Got the air compressor going!

[CJDave]

[img]/forums/images/icons/tongue.gif[/img] That is the correct spelling Pat. Buda made engines for lots and lots of applications, including Allis-Chalmers crawlers. AC went from using the two-stroke Detroit to the four stroke Buda diesel sometime in the fifties. Our propane powered furnace makes about two gallons per day of exhaust condensate. It collects in a tank and an automatic pump ejects it into the flower bed. It is slightly acidic. I see that in recent years the exhaust systems of autos are made from a corrosion-resistant alloy instead of steel. I think that condensate from these leaner, computer-controlled engines has a lot to do with that. [img]/forums/images/icons/tongue.gif[/img] A couple of years ago my neighbor grew soybean seed for the seed company and when they came to pick up the seed they brought a special conveyor that would be very gentle on the seeds and was hydraulic drive. We only had two tractors to choose from and as it turned out, the hydraulic system on the little one was just a scooch low on GPM to run the conveyor. So.... we got the big tractor and put a 230-HP engine to doing a fifteen HP job. In order to not crack bean seed we had to run VERY low RPM. THAT worried me....a lot... since the tractor had a turbocharged engine. Well, of course it slobberd all over itself; even pushing black unburnt fuel out of the expansion joint in the two-piece exhaust manifold. There was also a steady cloud of water vapor going skyward. When we got done I opened the throttle and you would NOT believe the cloud of liquid crap that came out of that engine. I found out only later that the tractor has a variable-flow hydraulic pump and we COULD have dialed it to a very low setting and then run the RPM up to a decent number, tereby preventing all the mess. [img]/forums/images/icons/crazy.gif[/img]

[Pat]

Dave, When I was in high school I used to go to work with my dad in the summer. He worked as a gauger for Magnolia Pipeline Company (Pipeline division of the Magnolia Petroleum Company (Mobil Oil.) I got some real world experience and got to meet adult working men (pumpers and other gaugers.)

My experience with Buda engines, as limited as it was, concerned stationary pumps. My dad had POA to buy tanks of oil in the field and performed preliminary analysis of the contents of the tanks to include specific gravity, temperature, % BS&W (Basic sediment and water) as well as the volume of oil in the tank.

He would sometimes calculate the time on the pump to take all the various tanks of crude he bought that day and set the timer on the Buda driving the pump to run long enough to get the oil. You had to consider the varioius elevations etc. Each tank battery had a valve that tripped when it ran out of liquid and got a shot of air. This prevented suciing air all the way to the Buda driven pump.

These Buda engines were typically started on white gas and then weened off the liquid fuel to natural gas as they warmed up. They typically had a 25 gal oil drum with a sight glass that automatically topped off the crank case and condensate kept the radiator filled and overflowing.

And that is about as much as I recall after 50 years of not thinking about it.

Pat

[CJDave]

[img]/forums/images/icons/tongue.gif[/img] I'm writing an article right now about running the all-fuel John Deere tractors in the forties and fifties. Those tractors had two fuel tanks, a "gasoline" tank and a "fuel" tank. it was the same sort of situation, you started on gas and then switched to "fuel" after the engine was hot. "Fuel" was distillate or else we used what we used to call "stove oil". Those fuels had a habit of getting past the piston rings and diluting the crankcase oil so you had to be vigilant and watch the oil level carefully to detect the early signs of what we referred to as: "making oil". Tractors of an even earlier era had adjustable heat risers on the exhaust manifolds to facilitate the vaporization of the very crude fuels. They also had water tanks that were used to add just enough water to help supress detonation on very hard pulls when the throttle was open wide and the compression pressure was at a max; in other words not much intake manifold vacuum. As you recall, engines like the famous Wright R-2800-35W 28-cylinder corncob as used on some of the heavy WWII bombers used water injection in order to supress detonation and get maximum take-off power. [img]/forums/images/icons/tongue.gif[/img]

[Pat]

Dave, In North Dakota winters air cooled VW had a problem with automatic chokes making a rich mixture that would slip by the rings which didn't fit too well at temps under -40 (F or C it didn't matter) You needed to keep a check on your oil level which would climb on the dipstick due to gasoline in the crankcase. In bad conditions just driving from Minot AFB to Minot, ND (about 15 miles) would add so much gas you needed to drain it and refill.

You don't have to go all the way back to WW II to get examples of water injection or alcohol/water injection. An engineer I worked with had a Lincoln Mark whatever that was supposed to get high octane gas. He ran it fine on 87 octane with great power and mileage. He had an electronic circuit that monitored his manifold vacuum and intake manifold temperature. If the temp was above the min spec and vacuum went below the set point then a metered stream of water inversely proportional to the manifold vacuum was injected into the intake manifold. Higher loading-open throttle (low manifold vacuum) = more water. Worked great.

Also back in the olden times just before the big rocks cooled when I was in the Strategic Air Command the KC-135 mid air refueling tanker used water injection in its turbines for extra thrust. With inputs of aircraft gross weight, pressure altitude, and such they calculated how much water they could run through the turbines during the takeoff roll and run out of water when they would be ready to lift off. This gave them a thrust boost to accelerate down the runway but no extra weight to carry aloft. You could always tell when they were making a "max effort" takeoff by the terrific dark smoky exhaust coming out of the jet turbines which would get much clearer about the time they rotated to lift off.

The tanker pilots were a religious bunch, praying hard on each max gross weight takeoff. They got a constant stream of engine improvements which gave them more power BUT... this was coupled with a constant stream of tech order changes giving them a higher gross takeoff wieght.

