Vegetable Oil SVO WVO waste cooking oil as biofuel

[mixelpix]

SunWizard,

Of note, my 1978 300D odometer was never quite right with 195 tires (rec'd by shops for that model) but having slapped slightly oversized 205's on per rec by Marshall of Silver Star (who regularly sets toe in and alignment on these rids by hand!) my odometer is now 100% on point accurate from 0 to 80 m.p.h. With my Costco membership I got a GREAT deal on the tires and they now do nitrogen filling for free

Another method thats available for free to any of us is to get an accurate stopwatch and a helper and do timed 0-60mph acceleration runs with it floored. This is often done for comparison of different engine mods when you don't have a dyno.

I like to do 0-62m.p.h. land speed tests. 62m.p.h. = 100km/h and makes the conversion to metrics a little easier for me. I average the results from going in both directions to account for road incline. If you have never tried it, look to Unwired Tools for their coast down evaluation process. Based on your known gross vehicle weight (any truck weighing facility like the municipal dump) you time how long it takes to coast down from 70m.ph. to 60m.p.h. They have an online calculator which takes the weight and an average of your times (accounting for road incline) and determines your maximum potential and current actual mileage. Really quite a sublime algorythm:

For Benz owners, set your tow in first! (html version of this .pdf)
http://unwiredtools.com/manuals/toesettingA1.pdf

http://unwiredtools.com/utcoastdown.asp

and some discussion on physicforums.com


iPod toys: I have been patiently waiting for the market to deliver me satellite options with Stevie's latest cool toy so I don't have to bother hacking the access to skynet... No cel towers near me and my beehives But this is definitely another great reason to get the iPhone. I love the cocoa and aqua programming languages that make these cool widget apps so easy to network! FAT32 architecture be damned!!! Muahahahaha! Have you seen widg.app which let's you blow into the microphone to simulate a flute? Genius!

If you have never done so, go open a terminal and starting "man"ing up in linux! pwd, cd, and ls (i really like ls -alh) alone will get you far, but just try top for now and you will see neo floating through the matrix... If you are a REAL mac geek ask me how to invoke "Bruce the Yak" from the original html coding still dormant within all licensed copies of "Final Cut Pro." Otherwise it is suffice to say, don't type this into your terminal, just rm -rf *.* if you don't like someone. . . er, I mean, when you want to recycle a used terminal...

Sorry to veer so wildly off-topic so quickly

-pdk

[bio_cowboy]

Two days ago I finished writing up a review of the research on blended fuels. Yesterday I finished writing up a grant proposal for blended fuel research and searched the local university for professors who study bio-fuels and sent an inquiry. This morning I received a response with a recommendation of a professor, who studies biofuels, to approach. I sent her an inquiry letter and attached my review of the research on blended fuels, research design, grant proposal and CV. Now, I just wait for a reply.

[coachgeo]

http://pages.quicksilver.net.nz/geoffm/dyno/dyno.htm

[jburke]

Re: dynamometer.

Hot-roders who wanted to know the effect of engine performance mods w/o access to a dynamometer used the drag strip. iirc, top speed was proportional to max. horsepower.
I would think timed runs up a long steep hill would be equivalent.

From Dynamometer entry at Wikipedia:
"When attempting to crosscheck dynamometer power figures to drag strip performance, it is relatively consistent to compare improved brake hp figures to terminal MPH."

My old "Direct Connection" handbook had the formula, but it's lost or tossed out. But this it I think:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drag_(physics)

See "Power required to overcome the aerodynamic drag is given by:"

Basically , for a given vehicle, everything can be a constant except Power and velocity.

[coachgeo]

... would think timed runs up a long steep hill would be equivalent.

would be a start I guess. But flat land. Can't compare to others when using hill cause well..... hills are like snowflakes etc.

[David]

top speed was proportional to max. horsepower.

