer for the carb and has a configuration where the hot exhaust preheats the carb. I haven't looked at it for awhile so I can't remember how exactly it is setup. The Franklin of that year won many economy runs and was getting about 34 mpg if I recall correct and much higher under certain conditions.

My 260z also has hot water going thru the carbs. It gets about 28 mpg when everything is running right. I suppose this was done to help with atomization.

Come to think of it my 49 Studebaker has the intake manifold connected to the exhaust manifold presumably to heat the manifold to improve performance. I think the 40 Plymouth is the same way. Must be to keep the fuel from condensing before it gets to the cylinders. All four are inline 6s.

All street manifolds have provisions for heating the manifold (or gasoline) so gas doesn't condense on cool metal. The job of the carburetor or fuel injector is not only to mix air and fuel but to also gasify the liquid fuel. We can argue all day at how well each does it's job. Gas fuels are very much easier to handle because they don't require the gassifying step that gasoline does.

I recall a news story a few years ago where a guy in one of the northern border states (ND, MI, MN ?) converted both a Pontiac & Caddy to run on propane (dual fuel type) carbs. He routed his exhaust pipes through the gas tank, leaving the stock fuel system in place to allow the engine to run "normally" until it reached the proper temp, then switched over to run "on fumes" (IE: Vapors) through insulated fuel lines (heat retention) to the propane side of the carb as the gasoline boiled. Reportedly, he achieved in the neighborhood of 170 - 200 MPG on a couple of full sized GM "tanks" built in the 60's. FOOD FOR THOUGHT!