Thursday, December 24, 2009
Not much time to work on the Dart this week, but I did pick up a few items...
Picked up one of Summit's extra long battery relocation cable kits, a Moroso battery cutoff switch, and an Optima Red Top battery this week. I'll see if I can get these in soon.
My plan is to run the 2-gauge wire forward to a bulkhead fitting on the firewall, then connect that to the starter and the alternator. I'll run two more 10 or 8 gauge wires from the battery to the front of the car, one for the EFI and ignition, and one for everything else. There will (at some point) be a cut off switch in the EFI / ignition wire to meet NHRA requirements.
Speaking of NHRA requirements, I probably need to order their rule book - I've got a feeling that a weird homebrew setup like what's under the Dart's hood might get looked at a bit more closely than normal when going through tech inspection.
My plan is to run the 2-gauge wire forward to a bulkhead fitting on the firewall, then connect that to the starter and the alternator. I'll run two more 10 or 8 gauge wires from the battery to the front of the car, one for the EFI and ignition, and one for everything else. There will (at some point) be a cut off switch in the EFI / ignition wire to meet NHRA requirements.
Speaking of NHRA requirements, I probably need to order their rule book - I've got a feeling that a weird homebrew setup like what's under the Dart's hood might get looked at a bit more closely than normal when going through tech inspection.
Labels: Dodge Dart
Wednesday, December 23, 2009
Spot the fake hydrogen booster theories!
Call them hydrogen boosters, HHO systems, Brown's Gas, or what you will, these things seem to be on the way out. Maybe it's been all the debunkings (some of which I've blogged about before), or maybe it's been the Ozzy Freedom types have moved on to other schemes. At least, I haven't run across as many discussions of these things recently. The way it's going, in another ten years, the hydrogen booster fans will be hanging out with the vapor carburetor crowd and commiserating over a few beers about how the government / auto industry / petroleum industry / Bavarian Illuminati have conspired to kill their technology of choice.
So, while these ideas are still getting kicked around, I thought I'd try gathering all the hydrogen booster theories in one place, as well as all the claims about how to tune the system. My first plan was to put that side by side with the theory that most of the claimed improvements are the results of bad experimentation, but where's the fun in that? Instead, I'm going to try something a little different - I'll post the theories without comment, although I will attempt to fill in gaps on occasion when a theory seemed incomplete. However, three of the items on these list are fake - theories or tuning methods that I've made up out of whole cloth. All the others are genuine claims that advocates of hydrogen booster systems have used to explain why it should work or how you should tune the engine after installing it.
Theories of operation:
So, while these ideas are still getting kicked around, I thought I'd try gathering all the hydrogen booster theories in one place, as well as all the claims about how to tune the system. My first plan was to put that side by side with the theory that most of the claimed improvements are the results of bad experimentation, but where's the fun in that? Instead, I'm going to try something a little different - I'll post the theories without comment, although I will attempt to fill in gaps on occasion when a theory seemed incomplete. However, three of the items on these list are fake - theories or tuning methods that I've made up out of whole cloth. All the others are genuine claims that advocates of hydrogen booster systems have used to explain why it should work or how you should tune the engine after installing it.
Theories of operation:
- The engine burns fuel to drive the alternator to power a hydrogen generator that makes more fuel to be burnt in the engine. Appears to be the oldest theory.
- The hydrogen generator doesn't create additional drag on the alternator because it is only taking up unused current that the alternator would be putting out anyway.
- The hydrogen isn't extra fuel so much as a combustion enhancer that speeds up the burn rate and increases knock resistance.
- It's not really the hydrogen that makes a difference, as much as that the generator also collects a mysterious sort of energy known as "orgone" that it feeds into the engine.
- The hydrogen generator produces monoatomic hydrogen - that is, the hydrogen atoms are all separate, instead of stuck together in pairs as in normal hydrogen. This is much more reactive, although somewhat tricky to keep it from reacting with other things (aluminum, plastic, oxygen, or even itself).
