Gas Savers

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OK, A couple of people have asked for more details of the Hydroxy generator cells I made, and how the heck I can find room under the hood of a Chevy Cavalier to fit 6 of them.

So here’s a picture of the hydroxy generator installed in the cavalier:

As you can see it’s virtually invisible to other road users.

Here’s a picture of the main Hydroxy generator unit:

A little bit different to the usual 4″ pipe or jamjar, this is the latest in a long line of experiments and the best producing HHO generator I have made.  At 12 amps this array produces 1.6litres/minute. I am currently testing it at lower amperages to see where the ’sweet spot’ is for this engine. Each vertical ‘T’ section contains a single 2 plate cell ( +& -) but the way I have folded the stainless steel gives me about 24 square inches on each electrode surface within that tiny space. Distance between cells, plus the fact that most of the electrodes are within the vertical tube, means very little stray current being wasted as heat. Gas collects in the top section and passes to a header with any electrolyte being recirculated to the bottom of the cell array. Being only 45mm thick it fits into the space in front of the radiator and is protected by the bumper/crossmember. The open design of the array also allows air to pass easily to the radiator.

The Header:

From the header the HHO passes through a bubbler to clean the gas and also to prevent any backflash. The bubbler is a simple design that allows gas to pass freely, yet in the event of a backfire will instantly block the flash from going to the header or main unit. It also allows air to pass back into the unit when cooling, without sucking the water back into the main unit.

The Bubbler:

And then goes into the air intake close to the throttle body.

I have since added an extra electrolyte catcher between the header and the bubbler to catch any overflow from the header and stop electrolyte from contaminating the bubbler’s water. I made the mistake of overfilling the unit on one occasion and it overfilled the bubbler. The new water catch tank now prevents this from happening, and any overflow gets sucked back from the catcher into the header when it cools down, without affecting the bubbler.

Rik

Well, I think I’ve found one of the reasons for the lost mileage. Delicate problem though. Computers are bad enough to deal with but at least they are logical. Wifey is another kettle of fish. She doesn’t use the chevy a lot, just shopping trips etc after she finishes work. Found out that she doesn’t trust the hydroxy system and has been switching it off when she uses the car. So the computer spends most of its time relearning the fuel maps for with or without hydroxy on these short runs.

Can’t make an issue of it or she will blow it out of proportion, so had to be sneaky

Fixed another hidden switch to turn the system on or off, and just wired the original switch to the led that indicates system is on. Now she can turn off the switch, that she thinks controls the system, to her hearts content without screwing up my efforts.

Heck, wimmin think that it’s ok to tell us what we want to hear, I’m just using their tactics to stop her messing up my efforts. Difference is, I will tell her eventually that she has been driving with hydroxy on, with no ill effects.

Hopefully running full time on hydroxy will allow the computer in the car to settle down and give back the gains I was getting before she started using the car again. When I first fitted the system she refused to drive at all, but retail therapy proved more powerful than her distrust of my work. At least I had the car to myself for almost a month though

Wimmin………… lovable but still a pain in the butt at times.

Rik

Well, the results I posted last week were good, but the computer in the Chevy is fighting back. Damn the oil cartels and car makers, I’m convinced they are in league to empty our pockets. OBD2 computers are designed for their benefit and forced on us sheeple as being good for the environment.

Filled the car to the brim, did  207 miles of mixed city and highway driving and had to add 4.4 gallons to refill.

Same gas station, same pump and filled to pump click off each time.  47mpg from mixed driving, down from the 53mpg average I got across the city last sunday.  Still a long way to go to my 100MPG target.

A few basics about the system I have installed:

The cells are fitted into the space in front of the radiator on my 97 Chevy Cavalier 2.2l with the reservoir/recirculation tank/primary gas seperator under the hood in the space between the cooling fan and the battery.

6 cells with 25 sq inches of active surface for cathode and anode each per cell. Electrodes are 4mm apart wired +-+- . The individual cells are wired in series. 2.3 gallon total capacity including a header tank/recirculating electrolyte system. The cells are all contained in a common electrolyte but with about 4 inches space and plastic baffles between adjacent cells to minimise crossover currents. Also the circulating electrolyte helps to reduce heating from stray electric current.

System runs at about 12 amps warm, when cold 1 cell is bypassed to improve gas generation at lower temperatures, and switched in automaticaaly as the system warms up. In 5 cell mode the system pulls approx 15 amps cold but would blow the 20 amp fuse if allowed to heat up.

Electrolyte is sodium hydroxide in distilled water.

Generates approx 1.6 litres/min of hydroxy/browns gas either with 5 cells cold or 6 cells hot.

Anti backfire bubbler, safety blowout cap and low water sensor are fitted to the system. Low water sensor also cuts out the whole system including sensors if I fail to top up. Hydroxy gas is fed directly into the air intake hose close to the throttle body. The 200+ miles of the last test didn’t trip out the low level sensor, about half a pint of distilled water needed to be added to bring the system back to level.

Resistors  in parallel on both Intake air temp sensor (2.4k ohm) and coolant temperature sensor (3.3k ohm) .

