Mad Scientist Matt's Lair

I had a link spammer stop by my blog recently trying to promote an amusing bit of pseudoscience. (There, I've given their link a more appropriate title.) The commenter asked if I could post some relevant info on it. Naturally, I'd be glad to.

Called the "AG Power Fuel Saver," this device attaches to the negative terminal of the battery, where it apparently, well, does nothing. The reason I say that is that it's made of nonconductive materials, according to their FAQ - so there's not much electrically it could do, and there's definitely nothing non-electrical it can do. They claim to have done mileage testing with it using an IM240 test - an emissions test that doesn't report anything about fuel mileage. It's interesting to see a bogus gas saver where its promoters don't even try to come up with a plausible reason why it could work.

What's even more interesting was that this isn't the first money waster of its type I've seen. I ran across a report where the EPA tested a nearly identical device (except it did have a few conductive parts) called the Fuel Maximiser. You probably won't be surprised to hear that the Fuel Maximiser didn't do anything either.

Labels: Gas Mileage

One of the people that Dateline interviewed was Eric Kreig, a critic of these sorts of hydrogen generators who's even more vocal than I am. I had read his site in the past, and I'm pretty sure I've even quoted from it (Evidently it wasn't on this blog, though). But I couldn't find it in time for yesterday's post. Well, here's Eric Kreig's page on Dennis Lee and hydrogen generators. Check it out.

Labels: Gas Mileage, Hydrogen

Tonight's episode of Dateline caught my attention. This time, they were going after something I've often gone after on this blog, the claim that putting a hydrogen generator on a car can boost its gas mileage. Their target was the HAFC system, peddled by convicted felon Dennis Lee. His system sells for around $1,000, with installation being equally pricey - or even more expensive. That's a pretty high price for an HHO generator - someone like Ozzy Freedom can get you the same whole lot of nothing for a whole lot less something.

You can read the whole episode write-up here. What I found especially interesting was that they tested the system at an EPA certified lab using the federal mileage tests. This is the very first time I've seen anyone do this, and as far as I've been able to tell, it may even be the first time anyone's ever subject an HHO generator system to one of these, with surprisng results. No, the surprise wasn't that the generator improved things. It got the exact same results before and after the installation. But then they turned the system off and retested the car - and it got better mileage than before. It sounds like the guys who did the installation also made some sort of tweak to the car, most likely running a thinner grade of oil, that produced a real improvement. And then the hydrogen generator caused the car to run less efficiently and canceled out their real gains. Although I'm not sure if the gains were more than the test device's margin of error.

Their "What's in the kit?" video, which wasn't shown on the air, is one I found particularly interesting. One, he's combined the hydrogen generator with a gas mileage magnet - I doubt that would be any more effective than the one the EPA tested in that link. The electronic box caught my eye, since it's very similar looking to a MegaSquirt, but a closer look showed it seemed to just be something else that used an off the shelf aluminum case. One other thing about the kit seemed pretty telling - that appears to be a sort of cheap PVC-based hose that isn't rated for underhood temperatures. That might explain why he commented it was pretty leak prone...

Labels: Gas Mileage, Hydrogen

Sometimes I like to troll through eBay to see what the latest swindles are aimed at people who hate high gas prices. A recent search for "gas saver" turned up 8,200 hits. Perhaps one or two of them may actually save gas. Most won't, but there are a few that were good for quite a few laughs. I've noticed we're seeing a lot more "HHO" generators, which I've covered quite extensively in the past couple months.

One that I'd hoped would be a good laugh parade was this Petro-Mag attempt to influence gasoline with a magnet. I was pretty sure I'd seen an EPA paper where they tested the Petro-Mag and found it did nothing. Close, it's the Petro-Mizer instead. Not that many of the guys selling these are particularly creative.

From the severely delusional category, this auction promises "Up to 30+ Better Fuel Efficiency Guaranteed! 60+ Ft. Lbs. of Torque! Up to 100+ Horsepower!" (All capitalization is the original ad's.) And they're promising all these gains on... a Toyota Paseo. Adding 30 mpg to anything is quite a challenge, and adding either that amount of torque or horsepower to a Paseo calls for a well engineered turbo kit, not a 5 cent resistor in a 25 dollar package.

