Fuel Heaters

[havocs29]

I have been noticing a lot of people that make fuel heaters for there cars. This makes absolutely no sense what so ever. I don't know who started this trend but they have it completely backwards. It's the COOLER the fuel is, the denser it is. Every engine builder will tell you to keep your fuel as cool as possible. The warmer the fuel and it will actually cause vapor lock which can be harmful to the engine if it is constant. So please anyone who does this, I am very curious as to why you think warming fuel benefits your engine.

[jtmarten]

I believe the theory is that warmer fluid has higher energy (the atoms move faster with increasing temperature), therefore it will atomize faster and more thoroughly. I've never heard of keeping the fuel cool. It's the cooler AIR charge that is more dense than warmer air. If you have a mechanical fuel pump/carb then if the fuel gets too warm it could vapor lock. Later model vehicles with fuel injection/fuel return lines will be far less likely to vapor lock.

[havocs29]

I guess that theory is completely wrong. Yes fuel injection doesn't really get vapor lock, but the cooler the fuel the more HP you get. Now if it is to cool than you can run into problems. But by warming your fuel you get less HP. Now mileage I don't know about. But if cooler fuel gives you more HP I would think it would give you better MPG. Any perpormance engine builder will tell you to keep your fuel cool. And most of those guys have generations of experience and the equipment to prove it.

[Haywire Haywood]

First post here but I have some info about the fuel temp. A buddy of mine ran drag cars for a few years and they actually pipe their fuel through a canister of dry ice to get it as cold as possible. It's a coffee can size thing with the copper fuel line run though and wrapped around like a moonshine still with dry ice in the middle.

Ian

[Q-Hack!]

I always thought these things were designed to vary the fuel density without going into vapor lock. The idea being that the colder the fuel was the more fuel you could dump into the cylinder. The warmer the fuel the less that was used. Obviously if there is more fuel in the chamber you will have more power. Not sure that fully applies to the other direction in saving MPG though. I suspect the best option is to try it out and see if it help. Mind you it will probably be different in the winter time vs. summer.

[havocs29]

I always thought these things were designed to vary the fuel density without going into vapor lock. The idea being that the colder the fuel was the more fuel you could dump into the cylinder. The warmer the fuel the less that was used. Obviously if there is more fuel in the chamber you will have more power. Not sure that fully applies to the other direction in saving MPG though. I suspect the best option is to try it out and see if it help. Mind you it will probably be different in the winter time vs. summer.

I guess it's something worth trying both ways. But I can't see any significant gains in MPG by using these methods. I cool my fuel on my 502 performance big block. Then again the headers on that thing get about 2000 degrees. So my engine compartment is quite warm.

[Smith03Jetta]

I created one and I can't see a measurable benefit from the gasoline heater. It could be helping me a small amount but I have not been able to see any benefit from the heater. I do smell a bit of gasoline but I've been unable to find a leak. I'm thinking about removing the line heater all-together.

[Roland Jacques]

I have been noticing a lot of people that make fuel heaters for there cars. This makes absolutely no sense what so ever. I don't know who started this trend but they have it completely backwards. It's the COOLER the fuel is, the denser it is. Every engine builder will tell you to keep your fuel as cool as possible. .

I think the goals of cooling fuel, and heating fuel, are complete opposites.
Cool fuel to go fast. Heat fuel to go far.

Cooling fuel is to get the Most HP possible from your fuel, (without concern about how much fuel it takes.).

Heating fuel is to get the Most energy out of your fuel (without concern about Maximum HP.) .

[havocs29]

I think the goals of cooling fuel, and heating fuel, are complete opposites.
Cool fuel to go fast. Heat fuel to go far.

Cooling fuel is to get the Most HP possible from your fuel, (without concern about how much fuel it takes.).

Heating fuel is to get the Most energy out of your fuel (without concern about Maximum HP.) .

That absolutely makes no sense. If warmer fuel created more energy, then that would also create more power. I guess I shouldn't knock it til I try it.

[timetowinarace]

So, would heating the fuel in effect lean out the a/f ratio?

This could be benifficial to ECU cars using hho boosters.

[donsimpson12]

I'm jumping into this one.. There are correct answers along the way in this post, along with some incorrect info...

A cool box or Ice box for drag racing enables you to dump more fuel into the cylinder. More fuel squeezed in, a bigger explosion with appropriate A/F ratios.. We've read this and it's true.

What people are toying with on the heated fuel side is fuel vapor.. Gasoline as a liquid is useless... Gasoline as a vapor is where the explosion comes from... That is why on fuel injected cars, a person will up the fuel pressure of the injectors.. It creates a finer mist which in turn creates a bigger explosion.. (More vapor)

My father created an invention in the 70's and was getting right at 40 mpg out of his 1973 straight 6 Chevelle.. Those of you that are old enough, also know that this thing was a tank.. 40 mpg was achieve through the creation of generating fuel vapor and feeding it into the carb. He couldn't jet the carb small enough with purchased jets.. The only fix was to solder up the jets and re-drill them. Also timing was retarded way back.. The car had more power and ran great...

