Need some expert opinion.

[yugoshooter]

This guy lives in my town and claims his system will give ten more miles to the gallon. Bobs ever hear of this. http://www.poconorecord.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080902/NEWS/809020325

[BobS]

"...Willard got his first job working on cars and trucks. In 1955, he took a job at a new Ford commercial truck plant in Mahwah, N.J. Willard worked his way through every job in the plant and caught the attention of plant manager Ernie Poley. Poley asked Willard to work in the experimental shop where a group was working on Rochester carburetors to improve mileage and reduce pollution in their trucks." This is the first problem here, as Ford did not own Rochester-GM did. I do not believe this claim.

..."It was felt that the oil companies wanted them off the market, so they bought up the patents and the products never made it into manufacturing. It was suggested but never proven.

The brochure focused on the most famous of the super carburetors, a carburetor that allowed a car to travel 200 miles on a gallon of fuel by Canadian inventor Charles Nelson Pogue in the 1930s...." This is also simply not true-Pogue used acetone in the fuel mixture, which made the largest difference as the vaporization pressure was less than gasoline and it went to a vapor faster, hence the difference in milage. With 100 percent gasoline, the carb design....

..."patented Pogue carburetor pre-heated the gasoline to produce a high-energy vapor. One day, the poor inventor was offered a job as manager of an oil filter company and that was the last of the Pogue carburetor." ...also caused an extreme problem of vapor lock in ambient air temperatures above 85 degrees F. You can accomplish a better vaporization, that this carb was never able to accomplish, by wrapping a copper coil inside a tank that is plumbed between the thermostat housing out location and the top tank inlet of the radiator (this provides the heat source from the engine at it's hottest available temperature to quickly vaporize the gasoline when it got into the carb jets, but stay liquid in the high pressure fuel supply line to the carb), then, plumbing the heated liquid to an Impco propane carb where it will vaporize without the problems of the Pogue design. To do this, you must have the fuel pressurized in the fuel line to a minimum of 100 psi and run it through a regulator at the Impco propane carb. I have personally done this conversion on a 1965 Corvair turbocharged 164 CID engine, back in the late 1960's as part of my degree thesis in college. There are other drivability issues, but it works....sorta, kinda. I can go into more detail if you wish.

This is another incorrect statement...

..."He also found it was a coincidence that gasoline suppliers began putting additives such as tetra-ethyl-lead in their gasoline — materials that would make the super carburetors ineffective." TEL raised the octane of the fuel, by LOWERING the vaporization pressure, to allow a HIGHER compression ratio, by reducing the problem of a vaporized fuel such as gasoline being introduced into the combustion chamber and creating spark knock and damaging the engine-the addition of TEL had NOTHING to do with the "wonder carbs".

Now, let's look at the platimum claims. First off, platinum in a catalytic converter reacts with the unburned hydrocarbon GAS (and in a 3 way cat, the NOx), not a liquid. Platinum simply does not react with liquid gasoline, the mixture is too rich for the reaction to occur, additionally, there is no added combustion heat (700-950 degrees F is required to START the cat reaction in the converter housing, which is why you have to shield them offroad-to prevent grass fires) to the platinum sits there and does nothing except dilute the fuel in the intake stream, leaning the mixture (which is the IMPORTANT part-it runs LEANER), not magically changing the chemical composition of the fuel. Secondly, do you realize how expensive platinum is? There is less than 1/10 of an ounce of platinum in a cat converter. SI,ply put, the "solution claimed MAY have some platinum, but not enough to do anything at all.

As far as the "testing" claims of the manufacturer...allow me a little liberty in my words here....the BEST thing I can say is....



BULLSHIT



..as the SAE has developed and set standardized tests that any emission device MUST use by law to be allowed by the EPA. The EPA website has a list of devices they have tested and documented and change in milage, if a device made a difference at all. This is not restricting anyone's ingenuity (I have been working, on and off, with several labs trying to make a real difference in internal combustion engine effeciency, using gasoline, and these guys are spending MILLIONS and have yet to break the 3 laws of thermodynamics. Without a standardized test, any results are not only suspect, you can bet that the "manufacturer" is lying through their teeth about the results. For example, there is an estimate of 40K miles durability....too bad, the law states that the device must last 100,000 miles MINIMUM WITHOUT SERVICE (this is what is holding up, until recently, the urea emissions catalyst to diesels, both heavy duty and light duty for US use. Urea burnes up and must be refilled at intervals).