The Tornado Money Waster, er, Tornado Fuel Saver is bad enough, but look at this knock-off. They're too cheap to even bend it to shape; they leave it up to the buyer. Presumably that's so they can blame the installer when it self-destructs and the engine sucks the pieces. It doesn't look very sturdy. Another amusing point: They claim it affects the transmission's shifting. Maybe that's because it steals so much horsepower you have to give the engine more throttle.

Labels: Automotive Awefulness, Gas Mileage

I was pretty sure locating a hydrogen generator on the car would be a bad idea, even if you powered it with battery packs instead of trying to drive it from the car's electrical system (after all, an alternator that demands 50 hp is going to put a big dent in your gas mileage). But I wanted to find out just how bad an idea it was, whether it was something that you could build but would be inadvisable, or some sort of monstrosity that wouldn't be able to move under its own power. When I calculated what size battery pack the hydrogen generator would need, it came out as something that looks like it would be technically possible but definitely not practical. Because an internal combustion engine isn't as efficient as an electric motor, this thing would have worse battery issues than an electric car.

The problem is that you're trying to plug it in before the hydrogen generator instead of after. Put the hydrogen generator in your basement and you might have something. So here's a few calculations to find out what it is you might have.

Gasoline has an energy density of 34.8 MJ/liter, according to Wikipedia. Some math turns that into 132 MJ/gallon, to 36.6 kilowatt-hours per gallon. So if you were making the hydrogen at home from household current, your cost for the equivalent of a gallon of gasoline would work out to this:

Price of a "gas gallon equivalent" = (Cost per kilowatt-hour) * (36.6 kilowatt-hours per gallon)/(Generator Efficiency)

Don't forget to factor in the energy needed to compress the hydrogen into the generator efficiency. You'd want to generate the hydrogen and oxygen separately, since you'll need to compress it in order to carry enough hydrogen to make a difference. So if you're paying 12 cents per kilowatt-hour and your generator's total efficiency is 50% including the power needed to run the compressor, you'd be paying the equivalent of $8.78 for a gallon. By the way, you'd also be stuck with similar costs on the plug-in hydrogen hybrid, although your generator efficiency would be up because you wouldn't need to compress the hydrogen nearly as much.

Still not good, but bring the price of gas up and the efficiency up and you might have something...

Labels: Gas Mileage, Hydrogen

When I last blogged about the idea of a "plug in hydrogen hybrid" that had an onboard hydrogen generator powered by plug in batteries, things looked a bit crazy. The SUV needed 36.7 kilowatts to drive its hydrogen generator, and that assumes that it's a 100% efficient generator. I'd translated that to 2500 amps if the generator ran at 12 volts. In practice, it probably wouldn't - you'd use a higher input voltage and less current. But this figure helps because batteries are rated in amp-hours. Although these are over a 20 hour discharge period, we'll assume it can deliver the same number of amp-hours in a single hour. We need a total of 2500 amp-hours of battery.

Since these batteries are going to be drawn down very low and recharged, a good starting point might be to see what we'd need if we were buying Optima deep cycle batteries. From that chart, we see the D31A model puts out 75 amp hours. So we'd need 34 such batteries to run our generator for an hour. And 34 of these would cost $7818.30, and weigh 2033.2 pounds. Quite a lot of batteries to lug around.

Well, maybe our initial assumption, an SUV that got 20 miles to the gallon at a steady 60 mph, was a bit unrealistic. What if you have an economy car that got 50 mpg at the same speed? That's easy, multiply the number of amp hours you need by 0.4 and repeat the math. You come up with 1000 amp hours, 14 batteries, 837.2 pounds, and a tab of $3219.30.

And those assume that you're trying to get 50% better mileage with a 100% efficient generator, for just one hour. Realistically, you're not going to get a 100% efficient system. There's a good chance you may need a battery pack 50% to twice as heavy. Carrying around a a ton of batteries (literally) is going to drag that mileage back down, to say nothing for what it does to your acceleration.