Voltage regulator on Manifold Air pressure sensor reducing supply voltage from 5.06v to 4.81v

Voltage adder fitted to oxygen sensor wire lifts the mean point by  265mv

All the sensor mods are controlled by relays so that they are only activated when the Hydroxy system is enabled. When the hydroxy generator is switched off all sensors revert to stock settings.

Next step is to either add another generator or add load sensing controls to regulate the amount of gas produced to the demand from the motor. That should enable me to add more offset to the various sensors and improve results.

Rik

Thanks to Mark’s comment on the previous post, I checked the datasheet images in IE and discovered that they were virtually unreadable. Unlike in Firefox where they can be easily enlarged.

These next 2 datasets are the bottom left sections of the originals. The other 3 sections are less important, just maps of the averages from various sensors recorded during the runs.

Hopefully they will be visible in lesser browsers  lol

Running with car in standard trim, gasoline only:

Running with Hydrogen generators switched on and all sensor mods active:

As you can see, there is a decent improvement once the system is fully tuned in. My next step will be to add another Hydrogen generator in parallel, but which only activates under load. Ticking over in traffic will only use one set of cells and the other set will add in extra volume of hydrogen when using the accelerator. Then the sensor fine tuning will need to be done over again to match the extra production of Hydrogen to the engine.

It’s a slow, painstaking process, logging results after each adjustment, monitoring temperatures and other visuals to ensure safe operation etc. However it is nescessary, theres no point gaining fuel economy if you end up with a cooked motor.

Rik

Found time at last to go out and do some road testing

The 2 datasheets below are taken from my laptop, connected to the car computer system, and represent 2 circuits around Panama city in quiet Sunday traffic.

The first datasheet shows the computer output running with the engine in unmodified form. All electronic modifications to the sensors disconnected and Hydrogen Generator switched off.

The second datasheet shows the results from driving the same route, about 10 minutes later in the day, after switching on the hydroxy generator and enabling the various sensor modifications that I have made so far.

Click on each sheet for full screen view:

Still a long way to go to the magic 100 MPG, but at least I’m making progress in the right direction.

It’s actually very difficult to replicate the driving conditions exactly on each run, so many variables can interfere unless one has the luxury of a test track. This is why I published all the data rather than just the MPG figures, so that you can see the variations in speed, load etc.

Hopefully I can get some highway mileage data over the next week or so. Previously the Chevy has been giving around 33MPG on the highway over a 100 mile trip without any modifications and it will be interesting to see the improvements if any using that as my baseline.

It’s been one hell of a week. Clutch slave cylinder on my chevy cavalier went out. A 20c rubber seal in a sensible car turned into a $250 parts bill due to the cylinder being incorporated into the release bearing. Meant dropping the transmission and no point in just doing the cylinder with that amount of work so a whole new clutch went in.

Also, the chevy does not use a mass airflow sensor (MAF), which would have made calculating MPG an easy task in software. The system I use for data can do that calculation for me, but with only manifold pressure sensor (MAP), I spent a fair bit of time writing my own javascript code to calculate the MPG from the inputs available from the car. This is the car I am using for my experiments with Brown’s gas (Hydroxy) and I want to have real data available for comparison, rather than ‘double mileage’ claims with nothing to back it up. Mileage figures from tank fills tell me the system works, but theres a lot more testing to do, especially in the area of electronics attached to the sensors, to fool the computer.  Also a lot more involved in building the generator than a wire coathanger in a jamjar, that some of these ebooks being pimped on the net would have you believe. I know from more than a years experimenting!!

Stay tuned and all will be revealed, with photos, videos and data printouts from the analysis software.

Rik

My first experience of these animals was a 1987 Volvo 480 turbo. 13 years old and the first car I owned that didn’t have a carburettor to fiddle with. I had not long got divorced due to my ex having a mid life crisis and a toyboy, and was now in a position to buy something that didn’t need to haul around a nagging  ***, 4 teenage kids and the assortment of stray dogs that ex kept giving a home to. That little Volvo fitted the bill nicely, low and wide, lightweight and lots of power yet could fit a couple of the girls in the back on the odd occasion I was allowed to see them.

I had made the choice of car, now all I had to do was find a good one. So many of the 480’s were rust buckets due to water ingression. Eventually found a decent example at a second hand dealers, but it took me 3 months of haggling to get the price down to where I wanted. It ran well enough in their lot and I didn’t road test it while haggling. None of the dashboard worked, but I found out that that was common due to poor quality connections and easy to fix.

When I did eventually get the price down and bought the car, I soon discovered why they were willing to drop the price. It drove out the lot fine, but the first hill I came to it backfired and lost all power. opened the hood and found one of the pipes from the intercooler had come off, due to no clamp. Once I nursed it home I got digging and found that the turbo had been replaced by a monkey with no real idea what he was doing. The alignment was bad and several pipe clamps were missing. Also the boost control valve that fed info to the computer was broken. All easy stuff to fix, and probably the reason the dealer was happy to drop the price. Spent a couple of weeks tinkering, putting the turbo right and also the electronics. Good education, that little beast had 5 computers on board, fuel and ignition were seperate, also a body module, dashboard and a final one for the ABS brakes. Way ahead of it’s time.

