[skiwi]

New invention will slash fuel costs

A MELBOURNE invention that claims to slash vehicle petrol bills by up to 20 per cent and reduce harmful engine emissions will go on sale tomorrow...

..Mr Rigney said it worked by enabling vehicles to use petrol that normally was spewed into the environment.

He said most cars wasted between 15 per cent and 20 per cent of petrol because they failed to turn it into vapour.

Vaporate added heat to a fuel system, ensuring all petrol was vapourised and used...

[Daculling]

I don't know about this... seen other such claims

200 mpg carb.

Thought... I've heard claims that standard oil bought the patents to the efficiency and emissions technologies that we enjoy today... and withheld them. I have no proof to this but someone told me a story...

A man in Iowa bought a sedan in the 60's and returned to the dealer asking why it didn't burn even close to the amont of gas it should... it was too efficient. The dealership took the car back with the promise of a new car each year. It was an engineering sample, testing the tech they would not sell... wonder why.

Of course Japanese companies brought this to market in a reverse engineered product and it became mainstream.

/have no proof
/just say'in what I heard

[ArimoDave]

Like so many of these kinds of products, you will get testimonials from people saying that it works in their car, etc.

Mostly what occurs is that people after installing such a device, actually (subconsciously) change their driving habits.
They start conserving fuel by driving slower, and more smoothly. The indictatve statement in the article which tends
to support this idea is this one:

He said Vaporate was less effective on commercial vehicles carrying heavy loads, vehicles driven on mostly country roads and those driven too fast.

If these thoughts are in the back of one's mind, they will tend to drive differently.
The real test is to do a blind test where several vehicles have the devices either installed or not,
and the drivers do not know whether the device exists in their car or not.

I suspect the device really does not work. But hey, if it gets people to drive more efficiently, then it is a good thing.
I just wouldn't waste my money on it.

ArimoDave

[BiGG]

New invention will slash fuel costs

A MELBOURNE invention that claims to slash vehicle petrol bills by up to 20 per cent and reduce harmful engine emissions will go on sale tomorrow...

..Mr Rigney said it worked by enabling vehicles to use petrol that normally was spewed into the environment.

He said most cars wasted between 15 per cent and 20 per cent of petrol because they failed to turn it into vapour.

Vaporate added heat to a fuel system, ensuring all petrol was vapourised and used...

Very cool! Here is more informtion on their website ...Vaporate System

[bobeau]

They start conserving fuel by driving slower, and more smoothly. The indictatve statement in the article which tends
to support this idea is this one:

He said Vaporate was less effective on commercial vehicles carrying heavy loads, vehicles driven on mostly country roads and those driven too fast.

ArimoDave

Combustion efficiency tends to decrease with decreasing load. This is a device which purports to increase CE, so his claim makes perfect sense.

That said there are plenty of devices out there which are snake oil and if they work at all it's due to psychological adjustments as you say. But something like this is easy enough to validate by running on a dyno at various loads.

[Bytesmiths]

[A MELBOURNE invention that claims to slash vehicle petrol bills by up to 20 per cent and reduce harmful engine emissions will go on sale tomorrow...

Yea, I got one of those.

I also got a special magnet that fits on the fuel line, too. They say it should be worth another 15%.

Then I got a special air intake system that's supposed to improve fuel economy by 25%.

Topped it off with special tires that reduce drag by 15%, an air dam and skirting that improves mileage by 10%, a special carburetor that's good for 20%... total fuel savings: <b>105%</b>.

Now I have a different problem -- I have to stop every few miles to drain some gas out of the tank to keep it from overflowing!

[erl]

Somewhere back in the early posts on the "Planning for the Future" board, someone touted adding acetone to fuel to improve the efficiency. I think the claims were similar. Gas doesn't burn efficiently enough...add acetone...15 to 35% improvement because now all the gas vaporizes and burns...more power.

Anyone try this?

[Grimnir]

A man in Iowa bought a sedan in the 60's and returned to the dealer asking why it didn't burn even close to the amont of gas it should... it was too efficient. The dealership took the car back with the promise of a new car each year. It was an engineering sample, testing the tech they would not sell... wonder why.

Urban legend. You can read about it at snopes.com.

[gg3]

However, you can look up "300 mpg VW" and read about the prototype VW showed off in 2002. Very impressive. Fast, sleek, sexy, with a couple of design nods to the old Messerschmitt, and yes, 300+ mpg.

There was also a British design called the Combidrive Mouse and a couple of other Ford and GM designs, all three-wheelers, which got three-digit mileage. The Mouse did about 255 mpg and was tested as high as 568 (!).

http://www.3wheelers.com/combidrive.html

The key to all of these is an ultra-light body, aerodynamic design, and making it as small as possible i.e. the Combidrive Mouse was a single-seater and the VW prototype was a 2-seater.

Generally, search on the word "microcars," and for historic examples search on the word "Isetta." The latter was the car that kept BMW from going into bankruptcy in the 1950s, and was enormously successful. 60 to 75 mpg in the 1950s, as with most vehicles of that genre, of which there were many.

See also the general index at www.3wheelers.com and see also www.microcarmuseum.com.

The point being, it's not hard to get close to 3-digit mileage, and it's only a little bit harder to get just into the 3-digit mileage range. All of this with conventional mid-20th-century technology.

I would venture to suggest that people could build 3-digit mileage microcars in their garages, using go-kart frames and moped engines/drivetrains, and simple enclosures made of aluminum and perspex. These would be pretty basic transportation for local use only, but at least they would work.