At this point, it looks like the idea of a plug-in hydrogen hybrid can't be saved. Or can it? Here's a hint: This example is plugged in the wrong way.

Labels: Gas Mileage, Hydrogen

I've been trying to do a few calculations to size a hydrogen generator for a car, mostly because it appears that nobody ever tries figuring out what size system they'd actually need. In my previous post, I tried sizing a hydrogen generator for a thirsty SUV. The calculation was that it needed to break down 2.2 gallons of water into hydrogen per hour, in order to replace a gallon of gas burned in an hour. If you've looked at some of the pages offering blueprints for a hydrogen generator, you may already suspect that this is going to end up being several hundred times larger than what you've seen advertised on the Internet - most of them claim you'd only fill a two liter tank every couple of months.

Now I'm going to consider the electrical requirements of this thing. You're making 0.93 kg of hydrogen in an hour. Remember when I noted hydrogen's energy density is 142 megajoules per kilogram? You'll need to feed this thing 132 megajoules of energy in an hour if it were 100% efficient. Since power is energy per unit time, this works out to needing 36.7 kilowatts to drive the generator. Converting that to horsepower, by the way, indicates it would take 49 horsepower to drive this hydrogen generator. See why this thing isn't driven off the alternator? You'd be wasting a lot of the engine's power, need a much larger alternator, and probably have to replace your serpentine belt with a chain drive to boot. If this thing were running off 12 volt batteries, you'd need to supply it with 2500 amps. Far more current than a starter draws.

It's obvious this design is starting to get into trouble. In further posts, I'll size up a battery pack for this thing (it's going to be huge) and see if there are, in fact, ways this hydrogen hybrid idea might be salvagable.

Labels: Gas Mileage, Hydrogen

This is a bit of a continuation of a discussion I had with a customer at work today. I've previously blogged about the trouble with powering a hydrogen generator from your alternator or the usual battery in a car. Short version is you're taking energy from the engine to make your fuel, and with inefficiencies along the way, you'd be very lucky to get 20% of that energy back.

But what if you powered it with a battery you'd charged from your home and recharged every night? Let's run a few calculations and spec out a system for a car. First, let's define what we want this system to accomplish. Suppose we are starting with a big SUV that gets 20 miles to the gallon when driven at a steady 60 miles per hour. And let's suppose we want it to get 50% better mileage, to 30 miles to the gallon of gas. Running a little bit of math shows that it would originally be burning 3 gallons per hour, and the improved version would be burning 2 gallons per hour. So this makes the math a bit easier to follow, at least up until this part. And let's add that this car will see 1 hour of use on a single battery charge.

The first question is, "How much hydrogen do we need?" Well, we'll need to supply the equivalent of 1 gallon of gasoline in hydrogen, per hour. Now the math gets hard: We need to figure out how much hydrogen that is. And we'll also figure out the device's water consumption. We'll start with a couple key numbers pulled from around the Web.

Energy density of hydrogen: 142 MJ/kg (most optimistic value from this source)
Energy density of gasoline: 46.9 MJ/kg (from Wikipedia)
Ratio of hydrogen to gasoline energy by weight: Hydrogen has 3.03 time the energy of gas.
Fraction of water that is hydrogen, by weight: 1/9
Ratio of gasoline's density to that of water: 0.739 (source)

Using these ratios, we find that you'd have to break down 2.2 gallons of water to get enough hydrogen to replace one gallon of gas. The calculations for this are pretty long, so I'm taking a break now. Next up, we'll see how much energy is needed to do this, how much power this thing is going to consumer, and what you'd spend on batteries. And why you shouldn't call it an HHO generator...

Labels: Gas Mileage, Hydrogen

Here's one I found surfing through a site called How to Spot a Psychopath. Modern Mechanix reprinted a Popular Mechanics article called Beware the Gasoline Dope Racket from 1936 about many dubious gasoline additives, including naphthalene, which some of the readers of my blog may recognize as STP Fuel System Cleaner. Some things just never change.

