I at one time as a teenager bought one of those "miracle" books on how
to get miraculous gas mileage, and different patented high mileage carbs that
had been invented over the years. They did give a formula for calculating the
REAL air/fuel ratio of a 99.99% fuel burn rate, it was more like 64:1 than
14:1, if you burned every bit of available gasoline vapor.....BUT. One of the
problems with this is, is that gasoline in liquid form acts like a coolant,
keeping the temperature down on the pistons and internal parts. Which is why
a lean-burning, pure-gas vapor engine will burn a piston or valve. The liquid
droplet form of the gasoline acts like a coolant, keeping the parts cooler.
Water injection actually hellps cool down parts, which is why it is used in
conjunction with lean-burn technology. Some of those carbs had been tested,
like the Pogue carb, a Canadian inventor, but problems with the burned
pistons makes them rather dicey. I was thinking, if you heated the gas to
vaporize it totally, then utilize a water injection spray, you'd get the best
of both worlds. I don't know if anyone ever used this , or have tried it. But
I believe the 64:1 formula should be correct if you can find another way to
cool the parts. Only a trained chemist could tell us if the formula is
actually true or not, I"m no chemist, so I have no irrefutable way to say it
IS or ISN'T possible to get 100 mpg from a standard V-8 or not. But , from a
layman's perspective, having graduated from high school, college, and tech
school, and having passed basic physics, etc, I can speculate on several key
points :
1) Liquids don't burn, vapor does. A carb forms liquid gas droplets,
not a true vapor, so only the outer shell of the droplets get vaporized to
burn, the rest is wasted as pollution or as a coolant. That is a FACT.
2) Carbs haven't changed much in the 100 or so years they've been
invented. Sure, they have all these different "circuits", but what do they
use to actually vaporize the gas? Pure physics, using the Venturi vacuum to
suck the gas thru crudely cast holes and passages in potmetal of what is
basically a round "wing", to make droplets of gas. And you think you can't
improve on it any?! C'mon! Fuel injection is better, the droplets are much
smaller, but still round and still liquid. Better, but not good enough.
So, if a way could be found in efficiently heat vaporize the gas, and
use water as a coolant instead of valuable gasoline, you might get a V-8 to
get 100 mpg and still run like a champ. I'll have to try to find that old
book, and put the Formula on the List, see if anyone can challange its basic
premise or not. Anyway, I'll just wait for the Virginia Big Game Lotto to hit
my numbers tonite, so I retire on 80 million, and not care one way or the
other if I can get 150 mpg from my Gremlin or not. :)
Jerry
'55 TF Suburban
'78 Gremlin GT
'74 Gremlin
'71 Sunroof Gremlin
'57 Chevy 4-dr
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