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"The charcoal burner would burn gases produced by heated wood. The burner had a two part system: a closed chamber with chunks of wood in it, and a charcoal burner to heat the closed chamber and make the wood generate gases by a process called pyrolysis.
Flammable gases produced by pyrolysis are then routed to a carburetor of sorts, mixed with air, and burned in the engine’s combustion chambers. "
Probably wouldn't pass a smog test today. :shades:
The principle of it sounds pretty neat, but in reality, it is neither efficient or reliable--it would be somewhat of a last ditch effort. Not only is performance spotty, but it burns a helluva lot of wood.
I hope this post doesn't generate a new craze of modifying old Mercedes 300Ds to burn fenceposts and pallets.
2001 BMW 330ci/E46, 2008 BMW 335i conv/E93
I'll call out the MG-TD
Charcoal Gas Producers were used extensively in Australia from the 1930's to the late 1940's especially during the second world war. Although Australia has extensive oil and gas reserves, they were unknown at that time, meaning that Australia was dependent upon imported fuels. during wartime, the scarcity of fuels became more severe and home grown fuels were necessary. Experiments with Shale Oil had been only partially successful.
The gas producers were used on tractors and agricultural machinery during the 1930s but were used on cars during wartime.
My mother grew up in a very isolated Outback town where fuel was even scarcer and producer units were common. Drivers would have to plan to light the unit some time before a planned journey and would have to refuel regularly.
There was a severe problem with coking of valves, with engines requiring strip down and regrinding of head, valves and valve seats very regularly ( I think dad said something like every 1,000 miles which seems an extraordinarily inefficient exercise!).
As an entirely irrelevant aside, the red outback dust was also ingested into the engine, through inefficient air filters. In turn, it wore out cylinder bores rapidly and formed a glaze on the piston top and cylinder head. If it built up sufficiently, it decreased the chamber size, increasing compression at the same time as the cylinder wall were being scratched out. A great way to ruin an engine
Cheers
Graham
Just click on this link. On my IE8 it's only showing about 1/5 of the picture!
http://images.hemmings.com/wp-content/uploads//2011/04/RuebenGreen_1500.jpg
2014 Malibu 2LT, 2015 Cruze 2LT,
Looks like a Fiat V8, or more correctly 8V Supersonic....
Found it, page 224. 'A Ford truck with a wood burner mounted in front of the radiator a year back'.
I guess up on the roof is the....what? :confuse:
Maybe the roof thing is for wood storage? I don't recall any kind of roof tank on the German versions I have seen.
The roof mounted object is a gas reservoir. The plant produced gas at a pretty even rate so it had to be held in a reservoir which was usually a flexible bag in a cabinet. Sometimes, the bag was unrestrained leading to weird cartoons of the time.
Cheers
Graham
2001 BMW 330ci/E46, 2008 BMW 335i conv/E93
2014 Malibu 2LT, 2015 Cruze 2LT,
2020 Acura RDX tech SH-AWD, 2023 Maverick hybrid Lariat luxury package.
Oh, I can just SEE that Saab owner, with his pipe, his pocket protector and his slide rule---LOL! "Back then", that was the image of the typical Saab owner---an intellectual with his head in the clouds.
Now, even Saab doesn't know who its owners are. :P
I think wood-burners would be a last desperate act for any country---prior to that, cars would merely get smaller and lighter as energy costs rise. (it's no coincidence that the VW Beetle was born when and where it was born).
We might end up burning lots more coal in the boonies, though, to power the electric cars of the urban elite. There's lots of coal in the ground still.
But yeah, if you see people chopping down trees in the city parks to fuel their cars, it might be a good time to consider emigrating to Australia.
Well, next-to-last, maybe:
Is this a little better?
I'm not sure it realy helps identify it any more easily though.
And Magnette, Click & Clack are 2 brothers that host a long running radio show in the US on Public Radio called 'Car Talk'. It's kind of a humorous show where they dignose car problems (or marriage problems) from callers. You can probably stream their show from any NPR station website (my local station/site is WLRN in Miami).
Now about that dark pic of the weird car with semi-'57 Plymouth fins and the strange c-pillar, is it a Vauxhaul?? (of course I've never seen any vehicle that looks like it).
Rassig = German for racy, hot blooded, sexy.
2001 BMW 330ci/E46, 2008 BMW 335i conv/E93
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I think the ones I saw in Britain were mostly brought back from Germany by returning servicemen, as I recall Borgward Isabellas were generally - the import duties on cars from Germany in those days made direct sales into Britain pretty expensive.
My pictures from my trip to Essen three weeks back include loads that either don't qualify for this site because they are too rare (i.e. unique) or too old - mainly pre-war. I love the way between us on this forum we get pictures of everything from a bog-standard runabout from the eighties to some rare Japanese micro-car, and someone out there will know what it is. Sometimes the regional variation helps - I'm more likely to know a British 50's car than to tell a Pontiac from a Buick, when you can only see half one wing and a hubcap, but it astounds me how after nearly 30000 posts new stuff comes on every day !