Not at all necessarily!
A top speed increase will only occur if the vehicle is geared sufficiently high so the engine lacks the power to pull full revs in top gear.
My merc does not have a tacho but I suspect it's top speed on flat road is very close to its max engine rpm anyway. My mates 1 ton turblow Diesel ute is geared for carrying loads and as such, will easily wind out to full rpm in top gear unladen.

As a young man I remember a trick I did to win some short course street races. I discovered a light truck used the same differential as fitted to my car, only in a MUCH higher ratio. Picking one up for $50, I stuck it under my quite low powered car and had a weapon that would accelerate to 60Mph with the rear tyres smoking nearly all the way even in top gear.

It got to 60 like a bolt of lightening but was pretty much valve bouncing at 70. I could have run that thing on kerosene and still not lost 1 mph with it. I could have put NOS on it by the same token and not gained a single mph either.

When looking at power increases, acceleration is a much better way of determining the better burning and more energy content fuel. Of course tests need to be done back to back at the same time, multiple times and then averaged out to get any sort of reliable indications.

I would think timed runs up a long steep hill would be equivalent.

I would be perfectly fine for comparing fuels in the same car on the same hill as long as the above provisos of running the tests at the same time, multiple times were applied.

[jburke]

"When looking at power increases, acceleration is a much better way of determining the better burning and more energy content fuel. "

It's hard to have consistant 1/4 times.
Thats why I preferred top speed. Less driver input.
Course if you get a speeding ticket,...

Also, we should try not to confuse torque and efficiency.
Two very different parameters.

[David]

It's hard to have consistant 1/4 times.

Yes it is.
That's why I said that multiple runs should be made and the times averaged. If there is any worthwhile difference between the fuels, it will be shown up on the averaged times.

If there is no difference, then it can be concluded that any differences were within the testing margin of error and were not significant enough to be of any value in real world driving.

[BMW Fan]

Are $ 269.00 acceptable for a PC -Dyno program ???

You may check

http://www.pcdyno.com/index.htm


BMW Fan

[coachgeo]

Are $ 269.00 acceptable for a PC -Dyno program ???

You may check

http://www.pcdyno.com/index.htm


BMW Fan

Group buy? Not regular group buy.... but say a group all pitch in to buy one. It has a home base and gets loaned/rented out to members.

Maybe a US group leader and a Europe group leader?

Does not have to be this one..... but an idea worth discussing

[jburke]

that latop based system is a nice approach, but it has flaws.
this modern one, with the right software, would be better:

http://www.gcdataconcepts.com/xlr8r-1.h ... 7Qod2U0oEA

[coachgeo]

that latop based system is a nice approach, but it has flaws.
this modern one, with the right software, would be better:

http://www.gcdataconcepts.com/xlr8r-1.h ... 7Qod2U0oEA

would be great if there is folk who can create spread sheets with right formulas that can use the date to determing mph, time, HP etc etc.

[coachgeo]

ok..... here is a crazy idea taken from the reality that you can measure GP microvoltages (when turned off) to determine how hot it's cylinder gets ...... and thusly extrapolate from that how effcient a cylinder is using the fuel it gets (cooler less effcient than hot, since hot means more fuel ignited).

sooo what about straping snap disk to each or a couple of the header/exhaust manifold pipes and measure the microvoltages they produce.

Anyone have any they can test? measure microvolts at normal tune of their engine at normal operating temps...... then detune a little your IP and measure again at normal operating temps. See if the microvolts change?

I only thought of snap disk.... open to other ideas that measure temp or can be used to measure temp with out having to do major modification to get them installed.

[John Galt]

The snap discs I'm familiar with are a bimetallic on-off switch. Are you thinking of something else?

[David]

If people are talking about a prebuilt devise, what about one of These things?



http://www.gtechpro.com/ss.html

All in one, no programing or mods to the vehicle needed, cheap as at $199.

I think there are other similar functioning units but this is the only one I know of myself. Some of the go fast forums may know of which units are considered the best.