Labels: Gas Mileage

Ok, that seems like a total non sequitur, doesn't it? Well, my mother emailed me a link to Run Your Car With Water as another dubious gas mileage gadget. So I'm blogging about this one in honor of her. Mom, this one's for you.

The premise on this site is one I've seen before. So has Tony, the engineer behind Tony's Guide to Fuel Saving. The device takes electricity from the car's electrical system and uses it to generate a mixture of hydrogen and oxygen (which they, and a lot of promoters, call "Brown's gas," after Yull Brown, a somewhat shady huckster), which is then fed into the engine and burned. There's an obvious problem with this: You're spending more energy to make the hydrogen than you are getting back when you burn it. If you could take waste energy, like from regenerative braking or the exhaust heat, and use that to generate hydrogen, then you might have something worthwhile. A waste energy system would probably need a good way to store the hydrogen, since the best times for generating the hydrogen are not necessarily the best times to burn it.

Their system, however, is one that rules out being able to store the hydrogen for later use. They mix the hydrogen and oxygen to make "Brown's Gas." This very interesting page on Brown's Gas gives a very good description of the trouble with storing a hydrogen and oxygen mixture:

Since Brown's Gas is an explosive mixture it would be hazardous to store any quantity of it at atmospheric pressure. To compress it for storage would be criminally stupid.

A standard cylinder used for storing hydrogen contains just over a cubic foot of gas under about 150 atmospheres pressure. At that pressure it would contain the equivalent of about 5380 liters of Brown's Gas. That is 2880 grams or 160 moles. At 242000 joules per mole a cylinder contains almost 39 million joules or 36700 btu. There are two ways of looking at this. One is that the cylinder is a poor storage device since, for all its size and weight, it contains about as much energy as two pints of gasoline. The other is that each cylinder is the equivalent of 21 pounds of TNT in a steel tube. This is not something I'd want to have around!

Another interesting tidbit about that site is the very small amount of water the device actually consumes. This claim on their website is an interesting one to examine, and not just for the excessive use of bold print and the poor capitalization:

Water can be used to fuel a car when used as a supplement to gasoline. In fact, very little water is needed! only one quart of water provides over 1800 gallons of HHO gas which can literally last for months and significantly increase your vehicle's fuel efficiently, improve emissions quality, and save you money.

The low water consumption claim would indicate that it doesn't inject very much hydrogen at all. They claim a quart of water lasts "months" in their system. A quart of water weighs 2 pounds, and 1/9th of the weight of the water is hydrogen. If a quart of water lasts two months, each month you'd get 1/9 of a pound of hydrogen into the engine. Suppose you used 30 gallons of gasoline in that same month. That's around 175 pounds of gasoline! The idea that such a tiny fraction of hydrogen in the system could improve mileage by 40% staggers the mind.

Labels: Automotive Awefulness, Gas Mileage

Last month, I wrote up a post on why fuel catalysts won't help your gas mileage. Recently, some talk on the For A Bodies Only forum led me back to one of my favorite repositories of information on gadgets that supposedly increase gas mileage, the EPA's archive of test results where they've evaluated all sorts of gizmos that people claimed would increase mileage, and found few actually did. It's worth noting that most of the successful ones have found their way onto production cars as standard equipment. Well, as it turns out, the EPA has tested a couple of fuel catalysts, like the Vitalizer III, the Optimizer, the Hydro-Catalyst Pre-Combustion Catalyst System and Rolfite. None of them proved to be any more successful than Basko's claim to have made a mileage inproving paint.

Labels: Automotive Awefulness, Automotive chemicals, Gas Mileage

I've previously criticized the Tornado Fuel Saver, Vortec Cyclone, and similar gadgets as well as ridiculing their knock-offs on eBay. Up until now, I've left the Fitch Fuel Catalyst, another device that I was pretty certain was a rip-off, alone. It wasn't because I thought it might work, mostly because I didn't have that much information on chemistry and the effects of catalysts on gasoline. Well, thanks to some searching that SlantSixDan did on the slantsix.org forum, that's changed. And, of course, Tony's Guide to Fuel Saving has some very good analysis of the Fitch Fuel Catalyst already.

