Whats up guys. Today i drove 100 miles at 65mph and filled up and got 17mpg. Wasnt too pleased, but its not all that bad really. I left the gas station and drove at around 45 mph around the city, then came home. I installed another "carburetor enhancer" that i made out of a brass valve, ball point pen, and some vacuum line i had laying around. I adjusted it and went back to the gas station around 8pm. I let the pump fill it up till it clicked off and it sucked down 2.3 gallons or somewhere around there, avg was 18.4 mpg over the last 40 miles since this afternoons fillup. again not too bad. I got on the highway immediately after filling up and drove 65mph 20miles one way, then turned around and came back at the same 65 mph average(between 60 and 70 usually) with 3 red light stops along the way. I filled up at the same gas station when i got back, same pump and everything. It took 1.35 gallons this time, for 40 miles. I thought "this isnt right." I pulled the handle again to see if it had clicked off early, and ended up with gas spewing out onto my clothing. Filled to the brim it took 1.577 gallons. 41 miles total were driven. Avg comes out to be 26.18mpg after the carburetor enhancer installation. This is done on a bone stock 1970 GS350 engine with 142K miles. I rebuilt the carburetor 4 years ago. Pay attention to the float level and set it 1/32 below recommended. Basically the carburetor enhancer is a vacuum line that is stuck into the float bowl vent on a quadrajet that is nearest the air cleaner stud. It is right behind the choke tower. This vacuum line is then connected to a needle valve or other type and the valve is then opened up until the RPM stops increasing. If flat spots are found or hesitations, close the valve a little and try again. www.eagle-research.com developed this neat little idea so read up about it there. Ill report back tommorow with 100 mile test results like this mornings
Those are some pretty good results. In my GS 350, I averaged about 17 mpg with nothing done to it. I changed over to HEI but never bothered testing it again. I never thought about attempting to increase my mpg to your level as I never thought of it as that type of vehicle. Maybe I should. BTW...A friend of mine bought an 86 regal with a blown up 307, installed a bone stock (except for the ignition) 72 455 from an Electra. With the original th200-4r and a 2.56 rear he managed between 23-26 mpg on the highway. Around town he was below 20 mpg. The car ran 14.5 in the quarter.
If you read the FTC opinions you will see these companies pushing fuel savings devices have been exposed and enjoined one by one going all the way back to such names as STP.
Eagle-Research has never had the EPA show that their products dont work, they are based out of canada and arent pushing any product, they actually want to help you and the environment. Its a one man operation for the most part who does his own personal research and ideas. He does alot more work on water torches, using browns gas to replace oxy/acetylene with much success. Anyway, test results were done over the same 100 mile stretch as yesterday where i got 17mpg. Speed was 65 on the highway portion with about 10 stoplights and heavy traffic both ways while in guntersville. I filled up with 4.908 gallons, at the point where it dribbled out of the fill neck. This calculates to 20.4 mpg. So there is an improvement there, although not as much as last night. Maybe the 95 degree weather(75 last night) made a difference somehow. I adjusted the valve as soon as i got home today, hopefully it will make a difference. Ill keep tinkering with the setup over the next few trips to see if i can get a bigger gain. I might try restricting the front float bowl vent to see if i can pull more of a vacuum on the float bowl with less of an induced vacuum leak due to opening up the valve so much. Ill be installing a fuel preheater soon as well as screens mounted in my ram air scoops and positively charged to 7KV. This should give the air that enters the engine a positive charge, including the oxygen, which would be attracted to the negatively charged fuel molecules, hopefully improving power and efficiency. Also im going to change my oil and air filter which ive neglected to do for a while. I might recurve the distributor if i can find advance springs at seco or advance/autozone.
EPA has nothing to do with device testing so you would not expect EPA to have done anything. What I am saying is that these devices have a history of not improving fuel efficiency and the Federal Trade Commisssion has a history of obtaining injunctions for deceptive claims. Almost universally they have no independent controlled testing to support their claims because if they did this testing they would be exposed.
I think you need to run several hundered miles (minimum) for each test before you can have any kind of accuracy for your information. If your numbers are good, you're definately on to something. But as Bob mentioned, I'd like to see the tests much longer. :beer
If anything check out that brown gas info on that site. 1 liter of water makes over 900 liters of brown gas.
Sounds like you are leaning out the mixture. That is proven to work, but beware of burning valves and pinging. If you can find one, I'd suggest adding water injection to cool things down.