Bubbling and heating gasoline to make a sufficient amount of vapor is pretty dangerous... He couldn't come up with a safe way to manufacture the vapor. (Heating the vapor helped even more as the atoms moved and mixed even faster than by simply creating a vapor.

Guess you know now why I'm interested and am reading and experimenting with HHO.. ;-)

The ideas and inventions about heating fuel only toy with the idea and techniques of vapor...

On a Carb or throttle body injection, the idea is for fuel to turn to vapor inside of the intake and then enter the cylinder as a vapor mixed with oxygen. Heated liquid fuel will vaporize quicker then cold liquid fuel.
That's the idea with heated fuels... Most cars these days are port injected and will see a much smaller gain with heated gasoline...

(The part above has some real meaning if we could capitalize on it)
If we could get the HHO into the cylinder via an injector at the correct time, then engine efficiency would greatly improve for both gas and diesel engines... Now... How do we inject the HHO and do it safely???



Hope this helps...

[Roland Jacques]

I think the goals of cooling fuel, and heating fuel, are complete opposites.
Cool fuel to go fast. Heat fuel to go far.

Cooling fuel is to get the Most HP possible from your fuel, (without concern about how much fuel it takes.).

Heating fuel is to get the Most energy out of your fuel (without concern about Maximum HP.) .

That absolutely makes no sense. If warmer fuel created more energy, then that would also create more power. I guess I shouldn't knock it til I try it.


When they cool fuel, they are not concerned about all the unburt fuel going out the exhaust. They are JUST trying to get more power.

Heating fuel Is trying to better use all the fuel, minimizing unburnt fuel going out the exhaust.


The reasons explaned by donsimpson12

[Haywire Haywood]

Don, nice explaination. I heard about something of that nature years ago.

Ian

[donsimpson12]

Don, nice explaination. I heard about something of that nature years ago.

Ian

Thanks... It's all true about Dad's invention.. He ran the unit for about a year before taking the unit off. It was way dangerous, but did the trick.
We even took it on vacation to South Carolina.. Fully loaded with stuff and
people, he averaged 38 MPG driving around 75 mph the whole way..

We talk about the HHO every couple of days and he's convinced that there is something to it.. We just haven't stumbled on all the keys yet.. I'm starting to think that we need to go back in time to an older engine technology. (Carb & Distributor) Then we will have easier control over the mixtures..

I have several older cars on their farm that I'm refussing to get rid of for that reason alone. I'm playing around with newer vehicle stuff and reading, but really feel that I'm gonna have to do some testing on one of my old cars before it's over.

[chevytruckman1234]

I think that the idea is that the fuel getting to be the same temp as the engine air that it is mixing with causes it to atomize better which is a better mixture more complete combustion

[donsimpson12]

It's to acquire more vapor..

Here's some reading links if your interested.. ;-)

Found this car where the company has figured out how to create the vapor safely.. It's very easy to do, the issue is the the amount of vapor needed for a full size automobile engine.. More vapor, bigger boom in the event of an accident.. I guess that's why this car's engine is very small.. hmmm..
http://www.fuelvaporcar.com/html/faq_s.html


This looks to be a crackpot invention, but the theories are sound about vapor.
http://wyominginstruments.com/g_inst.htm

Just a bit of reading..
http://www.ausetute.com.au/fuelsdef.html


Fuel Vapor Patent info..
http://keelynet.com/energy/gunnhist.htm

[ridelong]

I built a vapor carb for a 350 nova in the 70's.

Soldered the jets up and drilled them 80 bit, I think.

Turned the exhaust headers upside down and piped them into a sheet metal box that snaked the exhaust through to the other end of the box.

Put a sheet metal box on top of that box. Installed the carb on one end of the box, and the intake on the other.

That thing ran like crazy. The only thing, every time I turned the motor off...BOOM, it blew the sheet metal off the intake side.

Never got MPG data, the guy who owned the nova took the car back.

I don't think I have the nerve to try that again.

[1973dodger]

I've read a thread on another forum (i think it was overunity.com), posted by a gentlemen in which he has come up with a carberator and modified it to use a wick type of technology. The idea is to let the fuel climb the wick and as air crosses over it, fuel vapors enter the intake manifold. Of course, the hurdle to cross is what to do incase of a backfire.(can you say pipe bomb) In other words the wick could become a fuse which leads back to the fuel tank. I think he had some plan for flashback, but did not understand how it worked. He claimed tremendous gains in mpg.

1973dodger

[donsimpson12]

Here's what Pop's did...

1973 Chevelle with a straight 6.. Plenty room in the engine compartment.

This car had a smog pump on it.. For the young pups out there, this pump blew fresh air into the exhaust. It was an early emissions tactic.