So, first, I'm going to mention the fuel catalyst that popped up on the slantsix.org forum: Copper has a very strong catalytic effect on gasoline, so replacing a length of your fuel line with copper tubing would put a catalyst in the fuel system.

The trouble is, what would a catalyst in your fuel supply do? A catalyst causes a reaction that would already happen to go forward at a faster rate or with a lower activation energy. Catalysts do not put energy into the fuel, or cause reactions that absorb energy to happen. Fitch claims that their catalyst is a metal alloy catalyst that reverses the reaction of oxygen with the fuel. Um, no. Copper and other alloys actually cause fuel to react with oxygen to form gum and varnish. In other words, a fuel catalyst would cause the very reaction that Fitch is claiming it prevents!

But if you wanted a fuel catalyst anyway, you could accomplish the same thing with five dollars' worth of copper hardline from your local hardware store that Fitch would charge you well over a hundred for.

Labels: Automotive Awefulness, Gas Mileage

Philip emailed me this link to an interesting effort at building a 150 mpg car. It's not from one of the big automakers, but from an upstart called Loremo. This one isn't a hybrid, either. Instead, in the great Colin Chapman tradition, they've decided to "simplify and add lightness." It's not exactly fast since it only has 20 hp, but with a sub-600 kg (that's 1,320 lbs), it's not much heavier than a typical Lotus Seven knock-off. Only a Seven doesn't have a roof, or air bags, or a back seat - all of which are standard on the Loremo. It's kind of like a revived CRX in many ways, and might even be fun to autocross.

But one thing worries me: It uses a front-opening door, Isetta-style. This sounds like it would create the same safety hazard it did on the Isetta - if you're in a head-on collision, how do you open the door to get out? It looks like it may be possible to get out the hatchback in a Loremo, which could be a way around that problem.

Labels: Gas Mileage, The Automotive Industry

The mad scientist is feeling a bit belicose today. So I thought I'd go take on a few of the automotive evildoers - those who use impressive-sounding pseudoscientific claims to convince people that a worthless trinket will improve their gas mileage. It's my opinion that the products they sell are scams, and today I'm going to unmask a few of these evildoers and show what is wrong (and often patently absurd) about their claims. So I decided to do a little bit of patroling on eBay to see what I could turn up. There's always a couple good automotive scams on eBay.

My first target is what appears to be a cheaply made knock-off of a product I've blogged about before, the Tornado Fuel Saver. Not only is it cheaply made, it's cheaply photographed, too. Seller couldn't afford more than 72 by 80 pixels for his photo. (This guy appears to be selling the same thing but with a bigger photo, allowing you to see just how poorly made this thing is.) I've blogged about the "genuine article" reducing performance when tested on a dyno before. Since there's already a lot of notes on why the Tornado and its ilk are scams, I only feel it necessary to comment on one particular issue with this knock-off. They've used slit bends to form the vanes. This significantly weakens the base of the vanes and invites cracks to form. There's a good chance that the vanes could break off and get sucked into the engine. Perhaps that's why "Peter Pan" used such a small photo. The Tornado may be flim-flam, but at least it's well made flim-flam.

This guy puts the names of some better known rip offs into his auction. So he's not only ripping off consumers, he's ripping off trademarks (couldn't happen to a nicer bunch of trademark holders, though, could it?). This one is good for a few laughs if you're into material science, such as "Made of strong alloy zinc." Zinc's mostly used for cheap castings where strenght is not a big concern, stuff like the metal emblems on my Dart. Extra giggle points for using the phrase "cambusting chamber." Sounds worse than getting metal shards sucked into your intake.

This auction is for another gas mileage scam that refuses to die, the gas line magnet. The EPA's tested these fuel magnets time and time again. And they never work.

