Truth is stranger than fiction, or so the saying goes. And I could not make this story up if I tried. A Finnish politician has converted his American-built El Camino to run on woodgas. How’s that for awesome?
Juhas Sipilä’s 1987 El Camino, affectionately dubbed “El Kamina” (The Stove), features a very steampunk-like woodgas generator taking up about half of the truckbed. El Kamina’s 400 Chevy engine can take the 4,400 pound truck about 125 miles on 175 pounds of biomass, or about 1.4 pounds of biomass-per-mile. The truck itself can carry enough fuel for around 800 total miles of travel. Juhas, a parliamentary candidate, genuinely seems to believe that homegrown biofuels can reduce his country’s dependence on oil, and it is nice to see a politician (even if it’s a Finnish one) put his money where his mouth is. Juhas is in good company too
Hey Takza, maybe you should convert your Tercel to run on wood! I wonder how many miles to the cord you would get.
That's a cool thing. The technology is very very old, however. In WW2, virtually every country we were fighting against ran out of petroleum products and converted some vehicles to run on wood-gas. The Japanese did this extensively.
So did Germany and Italy, as well as France under the Nazi occupation.
No big deal. But I wonder what kind of air pollution results from the wood smoke?
More than that, now you got diesels running on fryer oil, put a couple of Tercels running on wood smoke, the freeway is gonna smell like a backyard bar-b-que!
"I'm high on the real thing: Powerful gasoline, a clean windshield, and a shoeshine."
in the late 70's I read an artical about Volvo making a wood burning car out of one of their current models. They drove it across Sweden in a demo drive, pulling a trailer full of wood. There was a cooker in the trunk that heated the wood and they would pipe the vapors forward to run in the engine, so there was no smoke. The problem was it took two cars to drive ahead to scavenge enough wood from the road sides forest to keep the car moving. There is not enough forest in the world to provide enough fuel to put a meaning dent in the demand for gasoline.
Even so in places like the PNW, it would be fun to drive around in a polished copper pipe steam-punk mobile that has a guy in the back throwing wood into a blast furnace looking device, driver up front wearing goggles, leather gloves with big gauntlets a Lambskin leather coat, tall black boots. You would never have to stop in a gas station. Drive it to Burning man, you would be a big hit.
Petros wrote:Even so in places like the PNW, it would be fun to drive around in a polished copper pipe steam-punk mobile that has a guy in the back throwing wood into a blast furnace looking device, driver up front wearing goggles, leather gloves with big gauntlets a Lambskin leather coat, tall black boots. You would never have to stop in a gas station. Drive it to Burning man, you would be a big hit.
My late maternal Grandfather (1870-1949) would love this. He was an engineer for the Missouri-Pacific starting in the 1890s and his first engine actually ran on wood. That was apparently just a "learner" engine, as he shortly moved to coal-burners.
Tom M.
T4WD augury?
"Oh, do not ask, 'What is it?' Let us go and make our visit." T.S. Eliot - "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"
"Now and then we had a hope that, if we lived and were good, God would permit us to be pirates." Mark Twain
Petros wrote:in the late 70's I read an artical about Volvo making a wood burning car out of one of their current models. They drove it across Sweden in a demo drive, pulling a trailer full of wood. There was a cooker in the trunk that heated the wood and they would pipe the vapors forward to run in the engine, so there was no smoke. The problem was it took two cars to drive ahead to scavenge enough wood from the road sides forest to keep the car moving. There is not enough forest in the world to provide enough fuel to put a meaning dent in the demand for gasoline.
Even so in places like the PNW, it would be fun to drive around in a polished copper pipe steam-punk mobile that has a guy in the back throwing wood into a blast furnace looking device, driver up front wearing goggles, leather gloves with big gauntlets a Lambskin leather coat, tall black boots. You would never have to stop in a gas station. Drive it to Burning man, you would be a big hit.
Except you'd be STUCK...no trees there? As long as it was all brass/copper and kept polished...she'd be OK though. I can hear the Chitty-Chitty Bang Bang music already.
Give a boy a gun-give a biatch a cell phone-and pretty soon you almost got yourself a police state.
Orwell said: War is peace! Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength...
Petros wrote: Drive it to Burning man, you would be a big hit.
Except you'd be STUCK...no trees there? As long as it was all brass/copper and kept polished...she'd be OK though. I can hear the Chitty-Chitty Bang Bang music already.
There is a burning man there. Ha! a burning man powered car! We can burn all the environmentalists first. Any volunteers?