1) He used a big mason jar (1 gallon used for Mayonnaise at a restaurant)
2) He put about one quart of gas into the mason jar.
In the lid, he plumbed in two hose openings.
3) He used the Smog pump to pump air into the jar through a hose that went to the bottom of the jar. (Like blowing into a straw in a soda.. Bubbles)
4) The other hose opening at the top was the collector. (Like what we do in an HHO generator today)
5) He then connected the hose to a long length of aluminum tubing.
6) He then wrapped the tubing around the exhaust header.
7) He then ran the tubing up to the air breather and put the inlet at a low pressure area where the carb would draw the fumes up and and then inside the throat.
8) With the car warmed up, you could take the top of the air breather off and you would see the white vapor coming out of the end.

The unit worked excellent, but if he would have gotten into a crash, it wouldn't have been very pretty.. He even put a valve on the gas line going up to the carb. I remember him testing it be closing the valve and being able to drive the car for a mile or two before it died. It was running on pure vapor.

He drove around 50 miles a day to and from work and the unit would use a little over a quart per week in the unit.

His mileage averaged from the hight 30's to low 40's consistently.
His mileage without the unit was 17 to 21 mpg if babied...

I'm sharing this idea, because it truly did work. He just needed a safer way to do the whole process..

I can easily discredit most of the units I've seen on the market since then because of being involved in his experiments and what he had to do to achieve his goals.

I've created plans since then with a much smaller version with safety in mind, but have never built the first prototype.

As I said before, this car ran great and more power than any stock vehicle of the same engine and vehicle size that I have seen.

I know that some of these ideas can be concentrated with HHO efforts as well..

I also know this.. Whenever someone hits the right technique for HHO and is able to manufacture enough to keep an engine running on HHO alone. A lot of safety precautions will have to be in place because of how volatile HHO is.

[havocs29]

I'm jumping into this one.. There are correct answers along the way in this post, along with some incorrect info...

A cool box or Ice box for drag racing enables you to dump more fuel into the cylinder. More fuel squeezed in, a bigger explosion with appropriate A/F ratios.. We've read this and it's true.

What people are toying with on the heated fuel side is fuel vapor.. Gasoline as a liquid is useless... Gasoline as a vapor is where the explosion comes from... That is why on fuel injected cars, a person will up the fuel pressure of the injectors.. It creates a finer mist which in turn creates a bigger explosion.. (More vapor)

My father created an invention in the 70's and was getting right at 40 mpg out of his 1973 straight 6 Chevelle.. Those of you that are old enough, also know that this thing was a tank.. 40 mpg was achieve through the creation of generating fuel vapor and feeding it into the carb. He couldn't jet the carb small enough with purchased jets.. The only fix was to solder up the jets and re-drill them. Also timing was retarded way back.. The car had more power and ran great...

Bubbling and heating gasoline to make a sufficient amount of vapor is pretty dangerous... He couldn't come up with a safe way to manufacture the vapor. (Heating the vapor helped even more as the atoms moved and mixed even faster than by simply creating a vapor.

Guess you know now why I'm interested and am reading and experimenting with HHO.. ;-)

The ideas and inventions about heating fuel only toy with the idea and techniques of vapor...

On a Carb or throttle body injection, the idea is for fuel to turn to vapor inside of the intake and then enter the cylinder as a vapor mixed with oxygen. Heated liquid fuel will vaporize quicker then cold liquid fuel.
That's the idea with heated fuels... Most cars these days are port injected and will see a much smaller gain with heated gasoline...

(The part above has some real meaning if we could capitalize on it)
If we could get the HHO into the cylinder via an injector at the correct time, then engine efficiency would greatly improve for both gas and diesel engines... Now... How do we inject the HHO and do it safely???



Hope this helps...

That is a very good explanation. Thank you. And I do agree, if HHO could be injected directly into the cylinder that would give amazing results. I would think that only a very small amount of HHO would be allowed into the cylinder though since it carries much more energy than gasoline or diesel. I think diesel motors would be much easier to do this to because there cylinders would more likely be able to handle the detonation. I have some older turbo diesel mercedes in my tow yard that I would like to experiment with on different injection points.

[timetowinarace]

I beleive the fuel companies began adding chemicals to gasoline in the 90's to prevent "evaporation" that makes most vaporizing carbs useless. There are many patents for these carbs, over 200, but most people have given up on the idea because of the chemical additions to the fuel.

[donsimpson12]

I beleive the fuel companies began adding chemicals to gasoline in the 90's to prevent "evaporation" that makes most vaporizing carbs useless. There are many patents for these carbs, over 200, but most people have given up on the idea because of the chemical additions to the fuel.

I'll have to do some reading on this one...
I don't think that is quite possible though since vapor / mist is the primary explosive material in the engine. If they diluted the gasoline with other chemicals, then it would be less effective.. I can't argue with that either since gasoline has turned to mountain dew and beer piss in the recent years.

I do believe that even today there is a redeemable amount of vapor that can be had from from gasoline.. If not, then all carb engines wouldn't work.

[Boltazar]

Heating the fuel will make it vaporize easier and maybe better giving you better MPG.

Cooling the fuel just lets you get more of it into the cylinders, more power