Another classic rip-off is the "ebay chip," which isn't a chip at all, but a resistor that you splice into the coolant sensor line. This forces the engine into warm-up mode, making it add more gas. This seldom improves matters as many engines are tuned cautiously from the factory and run fairly rich as it is under full throttle; some motors even gain power when you lean them out from stock. Amazingly, this device that dumps more fuel into the engine than it needs is now being rebranded as a fuel economy booster! They're really too numerous to count, but I've chosen a few standouts that offer extra laughs: This one, for its claims of MPG and power gains being higher than Jerry Garcia, and this one, for inexplicably wading into the abortion debate.

Let the bidder beware!

Labels: Automotive Awefulness, Gas Mileage

About a week ago, I wrote about how I hope small sports cars might make a comeback. About five days after I posted that, CNN had an article looking back at one of the models that defined the breed, the Honda CRX. They noted that the CRX in HF trim even manages to beat the Prius when it came go mileage, with considerably less technology but also less weight. You just don't see too many tiny cars out there, and certainly not ones that have styling in the same league as a CRX or with any hint of sportiness. I have to wonder why manufacturers think that customers want miniaturized minivan looks on their small cars instead of something sportier.

Well, the government has finally decided to raise CAFE limits to 35 miles to the gallon, so it's possible we may see a revival of this sort of micro-rocket.

Labels: Gas Mileage, The Automotive Industry

As a car guy, I'm starting to wonder if there is a good side to these high gas prices. Perhaps it will revive a type of car that's pretty much dead in the US market, tiny sports cars. I know there's a couple of good roadsters on the market right now - the MX-5, BMW Z4, Honda S2000, and the Solstice / Sky twins. But I'm thinking of a slightly different type of car, one that produced a lot of interesting results in the 1980s and early 1990s. And this type of car is pretty much gone now, but many of the surviving ones from that era have a cult following.



It seems in the 1970s, some American and Japanese manufacturers either realized that there would be a market for people who now needed great gas mileage but didn't want cars to be boring, or at least in one case found this would be a good way to spin a project. This led to quite a few tiny cars, usually with two seats, armed with revvy engines, sporty bodywork, and excellent handling. So you get an all around great car (unless you're trying to carry children around), one that looks cool, is fun to drive, and gets great mileage too. The prime examples would be the Honda CRX (pictured at right is the Team Gutty CRX from the GRM $2007 Challenge) and Toyota MR2, both of which still have cult followings. GM got into the act with the Pontiac Fiero. The Omni-based Dodge Charger of the era had more seats than this formula calls for, but it's still pretty close to the formula, and it also has some pretty determined fans.

Granted, this category did produce a few stinkers. It seems Ford Motor Company for some reason just couldn't pull this off even after trying with the Escort EXP and the 1990s Mercury Capri. GM also built a two seater version of the Chevette. But I've got to wonder if this is being dusted off somewhere around automotive boardrooms with gas prices climbing. Right now there isn't much out there that fits this formula - the closest thing I can think of is the MINI or the roadsters I mentioned above. You could drive the original CRX to an autocross, then take home a trophy and get 50 miles to the gallon on the way home. I don't think any automotive industry execs read this blog... but I can dream.

Labels: Gas Mileage, The Automotive Industry

When I first got my GS500F, it got around 50 to 55 mpg. When I filled it up recently, it was getting over 60. So, wondering what's changed?

The passage of time. That's it. I haven't really changed my driving style or made any modifications at all to the bike between those measurements. I've been wondering a bit why my bike might be getting better mileage now too. Here's some possible explanations:

1. School's out, so the traffic is not quite as thick.
2. The gasoline blend may have changed, as they use different additives in summer and winter for emissions control.
3. It's hotter, and this may improve gas mileage, particularly on an air cooled engine like in the GS500F.
4. The bike only had 1,400 miles on it when I got it, so it may be a bit better broken in.

But I haven't made any mods to the bike at all. Suppose I had installed something a scam artist was selling claiming it improved mileage - let's call this imaginary rip-off the Whirlwind Wallet Waster. And suppose the device did absolutely nothing. If I'd put that on sometime in the spring, I might have attributed this huge mileage gain to it, and put some glowing testimony all over the Internet about how the Wirlwind improved my mileage, and how effective this thing is. But that testimony would be completely wrong - the bike has picked up nearly 10 mpg on its own without me actually doing anything.