Overall, this is just more snake oil that someone that has no real understanding of how an internal combustion engine works spouting off about unrealistic claims.

Sorry, if this angers you!! That was NOT my intention. I just despise inaccurate reporting in the press and lying snake oil salesmen.....

Best as always,

Bob

[yugoshooter]

I have heard all those claims about super carbs an know they are BS. I was thinking the same thing about the platinum. The Junk yards around hear give you from $50 to $175 for a converter depending on its size so I know platinum is very expensive. Do you mind if I print out your statement and give it to him and I will give you his rebuttal. I called him today and I have plans to meat him this week.

Subarus do have a heated intakes.

[BobS]

I have heard all those claims about super carbs an know they are BS. I was thinking the same thing about the platinum. The Junk yards around hear give you from $50 to $175 for a converter depending on its size so I know platinum is very expensive. Do you mind if I print out your statement and give it to him and I will give you his rebuttal. I called him today and I have plans to meat him this week.

Subarus do have a heated intakes.
Feel free to do that....I don't have any problem with what you want to do.

My biggest problem with the "claims" is that, generally, within certain LIMITED conditions, some of the devices do work to a certain degree, but the exact change is not measureable, due to faulty testing conditions that are not repeatable. However, the questions to ask...

1. What are the operation conditions? (the auto industry has to keep the drivability the same from -25F to +140F without affecting the output of emissions)

2. What is the compression ratio of the engine? (not "it hasn't been changed" as that was the specific loophole Pogue used- engines at that time averaged 6.5 to 7:1, instead of today's 8.9 to 11:1. In other words, the TEL was added that time to allow the higher compression ratios-the result was better economy, greater power for increased compression, and lower BSFC , or Brake Specific Fuel Consumption, which means the engine was more effecient in that it burned less fuel to make the same amount of power).

3. What is the A-B-A BSFC measured over the operating range (not a single point) of the engine? (A-B-A is a specific testing and normalization procedure required to establish valid conclusions).

4. What testing conditions were observed during testing and were they standardized to normalization parameters? (this is the procedure to validate test results at the SAE standard conditions of environmental conditions-Comparing raw data that has not been normalized is simply not proper statistical procedure-regardless of claims otherwise).

5. What was the baseline testing parameters and were they normalized? (Same as item #4 reasoning)

There is more, but any real testing results that are not claimed to be "confidential" will not dance around any of these issues (which is why the test results are public the EPA conducts). So called "real world" testing is meaningless as there are too many variables to account for and too many conditions are unaccounted for-that is the purpose of testing-to establish a set of standardized conditions to allow the ONLY variables to be the parts and device that is changed. For example-think about this....what moves the device liquid through the tube connecting it to the "pcv valve" and "intake manifold"? Unless the device uses a pump (not likely, due to the volume and the pressure developed), this means that atmospheric pressure is used. What happens when you take a vacuum line off the engine while it is running? It starts to (assuming properly tuned to start with) sputter and the intake manifold vacuum falls, altering the timing (even on a computer controlled engine, through the MAP sensor) and turning the engine lean.

Federal Trade Commission about the legality of "claims" made :

http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/edu/pubs/consumer/autos/aut10.shtm

EPA actual test procedure and requirements:

http://www.epa.gov/oms/consumer/b00003.pdf

EPA Testing program results for all devices tested for their claims:

http://www.epa.gov/oms/consumer/reports.htm

Best regards,

Bob

[yugoshooter]

Thanks for the info Bobs.

[Christian for Israel]

i started adding 2 oz if acetone per 10 gal of gas a couple of years ago and noticed a slight increase in my mileage (it went from an average of 16 MPG to a bit over 18 ). not enough to make you do back flips but it justifies the cost of the acetone and gives a little bit extra, especially with the price of gas these days.

bob, are there any tricks you know of that can give better mileage inexpensively?

[BobS]

i started adding 2 oz if acetone per 10 gal of gas a couple of years ago and noticed a slight increase in my mileage (it went from an average of 16 MPG to a bit over 18 ). not enough to make you do back flips but it justifies the cost of the acetone and gives a little bit extra, especially with the price of gas these days.

bob, are there any tricks you know of that can give better mileage inexpensively?

