reserved for more pictures

Hello All

Thank you for your kind words of encouragement they are very much appreciated.

Mike:

No you did not miss the engine spec, I added it to the original post after reading your comment, I thought It would be better there instead of placed after the fact.

I am optimistic that the 6 cylinder will give me enough power on woodgas to blend in with traffic but I will have to just wait and see, if nothing else it will at least make a very good first try and experimentation vehicle. I would have liked to gasifiy a larger engine but this truck was what I had in my position at the time.

I like the manual transmission as well however I intend to have separate pull cable throttles for both the woodgas and air intakes so manipulating these along with using the manual transmission may prove difficult especially in clutch heavy circumstances i.e city driving. But this is another one of those things that will have to be worked out as it develops.

I currently live in Belleville Ontario, directly across from New York state over Lake Ontario

Wayne: "When will you be busting the champaign bottle on it?"

when I first started the project I was hoping to have it done by Christmas but it seems things are progressing pretty well so I am optimistic that if nothing comes up to detract me from the project then I could be making my first test drives by the end of September.

Terry:

That is a very nice offer of which I may take you up on sometime in the future. I may be heading back to Thunder Bay in a year if everything pans out and Kirkland lake is in that general direction. It would be interesting to compare notes.

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Here are some photos of my other project that I worked on last winter and completed this April for the summer. I have over 1000kms on it. It's great for intercity driving and I can outrun and out maneuver most cars in the city.

The bike is capable of speeds of 85km/h and can go comfortably 30km at that speed. It can get a range of roughly a 100km at 30km/h. I plan to use the wood gasser for long distance trips or when I need to haul materials and use the bike if I need only to transport myself or pick up groceries etc.

for those interested the bike is powered by 30 lithium iron phosphate batteries wired in series to total 100v at 16amp hours.

yes that is a hub motor in the rear wheel. I dissembled it, added new high temp hall sensors, thicker wires, sealed it with a couple gaskets and added a thermometer and mineral oil to monitor the internal temps and help cool the motor when I get pulling up to 4000kw.

No trouble with Law enforcement to this date. Where I currently live there are relatively few E-bikes around and all that I've see are ones bought in stores which are limited to Canadian regulations. There is no wattage law here in Ontario (yet) but there is a limit on how fast they can be manufactured to go i.e 32km/h while on the road. This makes it frustrating for both owners and other road users since most stock e-bikes take up the room of a scooter so cars and other vehicles can't pass without endangering people. With my bike I can keep up with traffic and it just kinda blends in. There is no license or registration for this kind of thing here and I hope it stays that way.

I do have a bicycle tag that I found while in another city off an old junker so decided to put it on but it has no value other than for it looks.

well, we are running on woodgas!

I had to scrap the plenum in the last post as the RV valves where leaking/warping under the high vacuum and heat/gasoline conditions (as was mentioned by Woody). The plastic plates where cupped after a hundred kilometers of gasoline driving and the rubber seals swelled do to an interaction with gas so it was a no go.

I decided to do what Wayne suggested and pipe the wood gas in above the TBI. I still used one RV valve to adjust the incoming air and a butterfly (damper) to throttle the woodgas. The wood-gas throttle is attached to the gasoline throttle via a cable and the air intake valve has a separate pull throttle. I decided to try and filter some of the fine soot that I hear can bake to the TBI/carb and intake manifold by putting in a piece of foam. This worked ok for roughly 60km and then it clogged and wouldn't even allow enough air in to run the engine effectively on gasoline alone. I will not put the filter back in and will be forced to clean the TBI/manifold once it becomes a problem. I may look into getting another set so that I have a back up for when cleaning must be done.

pic 7- The intake pusher blower is attached temporarily in the box while the exhaust heat exchanger is fabricated.

I still have to fix a few issues with linking the gasoline throttle with the woodgas butterfly, currently it sticks a little so when I flip from woodgas to gasoline it reves fairly high when in neutral/shifting gears.