If there's a moral to this, it's that gas mileage measurements are not easily repeatable. If you are trying to measure mileage changes from a modification, you need to rule out all other possible factors that may have caused the mileage change, as you can get very large changes in mileage - larger than the ones companies selling bogus mileage gadgets advertise, sometimes - without changing anything about your engine. If you're telling me something gave your car a huge improvement in mileage, it's up to you to prove the mod actually was responsible for the change, and that you've made an effort to prove this was not some other fluke changing the mileage that has nothing to do with the mod. Or worse, if you're getting more miles per tank but haven't checked how many miles per gallon you're putting in, can you prove to anyone that this isn't just an optimistic reading of your gas gauge?

With gas mileage able to bounce around like that on its own, it takes careful work to make sure a change actually improves mileage and it isn't some other factor at work.

Labels: Gas Mileage, Motorcycles

It's starting to become an annual tradition. Gas prices go up in the spring, and somebody starts circulating a hairbrained idea on how to coax them back down. Some of them have shown a perverse sort of creativity in how the author thinks it might be possible to lower gas prices without actually, well, using less gas. Some past versions have included only buying from one company, or buying just a gallon or so at a time. The "Buy only from one company" at least had some sort of semi-rational justification, while the idea behind buying in smaller quantities left me completely perplexed as to how anyone thought it would do anything.

This year, I see the bad ideas are back to the basics, a call for not buying gas on one specific day, presumably just either buying the same amount of gas a day earlier or later. Still a worthless idea. The only way to spend less on gas is to use less gas.

Labels: Automotive Awefulness, Gas Mileage

I've blogged about companies that make dubious claims about improving gas mileage. I've talked about them on message boards. I really don't like it when unscrupulous manufacturers take advantage of people's ignorance about cars and anxiety over high gas prices. Well, now, I've decided to do something else about it.

Did you know that the Federal Trade Commission has the power to compell any company making something they claim improves gas mileage to submit it to the EPA for testing? When that happens, the EPA publishes their results online for the world to see. And I'd like to see them do that to the makers of the Turbonator, SpiralMax, Vortec Cyclone, Tornado Fuel Saver, and the whole collection of scum trying to promote "superchargers" with no moving parts.

I'm sending a letter to the FTC today urging them to look into this. And I would appreciate it if you, the readers, would also take action to make these people put up (their test results) or shut up. Here is the letter I am sending the FTC.


Federal Trade Commission
CRC-240
Washington, DC 20580

Dear Federal Trade Commission:

I am writing to you to complain about an automotive device that I believe to be a scam. It's been around for many years, but recently the people who sell it have made a much more aggressive push, getting it displayed in large display cases at Pep Boys and other auto parts stores. This product goes by several brand names, including Tornado Fuel Saver, SpiralMax, Vortec Cyclone, and Turbonator. The companies selling this often make claims that range from misleading to completely false, and I've seen several tests by news media and private citizens where it failed to produce the promised improvements in horsepower and gas mileage. Here are some examples of false claims:

First, the devices claim to be superchargers. Spiralmax and Vortec Cyclone both use “Supercharge any car” as their slogan, and Turbonator's website promises that their product allows you to “Supercharge your car, truck, van, boat, RV, or motorcycle in just a few minutes.” A supercharger is a power-driven air compressor installed in an engine's air intake. These devices are not power-driven, and do not resemble or function as an air compressor or pump in any way.

Second, these devices all claim to improve gas mileage. Vortec Cyclone's manufacturers claim, “The average user experiences a 1-2 MPG improvement in fuel economy; some users have experienced up to a 30% increase in mileage.” Tornado Fuel Saver claims, “TornadoFuelSaver increases gas mileage anywhere from 7-15%.” Turbonator claims, “Turbonator users have reported MPG increases from 10 to 22 percent,” and SpiralMax claims, “You get more torque, acceleration, and better fuel economy.” However, tests by Popular Mechanics (in their September 2005 issue) and CNN found such devices produced anywhere from no effect on fuel mileage, to a 10% drop in fuel mileage. I have never seen an independent test under controlled conditions where any one of these four devices has produced an improvement in fuel economy.

