Gasification

[Markus Strobl]

>    I'm aware of at least one attempt to prepare a true vaporized mixture. This attempt used a carburetor, an exhaust driven heat exchanger and a turbocharger. As someone already mentioned, the carb does a decent job of atomizing the fuel when you can't hit a hot intake valve. The heat exchanger vaporized the mixture, but also heated it(increasing knock tendency) and dropped it's density. The turbo was used to maintain density which, at elevated temperatures, also raised it's pressure. I can't recall whether it was a draw through or blow through set-up, but I strongly suspect it was blow through. Some pretty impressive numbers were obtained for performance and fuel economy. I would like to have seen much more data, such as MBT timing, octane sensitivity, and BSFC. It was presented to the Big Three, who dismissed the idea for a variety of reasons, all of which disgusted the inventor. His name was Smokey Yunick, about whose reputation I have mixed feelings. I don't know wheth!
 er h!
> e patented this idea, but I read
> 
> 
>  about it it the 80's. No pressure was given, so no one knows if performance was related to boost or vaporization(hence, my desire for real data). There is a myriad of unanswered questions, which is makes everyone skeptical.
>   Has anyone heard of this since? 
> 
> PS: cracking intake valves with fuel is difficult since they are continuously cooled by charge air and fuel; they don't nearly an hot as exhaust valves. Perhaps it's possible after an extreme hotsoak.
> 
> Ed Hernandez
> ehernan3 at ed8719.pto.ford.com

Smokey has made alot of weird/innovative (strike appropriate) engines. I saw
a car show on Swedish TV about one of Smokeys cars. It was a rabbit with 
smokeys stuff on it. He claimed to have reached over 50% efficiency vs the
normal 25-30% for gasoline engines. The 4 cylinder was cut in half and was 
made a 2 cylinder (!) and he got more than stock power from it. The show 
host demonstrated by smoking the tires. It sounded way weird. Never heard an
engine sounding like that. Didn't sound bad, just weird. Smokey claimed to
have a big pontiac from the early 80s that did 0-60 in 6 secs and got 40mpg,
vs 12secs / 18mpg stock. Several manufacturers including Swedish Volvo 
gave him cars to experiment on. The show said he was in the process of patenting
the principle, but that was 7-8 years ago. The basis of the principle was to
run the intake charge very hot. The secret was to do this without detonation.

Markus Strobl                 96 Z28 6M. Borla, !CAGS, PEG2, QLC, CD