The lid I posted about earlier is still a problem and I am losing a lot of vacuum do to a poor seal. I think I will have to make a new one that fastens around the rim at several points. When driving today I was maxing out at 60kms on the flat but I think a combination of it being the first time driving this vehicle along with the poor lid and filter clogging up it was a pretty good run.

I won't be able to fix the problems for a few weeks as I am busy with work and I need to devote some time to my very understanding girlfriend who has gone all summer putting up with the ongoing fabrication.

I can finally see the light.... to be honest, I was still kinda skeptical whether this would work or not until I was rolling down the street on woodgas. I had to double check the TBI injector switches to make sure they where off and still it was hard to belevie... I think I'm coming down with a fever... a woodgas fever that is.

Thanks to all that have been helping me out with this build and a special thanks to Wayne and Chris. It's a great thing you are doing.

until the next update take care and thanks for the input.

hello Wayne

On the 4.3l v6 the on-board computer controls the ignition timing. Apparently there is a way of disabling the computer from automatically adjusting the timing by unhooking a wire under the floorboard. I was slightly hesitant to do this as the truck is my only vehicle and messing with timing seems like it could ruin an engine quickly if done improperly. I'm quite a novice when it comes to wrenching on an engine and I am learning as much about ICEs as I am about gasification as I go.

I read your post on Richard C's thread advocating he advance his timing as it would help with wood fuel economy and getting more hp out of the engine when on woodgas so I think once I get a little more comfortable with the procedure I may try and advance the timing to see if I get any performance gain.

Thanks again

Dustin

been running the truck more this week. I took the filter material out of the mixing chamber and things seemed to work a little better. As well I replaced the hopper lid with another and it seems to seal better.

I am maxing out at 60km/h (38mph) on the flat which is disappointing. I have to run in 3rd gear as shifting to 4th does not provide enough vacuum to keep the engine RPMs up. The vacuum gauges read 15 at the mixing chamber, 10 at the rails and 5 at the hopper when in 3rd gear at 2200 RPM which gets me 60km/hr. I'm running a 6inch restriction. I do have some small leaks that I haven't fixed. shifting to 4th from above gives me 1800RPM and 7-9 at the mixing chamber 5 at the rails and 2-3 at the hopper, the RPMs slowly decrease until one shifts back to 3rd.

I did mess around with the timing with he above post information in mind, but I think it did more harm than good. After messing with the timing I couldn't idle on woodgas and the gasoline idles very low now, think I'll try and set it back to the default 0* TDC

I'll keep plugging away at it, I hope I can at least get it to run at the speed limit 80km/hr (50km/hr) and would be ecstatic if I could maintain 100km/h. Hopefully with some more work with the 80% I'll be able to squeeze some more speed out of the old truck as well as get it to idle.

Chris: I am able to kill the engine by closing the air intake valve while running on wood. From what I've leak tested most of them are found before the grate but I still need to go over it again to get rid of anymore that have shook lose.

Woody: The restriction plate is 6inch diameter and 12 inch's from the nozzles. I can't tell if I'm getting puff backs or not (don't hear them while driving) but after driving for a bit my hopper lid eventually develops more and more leaks which I assume would be to puff backs.

Again thanks for the continued help.

Don:

I read that the slide valve was apparently easier to adjust compared to a butterfly valve since the slide valve only opens on one side versus the butterfly opening on both with the same movement of a cable. As it stands now I have about 1/4' of play from the "sweet spot" of the air intake on each side which gives me some breathing room when trying to adjust.

More updates:

Been working on the gasifer again this week. I decided to widen the restriction plate from 6inchs to 7inchs. I also found that the ammo box I used for an ash dump had it's rubber seals burnt out which allowed a lot of air up through into the hearth (lots of white ash at the grate).