Third, they claim to provide improvements in horsepower, sometimes as much as 35 hp or 35% more power. I have seen the results of several people subjecting these to dynamometer tests, and every time it has been tested in this manner, installing the device caused the engine to lose horsepower instead of gain power. One of the results, where a truck lost 10% of its horsepower, was published in the September 2005 issue of Popular Mechanics; another test appeared on CNN.com with similar results.

They are marketed with several other dubious claims. Many of them claim to produce more “swirl” in the combustion chamber, but are installed upstream of a flat throttle blade and between one and two feet of plumbing where the air must execute several turns, branch off into individual cylinder runners, and pass through the intake valves. It is doubtful that any swirl effect created by this device could sustain itself long enough through the intake to produce any meaningful results in combustion.

I am writing to request that the FTC take action against the manufacturers and marketers of these devices. Every independent, scientific test I have seen of such devices has shown that they do not perform according to the manufacturers' claims. I would like to see these companies forced to submit their devices to EPA testing to determine if there is any basis in fact for these claims.

I have not bought one of these myself, but if you need for me to test one personally to have a basis for filing a complaint, I would be glad to purchase one, install it on one of my personal vehicles, and have it tested on a dynamometer to see if it causes my car to lose horsepower – as I suspect it will.

Here are the addresses of the companies marketing these products:

Tornado Fuel Saver
1182 Hyde Park Dr.
Santa Ana, CA 92705

The Vortec Cyclone's manufactures do not give their physical address out on the company website, but they may be found online at http://www.vorteccyclone.com/index.html.

Turbonator
6747 Land O Lakes Blvd.
Land O Lakes, Florida, 34638

SpiralTech USA, Inc. - JT&T Mfg, Inc. (SpiralMax)
111 W. Fairview Avenue
San Gabriel, CA 91776

Thank you for your time.

Sincerely,

Matthew Cramer

If you'd like to lobby the government to have one of these things tested, the address is right there at the top of my letter. While it might not be effective to copy my letter verbatim (they might think I was a Mad Xeroxer, sending in dozens of the same letter), feel free to use it as a template. If you've been ripped off, be sure to mention your experience in your letter. You may also contact Steve Johnson, the EPA Administrator, who also has the authority to force the manufacturers to submit their products to EPA testing. I believe this address is the correct one to reach him:

Steve Johnson
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
Ariel Rios Building
1200 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W.
Washington, DC 20460

If you believe these manufacturers are innocent, that these products actually work, I'd urge you to contact the FTC and EPA too, and ask for these to be tested. Why? Well, for one thing, that'll shut me up about them! I will issue an apology to these companies in the unlikely event that an EPA test reveals their products actually work. And if they work, you shouldn't have anything to fear from what I'm proposing, should you?

Labels: Automotive Awefulness, Gas Mileage

A Los Angelos NBC affiliate brought some hidden cameras into their local Jiffy Lubes to see if the technicians there were being honest. Well, their report documented clerks selling them unnecessary services, and at five out of nine Jiffy Lubes they visited, the mechanics didn't do all the work they billed them for. They even caught a district manager trying to insist he was a customer to avoid answering questions.

Jiffy Lube reacted to this by firing six people, including the district manager, and installing some cameras in Los Angelos area stores. They also promised they would retrain some of their employees. I was disappointed that nobody in this story got arrested - I'm not a lawyer, but I believe the legal term for taking money for services and not actually performing them is "theft by conversion."

Found this one via Snopes, where they also linked to an MSN Money article on how to avoid auto repair ripoffs. I'm not sure how many of these tips would have applied to the Jiffy Lubes in the article - most of those do have a relatively clean work area and clearly post their prices, for instance - but none of the local Jiffy Lubes are listed as AAA approved.

Labels: Automotive Awefulness, Gas Mileage