There are a number in little things you can do to an ICE to improve the BSFC (which has the direct effect of increasing fuel mileage), but there are several other varibles you have to define first. Notice my earlier comments on the temperature range we have to use in the automotive industry. In a modern fuel injected engine, you can get a solid 5-7 percent increase simply by optimizing the computer programmed fuel map for your own exact conditions. This means to narrow the parameters. The catch with this (there is ALWAYS a "TANSTAAFL" attached) is that, should you go outside your programmed parameters, you simply will not be able to start the engine or move the vehicle if the change is too great.

Think of the most efficient (meaning the most adjustable and precisely metering) carb ever built-the Weber dual bore DCOE, developed to it's most accurate metering in the late 1960's. This SOB of a carb had to be readjusted if the AIR DENSITY and PRESSURE changed. The flip side was that this adjustability allowed you to get the most power OR the best BSFC out of a given engine. Not both at one time.

My point to this is that any change for one engine is not necessarilly applicable to another.

Another example, rear axle gearset, in the case of a pickup truck. Take a Chevy Blazer CUCV and a M1008 CUCV pickup truck. These 2 vehicles used exactly the same engine, tuned to exactly the same power levels. The Blazer generally got between 18.5 and 21 mpg in the EPA highway cycle, while the '08 (the pickup) got between 12 and 15 mpg. The differences? Weight, aerodynamics, tire size (measured in revolutions per mile, not diameter), tire rolling resistance, and gear ratio in the driving axle.

My point to all this is that you need to define things a little closer to be able to give more specific things , other than the "old saw" of tire pressure, keep fuel and air filters clean, etc....

Best regards,

Bob

[wallew]

I'll add one more little tidbit about the M1008 and it's offshoots.

My M1031 is LUCKY to get that 12 mpg. But it's big, heavy, and uses the 6.2L attached to the TH400, run through an NP205 that distributes the power to those heavy one ton axles with higher gear ratios.

AND I USE ACETONE. I also use Royal Purple with Prolong added. The Prolong has kept me from walking home at least twice that I'm aware of. The Royal Purple is strictly a synthetic that I like. ANY synthetic will do what RP does. At least I would think they are all the same.

And don't forget that any engine is basically an air pump. Takes air in, pumps air out. The better it can flow air in and out, the better your MPG will be. But HOW you do that is up to you. Think 'little steps', not some miracle cure for bad mpg.

And realize, sometimes a large vehicle can ONLY get so good an mpg as it's dependent upon gear ratio and rolling resistance due to tires and wheels as Bob has said.

[yugoshooter]

My 86 sube wagon got close to 30 mpg at 75 mph with a 1.8 four cylinder Holley 5200( copy of a weber 32/36), with no cat converter, 5 speed manual with 390 diffs. It weighed 2400 pounds wet. The 96 outback wagon i have now Has a 2.2 4 cylinder MPFI with 4 speed auto 411 diffs with the cat intact. Weight is 2800 and I'm getting about 22 mpg at 75 mpg, maybe 18 in town . I feel it could do better and I am looking at what I can do to improve it.

[wallew]

YS,
Like I said, little things.

If you haven't changed over to synthetic oil, do so. If you haven't swapped in a better flowing air filter, do so. If you have a restricted exhuast system, change it out for a better flowing one. ALL of these will net you small gains. Call it 1 - 2 mpg for each of these. MAYBE.

Adding acetone to your fuel can also up your mpg by as much as 2 - 4 mpg, depending on what you are driving. Here's a link for that: http://pesn.com/2005/03/17/6900069_Acetone/

Making sure you have your tires properly inflated. I've also removed as much 'detris' from the outside of my vehicle as I can. This removes wind resistance, which will also add less than one mpg to your fuel economy.

Little things. They all add up. OH, and don't drive erratically. By that I mean don't go fast, go slow, fast, slow. If you have a cruise control and CAN use it, do so. The reason you couldn't use it would be because you are stuck in a huge traffic jam as you and everyone else trys to bug out. Like those who left New Orleans before Gustav hit.

If I've missed something, please folks, speak up. I can use every cheat I can find.