- The hydrogen and oxygen react with decane in the fuel, causing it to split into ethanol and iso-octane.
- The hydrogen doesn't burn or react with the gasoline, but instead reacts with a different gas in the air to produce a chemical that has an effect on combustion. What gas it reacts with was not specified, but presumably it would be reacting with nitrogen to form ammonia.
- There is an extra electron on each hydrogen molecule, forming an electric current from the hydrogen generator to the combustion chamber.
- Adding hydrogen to the air / fuel mixture causes it to implode instead of explode.
- A steady flow rate of 1 liter of hydrogen and oxygen per minute is best.
- A steady flow rate of 100 liters of hydrogen and oxygen per minute is best.
- The flow rate should be proportional to the engine size and RPM. To find the best flow rate in liters per minute, take the engine size, multiply by the RPM, and divide by 2.
- Because hydrogen speeds up the burn rate dramatically, timing should be retarded to a fixed timing rate in the vicinity of 10 to 12 degrees after top dead center.
- Because hydrogen causes the air / fuel mixture to implode, timing should be advanced to somewhere around 70 to 90 degrees before top dead center.
- Because hydrogen increase knock resistance, timing should be advanced 5 to 10 degrees ahead of the standard timing curve.
- The air/fuel mixture should be leaned out to somewhere between 16:1 and 20:1.
- Because hydrogen causes the air / fuel mixture to implode, the engine needs very different valve timing. The cam should be replaced by one with a much longer intake opening and a far shorter exhaust opening, and overlap absolutely must be cut to zero.
Labels: Hydrogen
Saturday, December 19, 2009
Starting on a trunk mounted battery
I've been having trouble finding time to work on the turbocharged Dodge Dart - things have been very busy at work as we were getting ready for the PRI trade show. (Which reminds me - I have pictures of that I need to post.) Today after work I found I had some time to wrench on the car, but it didn't feel like I had enough time to pick up a socket for the steering box to get it back on. I'd unscrewed the nut with a giant set of Channel-Locks, but wanted to use a proper socket for putting it back in place. So finishing that wasn't the best choice.
When a task looks overwhelming, often it helps to go over the individual, non overwhelming steps, and pick one thing you can do with what you have available right now. I decided I could mount up the trunk mounted battery box. The Moroso box I have mounts with bolts through the bottom of the box, but oddly enough, it wasn't drilled at the bottom of the box. You have to drill it yourself. I picked a spot over the right rear wheel and drilled both the box and the floor for the mounting bolts. Next step will be to get a battery and wire it in, probably an Optima red top. While I do the wiring, I'll plan it so I will be able to install a kill switch, but initially I will probably leave that out so I can get this running. Now that I've found that RTE Engineering has an option of converting a factory ammeter to a volt meter, I'm planning on going that route. Ammeter bypasses are pretty popular in the Mopar world (sometimes for good reasons and sometimes for bad ones), but I really don't like leaving a gauge that is just dead and sitting there.
When a task looks overwhelming, often it helps to go over the individual, non overwhelming steps, and pick one thing you can do with what you have available right now. I decided I could mount up the trunk mounted battery box. The Moroso box I have mounts with bolts through the bottom of the box, but oddly enough, it wasn't drilled at the bottom of the box. You have to drill it yourself. I picked a spot over the right rear wheel and drilled both the box and the floor for the mounting bolts. Next step will be to get a battery and wire it in, probably an Optima red top. While I do the wiring, I'll plan it so I will be able to install a kill switch, but initially I will probably leave that out so I can get this running. Now that I've found that RTE Engineering has an option of converting a factory ammeter to a volt meter, I'm planning on going that route. Ammeter bypasses are pretty popular in the Mopar world (sometimes for good reasons and sometimes for bad ones), but I really don't like leaving a gauge that is just dead and sitting there.
Labels: Dodge Dart