Pat

[egon]

Now you fellows got me interested in engine water injection. So I did the Goggle thing with lots of results. Lots of different applications and mixtures of water, oil and ethanol or methanol. Most seemed to be applied to aircraft engines of the piston or jet type. More than one car company experimented with water injection also. No idea why it was stopped as it has merits. [img]/forums/images/icons/grin.gif[/img]

Also found was a kit you can install on your car.

http://www.rumblebee.org/viewtopic.php?t=27511

Combine this with the Hydrogen kit and for sure one should get fantastic mileage.

CJ, the 28 cylinder engines first appeared in the B36 and were then adopted to other aircraft.

Egon [img]/forums/images/icons/grin.gif[/img]

[CJDave]

[img]/forums/images/icons/tongue.gif[/img] The water injection thing HAS been around for quite a while. In aircraft it was a way of supressing early detonation while still enjoying the benefits of high intake manifold pressure from superchargers and turbochargers. When I was a kid and working weekends in a big wrecking yard, every now and then I would see an after-market water injection kit on a car. I cannot help but think that most of them were wasted, however, because the compression ratios on most of those old dogs from the thirties and forties was quite low. By the mid fifties, Detroit had entered into a horsepower race and it was then that compression ratios began to skyrocket. 12 to 1 was not a bit uncommon, and THAT is where water injection would be beneficial. [img]/forums/images/icons/tongue.gif[/img] Hmmmm.... I was never quite sure whether the WWII stuff was the 28-cylinder design or if that was post-war? I once saw a 28-cyl corncob engine in a cut-a-way display. What a nightmare! [img]/forums/images/icons/crazy.gif[/img] Before the afvent of the jet airliner, flying a passenger plane to Hawaii was kind of a big deal. First you had the engine factor; would they hold togehter; all those cylinders moving up and down? THEN there was the point-of-no-return thing where after a certain distance you could not turn back no matter how bad the weather was in Honolulu, or San Francisco as the case may be. [img]/forums/images/icons/crazy.gif[/img] I always wanted to go to Hawaii on the Princess Luriline the ocean liner that plied the SFO to Honolulu run, but by the time I was wealthy enough to do any such thing, the speed of the jet airplane had replaced the more relaxed surface vessel. [img]/forums/images/icons/frown.gif[/img]

[egon]

Check out the compression ration of the aero piston engines using water injection. It was usually in the six to seven to one ration as were most of the engines of the time.

The high compression ratio came with better quality gasoline. Chrysler started using the Hemi design as it would tolerate lower quality fuel at a higher compression ration. They dropped this design for the wedge type when the fuel qualities improved.
Then, when lead was no longer allowed in fuel the hemi and polysherical type compression heads became the standard again.

The 28 cylinder was post war. [img]/forums/images/icons/grin.gif[/img]

Egon [img]/forums/images/icons/grin.gif[/img]

[Pat]

Egon, When I was in the 9th grade and fascinated by all things automotive, especially high performance I became aware that engine performance was enhanced after a thunderstorm due to cold dense air which gave more "stuff" to push the pistons down. Back in those days (after hand crank but before everyone went to throw away paper air cleaner cartridges) I proposed a synthesis of evaporative air conditioning and an oil bath air cleaner. Essentially a "swamp cooler" in place of or in addition to the oil bath air cleaner. This would provide your engine with cool dense moist air to boost your performance like the thunderstorms did.

Not too tough to do back then as not all under hood vistas revealed chock-a-block engine compartments crammed full to the limit, obviously requiring the installers to use greasy shoe horns.

Pat

[egon]

I used to "De-carbonize" the car engine by pouring a little water down the carburetor!
[img]/forums/images/icons/grin.gif[/img]
I also tried the swap cooler thing for an air conditioner but failed miserably! [img]/forums/images/icons/grin.gif[/img]
Egon [img]/forums/images/icons/grin.gif[/img]

[CJDave]

[img]/forums/images/icons/tongue.gif[/img] There was an "Okie" who lived not too far from us when I was a kid who knew each and every car survival trick that there was; bacon rind in the bearings, sawdust in the gearbox, you name it. Those kinds of tricks were all part of getting an already completely worn out car from Oklahoma to Californey in those "hard times" with no money and only your wits as a means of overcoming adversity. I saw him do the water in the carb trick to a car that he had just bought real cheap and suspected that it was OK, just carboned up. You would not believe the chunks that came out of the exhaust! Sure enough, the car ran a lot better after he gave it a "physic". He also showed me how to combine two bearing inserts of unequal size in the same journal to compensate for a bad crankshaft. I actually used that trick on my 350 Chev-lay suburban when it spun a rod bearing while we were on vacation. I installed the unequal bearing inserts, buttoned it back up, and brought it home 650 miles over two mountain ranges with a tent trailer in tow. As soon as we got back I place a long distance call to my boyhood home town and thanked that generous Okie for showing me all of those Pearls of Route 66 "mechanical wisdom". [img]/forums/images/icons/crazy.gif[/img] I inspected a big power plant once that used two 747-sized jet engines to turn a pair of generators. They had two gigantic swamp coolers on top of the building to add moisture to the incoming air and help boost power by allowing them to run more fuel into those two screamers. [img]/forums/images/icons/crazy.gif[/img] The first time I laid eyes on a CHRYSLER FIREPOWER I was in love. I put those beautiful double-rocker hemi engines in anything and everything that would move, from Ford trucks to hot rods. I loved the ragged sound that the open combustion chambers made and I loved the way those big valve covers looked with the spark plugs down the middle. I played mix-n-match with blocks, heads, and water pumps to make just the right engine for what I was re-powering. [img]/forums/images/icons/smile.gif[/img] Yes, the 361-383-413-426 and so forth family of Chrysler "wedge" engines were all pretty hot, but they never had that brute horsepower look of the early hemi, and even more important, they didn't say: Chrysler Fire Power on the valve covers. [img]/forums/images/icons/crazy.gif[/img]