now my question is whether or not this "carburetor enhancer" stuff will decrease engine power if it is able to increase fuel economy. And not to sound like a stick in the mud but I go by the old addage "if it seems too good to be true, it probably is". Patrick
I have about 20 water injection systems from the 70s that i purchased from an old GMC big rig dealership that had closed a long long time ago. They are called "turbo vapor injector" systems. I converted it to steam injection by sucking water instead of water vapor, and running the water through a coil wrapped around the exhaust pipe at the manifold. Seems to work although i didnt see much if any mileage gain from the water. If anyone wants a water injection system to do their own personal testing, let me know as i have many kits and they are nice glass jugs with cast aluminum tops, not skimpy plastic crap. The carburetor enhancer by design will not inhibit full throttle performance at all since it is operated by vacuum. When you go full throttle the vacuum should drop to near zero, at which point the carburetor enhancer can no longer pull a slight vacuum on the float bowl and carburetor functions return to normal. So full throttle performance is not hurt. Part throttle performance does not change a bit to me. The carb enhancer is inversly proportional to the throttle angle since its affect is reduced the more you push on the gas. It doesnt put much of a vacuum on the float bowl at all. If there was much vacuum the car would not run since it could not create enough vacuum in the venturi to pull the fuel out of the float bowl. You can open the valve enough to kill the engine if you plug the other float bowl vent because of this. If it is opened to the correct adjustment, it should help to keep the vacuum in the venturi from pulling liquid dribbles or a stream of fuel and instead pull more of a mist. So what it essentially does is help the carburetor create a better atomized fuel spray at higher vacuum situations like light throttle and cruise. Then when under deceleration if modified, it acts as a deceleration fuel cut. Since the vacuum under deceleration is higher than at idle and light throttle, this aditional vacuum on the float bowl is enough to overcome the vacuum in the venturi and stop fuel flow into the engine, where it would normally add extra fuel. Water injection will take the place of the fuel for quenching. If anyone wants to build one its only like 5 bucks in parts, or free if you already have a brass valve, some vacuum line, and a vacuum tee. The information is free. Not a 60 dollar gimick magnet that claims 50% or something wild.
I would enjoy the company of someone else doing testing as well. Always fun to compare results much like putting in a new cam:grin: I rebuilt my carburetor last night, since it had been 5 years. I found that my well plugs were leaking again despite the fact that i had sealed them. I used epoxy this time and i think it should take care of it. Should help the start up troubles a bit. Also my back two carb base bolts were finger tight and it seems i might have had a slight vacuum leak at the rear of the carb, so that is taken care of. I adjusted the float 1/32 lower than it was to help keep float bowl flooding at bay, which Wiseman says is one of the biggest problems with carburetors and fuel mileage. Also recurved my distributor using HEI advance spring kit from autozone, and stock weights. Ill report back with any results if there are any. In the meantime here is a link to the entire carb enhancer instructions, about 10 pages or so with diagrams and interesting information to read about. See what you think. http://www.steamengine.com.au/ic/engines/vapour/
Great explination, Jacob! I understand it better now, but it still seems that any "pulling" or vacuum in the bowl would slow the fuel from passing through the jets. Those water injecton kits sound cool. Do they use a pump? Where does the water enter the engine - from the top of the air cleaner? I used to mess with a Holley water injection kit. It did stop ping!
Yes at part throttle the slight vacuum would reduce the amount of fuel coming through the jets. The difference is that normally the fuel that goes into the venturi is composed of larger fuel droplets which have less surface area to combine with the incoming air to create the appropriate air fuel charge. This means more large droplets have to be sucked in to maintain the proper burn. When the carburetor enhancer balances the pressure drop accross the carburetor somewhat, the fuel that is pulled out is no longer pulled out as large droplets since its not just dribbling out anymore. The smaller droplets, which can be considered to be better atomized than normal, have a greater surface area to combine with the oxygen in the air charge. This way you can use a lesser amount of fuel yet achieve the same end result since its mixing/vaporizing more completely. So it does slow the fuel coming out of the jets to an extent, but there isnt necessarily an incorrect lean condition as a result if it is applied correctly. The water injection setups actually rely on vacuum to suck in water "vapor" formed from a bubbler in the tank. Its easy to say that this is the worst way to apply water injection, since the volume of water injected is very little, and the fact that it does not operate at full throttle since it operates on vacuum, just like the carburetor enhancer. I use the bubbler end to suck liquid water from the jug instead of vapor, then turn it to steam in the copper coil around the exhaust. Liquid water injection is best if you can create an extremely fine mist, perhaps using ultrasonics to atomize the water. If you cant create a mist this fine however, water distribution problems arrise and the large droplets will fall out of suspension easily. High pressure sprays or ultrasonics can be expensive however, so steam injection is best for me, as you can inject larger quanities of water and its in a vapor state which mixes well with the air/fuel charge and stays there until it enters the combustion chamber. Hope that helps
I wont be doing any testing of the gas mileage on the 70 except for around town city driving until monday at the earliest. Im in the process of installing springs, ball joints, and tubular control arms and such on the Ttype so i wont be making trips to work on the 72 GS until that is done. Ill be making parts runs around town though so ill check the mileage afterwords and report back. If anyone wants to join in on the experimenting, its actually pretty fun and easy work, and is certainly of some benifit if you drive your car much. Fuel saved is money pocketed in my opinion. Later
buick 350 have a 69 buick special deluxe with a 350 2brl carb which would be better for mileage a 2 brl or a 4brl carb...
I seriously doubt that the 2bbl carb would be any more efficient than the stock quadrajet 4bbl. In that case, i recommend getting a 4bbl because then you can retain your gas mileage, and have more power at your will. Cant go wrong. The carb enhancer can be applied to your 2bbl if you know where your float bowl is. You could try it out before putting on a 4bbl. Either way, your 350 if properly tuned should get 17 to 20mpg on the highway depending on your gearing. Im running the stock 3.23, but most 72 GS's came with 3.08s standard, and with your car being a skylark it most likely has some 2.xx highway friendly gears, so 20mpg should be easily acheivable. Later
I found that it didn't matter much if I just used two or all 4. My 80 wagon got 15-18. Its a full manual carb so I can with foot control only use the small front two and driving with a light as a feather foot didn't save much gas.