I sealed the ammo box with stove gasket and some other leaks that have cropped up around the gasifer/heat exchanger junction. Around this connection the paint has been burning off and seems to have popped a few welds (The high temps may have been due to the air leak in the clean-out). I sealed the small leaks with red silicone and seemed to work well. I finally got my hopper lid to seal tight.

I am estatic to say that I'm pulling 30inch H20 at the manifold, 20 at the rails and 10-15 at the the hopper. I was able to cruise at 90km/hr in 4th at around 2200rpm and had lots of power to climb hills. It seriously feels like I'm driving on gas. The old truck never really had much pep as it was and I'm pretty frugal on the petal so it performs much like I was driving on gas. All the speed limits around here are 80km/hr and most drive 90km/hr so I am able to keep up quite nicely.
The fuel consumption has gone down quite a bit too I think as well. I have no numbers yet but will be keeping a record to see if my mileage improves.

still need to address some more issues.

1st: need to do what Chris suggested and tie a push/pull throttle to the throttle to allow the truck to idle on wood gas. the truck idles really well at roughly 1000rpm but without the push/pull cable attached to the throttle I need to manually open the throttle with my foot which is a pain especially when trying to brake/clutch or get out of the vehicle while in neutral etc.

2nd: I need to install a throttle body between the woodgas inlet and the mixing plenum. It is very difficult to run the truck with duel fuel right now. When the truck is running on gasoline there is nothing to stop woodgas from being sucked into the mixing plenum. When this happens the air/fuel mixture is too rich and the truck sputters and stalls. It's nice to switch from one to the other (any instantly) if need be , but right now the only way I can do this is by pulling over and getting out of the truck and disconnecting the wood gas line. If a tight fitting throttle body was between the woodgas inlet and mixing plenum than the wood gas could be shut off from the cab with a cable. The throttle body in on the way so we shall see how it works.

I installed a narrow band air fuel mixture gauge to work off my stock o2 sensor and will see if that is any use of not. It may be more valuable when I am trying to idle, not sure.

The 7inch restriction seems to be working real good. Like I said above I am getting a lot more power out of the engine and it's running very nicely. I took the lid off the mixing plenum and there was no tar to be seen, only dusting of soot and a small amount of water droplets. I put another 80km on the new restriction and everything seems to be running smooth. I will stay with this restriction for now. I can't really see moving up to a bigger restriction because then I think I will get into trouble with tar at slower speeds and idle. But we shall see.

Chris: I looked at the grate through the ash dump and it did not look like it sustained any damage from what I could see everything inside the gasifier was intact and sustained no damage. I took the heat exchanger apart when I was trying to diagnosis my problem and the internals had no obvious signs of heat damage. It was just the paint on the outside of the heat exchanger next to the wood gas inlet was starting to burn off. I think I caught it before anything went too south so looks like just cosmetic damage.

Mike: I love the solenoid idea. I just ordered one at the local auto parts store as the wrecker didn't know what I was talking about and I wasn't in the mood to try and convince them to allow me to walk through their lot. As I posted above I had a piece of foam in the mixing plenum to help catch some of the soot in the air but it plugged very quickly, perhaps a different type of foam would be better. What is the cleaning schedule on replacing the foam in your Chevy?

Woody: I'm learning the other 75% as I go and hopefully I will become competent in' woodgas before I destroy the gasifer :). I was thinking that since my engine is quite small (V6 4.3l) compared to other trucks being gasified that I wouldn't really be able to pull hard enough on the gasifier to cause it to over heat (perhaps I'm wrong). As well I thought the more vacuum the better in that it would reduce the chance off producing tar by increasing the heat (although you don't want to much heat obviously). More vacuum = more gas which gives one more power and speed or am I wrong?

On My most recent drive I've only been able to get the thermometer on the rails up to 300F (I think right where it should be) I have no way to monitor hearth temp at the moment. It does seem beneficial but to costly for me at this time to invest in. I was able to maintain 90km/hr with some moderate hills.

Thanks again for the advice and tidbits

Dustin