Discovered that the boost was limited by the computer to a rediculously low level, around 1.2 atmospheres. What a waste of potential power. With no way or knowledge of how to modify the computer I was feeling kind of stuck, but then the idea hit me.

Instead of doing brain surgery, change the information the computer receives.  I cut the sensor feed tube leading from the pressure side of the turbo to the control valve, added a ‘T’ piece and ran a tube from there into the dash, ending in a needle valve. By opening the valve I was able to bleed off some of the pressure the sensor was seeing, making it think it was below the cut off point.

For normal running I would leave the valve closed, but when I needed a short term boost of power for overtaking, just open the valve and hit it!! That car could spin its wheels at 60 mph in 3rd gear!!  That was my first experience of beating the computer. Don’t change the brain which costs big bucks, change the information going to it from the sensors.

Who the heck had this bright idea??

To pander to the clean air brigade lets burn excess gasoline under the car and make heat, rather than improving the combustion efficiency of the motor which would either use less gas or gain more power.

Instead of forcing car manufacturers to use efficient designs, which exist as patents but are buried due to commercial interests, lets keep on using outdated technology. That way the suckers can consume excessive amounts of gas and we can produce another part that can be sold annually at an excessive price.

Great for business but a crappy deal for the consumer. What’s new when big business, big oil and governments are involved?

I first heard of LPG (liquified petroleum gas) as a fuel back in the mid 90’s. Up till then I thought it was just a cylinder that I used for the stove in my caravan, and for powering a barbeque. The first systems were coming on the market, but at quite a premium price, and there were few outlets that could refuel a car. Got me interested though and I dug deeper into the subject. I found that many forklift trucks ran on LPG and that vaporisers were available for them, also cylinders that were designed to supply fuel in liquid form rather than as gas through a regulator. The biggest problem for LPG is that as it vaporises it drops considerably in temperature and will freeze. Not a big issue with the low flows used for barbeques etc, but I wanted to fit a system to a 3.5litre V8 Landrover. That beast did about 14mpg on gasoline on the road, and considerably less when playing offroad.

So I got experimenting with a secondhand vaporiser from the local fork lift repair place. It was kind of small for its new home, but by drilling out the jets I got it flowing enough gas. The next problem came up, insufficient hot water flow to stop it freezing up. Solved that by using microbore copper tubing wrapped around the outside of the unit and covering the whole thing in a layer of insulation to keep the heat inside. Split the flow of water that came from the heater hose through the unit as standard and let it flow through both circuits. Threw away the engine driven fan and put in a pair of electrically operated ones from a ford truck, that helped to keep the heat level in the engine up. The tank and supply problems were easy to solve, just use the cylinders supplied for forklifts. I built a cradle with retainer straps into the back of the Landie and plumbed in the copper tubing along the chassis to the vaporiser.

Feeding the gas into the airflow involved adding adaptors to the front end of the carburettors. Another part to either buy or make. I cut the flanges off a pair of worn out carburettors, ground the cut edges nice and flat, then drilled and tapped brass barbs into them for the gas hoses. Not as pretty as the commercial venturis, but they worked fine. Fitted electrically operated fuel cut off valves to both the gasoline supply and the LPG feed line, and a switch on the dashboard to operate them.

To change over from gasoline was as simple as flicking a switch. Start up on gasoline and then shut off both the valves, wait for the carburettors to empty and then switch on the LPG valve. Instant savings. It took a bit of fiddling around to get it all working, but was a fun experiment that saved me a pile over the couple of years I had that beast. Of course, being an honest law abiding citizen, I only used the LPG when driving on private land. With no road fuel duty being paid on the cylinders I would have been illegal if I used it when driving on the road. Still saved me a wad of cash though as I used to compete regularly in land rover trials back then. As a side benefit, the engine was extremely clean inside and even when in use on the road using gasoline I never had a problem with roadside emission checks.

My first bike was an ancient BSA 250cc from the 1950’s that had been in an accident, I bought it for $10 as a big box of pieces after the original owner gave up his plans to rebuild it. It was a great learning experience at 15 yrs old, and I did get it all back together in time for my 16th birthday and my first licence. There followed a succession of other bikes and cars, mostly junkers that I was able to turn into usable machines. Did all the usual things for those days, bigger carbs, noisy exhausts and hot cams, grinding out ports for better flow and machining cylinder heads for extra compression. Plenty of fun and games until the dreaded marriage bug got me. I gave up grass track motorcycle racing and went over to rallying as a less deadly hobby, but even that fell by the wayside when my first daughter was born. The age of responsibility had caught up with me and I was still in my 30’s. The kids grew up though, and I eventually needed another hobby. Land rovers became the new love of my life as the competitions available were fun, more about manouverabilty than speed, and my daughters were at an age where they could enjoy the days out with dad. I had a few good years pleasure competing in events run by the local landrover club in South Wales where I was living at the time.The biggest killer in those days was the cost of fuel, even then, the late 90’s, gasoline in the UK was around $7.50 a gallon and a 3.5litre V8 landie likes to drink, especially at off road speeds.