Radical Gas Miser Ford Windsor Small-Block

From what I understand, there are 4 major underground supplies of NG in the US, with an estimated total of the EQUIVILANT of 10 billion barrels each.

With that much money at stake, my quess is you could find Plenty of big-time money guys to build the pipelines needed.

I would think that with that much NG, and China's demand, that we could export it to them and make $$$$ for our countries debt.
I would think the U.S. government could make tens of billions of dollars just writing contracts for new NG facilities at international seaports in the U.S. so it could be exported.

Hmmm.

 

I just quick did the math in my head. It's TRILLIONS of dollars.

That, in theory, would solve our countries money problem. Unless I'm missing something here.
Seems way too simple.

 

The problem isn't the big pipes so much as the small pipes. It has to be a network, like cities have for residential NG. If your street doesn't have the pipes, who pays to put them in? NOT ME says the taxpayers. Not to mention the cost of rights-of-way for the pipes to lay in.

Oh, and you can't export it. You can't put it on a ship or a plane. You can't build a pipeline to China.

 

back to the motor i would use newer heads/better combustion chamber install seats to use smaller valves and and fill the ports to get the best flow

 

A 255 engine from Ford were all junk. Very low power and leaked oil bad, but they were lighter than a 302.

 

Whew!.. as to the politics, if we study history, the only logical conclusion is that the industry really isn't interested in optimum fuel economy. They rant and rave every time oil gets expensive, dust off some neat brocures and pull a rabbit or two out of the hat, and when everything blows over, its back to gas-guzzling business as usual.

so, in reply to a question, yes, I think an enconomy-minded, knowledgable back-yard automotive engineer can build a better combination than stock, even 'modern' tech.

As to 'ancient' tech, 81-82 255/302 would be ~ 30 years old, not 50 years old. Traditional enough, and I don't like a vehicle where I can't fix it, or even see the engine. Electronic ignition is nice, but when you start relying on IC'S for everything, then the more complex system is more vulnerable to failure. EMP, anyone?

And, ancient tech or no, new cars are still coming out with piston engines, as they have since the late 1800s.

Fuel injection isn't that much more efficient at mixing the air and fuel as a carburetor, either. and is also ancient technology, since ~ 50's for early prototype electronic, and since rudolf diesel's time, on his engines.

Charles Nelson Pouge had a vintage-era carburetor design, which was tested, and gave then (and now) unheard of mileage.

Tom Ogle had a vacuum-draw throttle-body type vapor setup in the late seventies, and again got unheard of mileage.

Smokey Yunik, the NASCAR legend of the 50's & 60's, developed his system as another approach at vapor-phase fuel induction; and as I understand it, alll of his learnin' was hands-on & seat of the pants, and most people agree that he kwew his stuff.

The Fish carburetor, though not a 200 mpg carburetor, does radically differ from traditional carburetors in some simple, but key ways, and does result in significant changes.

None of these 'prototypes' or 'aftermarket' systems were ever OE equipment, yet all out-performed the industry on fuel economy, and all were designed, built, and tested by 'back-yard engineers'.

In short, I think it is way past high time that we leave the industry up on thier self-imposed jack-stands, and take the tech race into our own hands.

 

As for what details on the Yunick system that I have been able to glean:

1.) Carbureted, no choke
2.) Pre-heated w/ coolant-intake heat exhanger, down-stream of carburetor & upstream of the 'homogenizer'
*Note that all of the various yunick prototypes had very small
radiators/coolant capacities*
3.) 'Homogenizer' is effectively a modified, low-boost (1psi) turbocharger,
which also provides for heat-transfer from the hot (turbine) side to the cool (compressor, evaporator/expander(phase change) & blender) side.
*Note that there may be a special type of intake tract, to allow for maintaining the temperature to the engine, with exhaust providing heat.

4.) Lots of Piston Dwell @ TDC. 13 deg's crank rotation, within 0.001" of TDC, as measured with dial indicator, if memory serves correct.

5.) Reference is made to such things a cams, trick rings, ceramic coatings, special pistons, etc.

6.) Unknown is the tuning procedure, the ignition advance, or the ideal air-fuel mixture

(I suspect that it is NOT the traditional 16:1 that we all know of, because this traditional number allows for the wasted portion of the fuel that doesn't power the engine, which is not needed if ALL of the fuel burns inside of the cylinder)

There's the basic foundation for the Yunik recipe. Tune carefully to taste, and you may be able to tease out the 'simple' secrets which haven't been do***ented.

 

And, as to 'Traditional' Alternative 'Green' Fuels

1.) Steam. Leno's Doble gets ~ 25 mpg, and beats modern CA smog emissions. not bad for a 1930's era steam-powered 5000# luxury car. And, this particular steam car had successfully overcome many of the traditional steam-car handicaps/anoyances (like, 15 minute start time, lack of closed steam system (condensor), etc.)

2.) Moonshine. Ethanol was a great contender for fuel in the early days.
Also refreshing beverage in moderation, good for first-aid, and useful
for sterilizing drinking water.

3.) Electric. Very traditional; some of the earliest cars were electrics.

4.) Carbide. Traditional Head-Light & welding fuel souce.

5.) Gas-Generators. Used in WWI, WW II erra when biom*** (wood) was available and gasoline wasn't Build a lean fire, choke it, and pipe the unburned flue-gas (with additional fresh air) into the intake manifold.

6.) Horse. Very reliable, ultra-traditional. Also provides envrionmentally correct fertilizer, and can be recycled upon catastrophic failure.

Pick your poison

 

The heads I mentioned are relatively high flow small port, small valve.

 

As for 'Traditional' HAMB, I would like to have a vintage car,
BUT
I also want to be able to afford to drive it.

If I understand correctly, a lot of the 'traditional hot-rodding' was about poor 'back-yard engineers' trying to optimize (usually for power & speed) over the OE offerings then available, and they usually won out, for some reason ...

As for daily drivers, my newest vehicle is a 1991, carbureted mazda pick-up, with an automatic (3rd in my personal collection). Everything else (at least twice that number, is manual, and the next newest is an 1983. Carbureted all. Not super-old, but definitely not 'modern tech, niether.

And, you dont get near as light or simple as a true vintage vehicle, either. Somewhere around the 50's, cars got m***ive, and they stayed that way ever since. And we all know that a heavy vehicle is harder to get moving, and doesn't move nearly as far, with a given ammount of power (or acellerate as fast, either)

Somehow, I think that having 2000# less weight to push might outweigh the aerodynamic hit of the 20's & 30's body styles...

What does 300 hp do performance-wise in a 27 T roadster, anyway?

but, I digress... I think this topic is about build recipes for 65-85 small block ford v-8 engines of the windsor family ...

 

What happened to the variable valve timing, lift and even compression ratios they were mucking with a few years ago, they go the way of 4 wheel steering?

 

Find a 221 V8

These have a 3.5 bore and chuck a 302 crank and rods at it. [ its a bolt in ]
But if you want to get really creative grind down the mains on a 351w crank and use 4.900” 302 rods and custom 1.55 comp height pistons [3.5 bore and stroke]

you’ll have a 1.4 rod stroke ratio [ ok with low rpms ], I would actually protrude the pistons above the deck and flycut the heads for higher compression

To get more efficiency from the fuel you need to harness the heat better and reduce the air/fuel intake.

Get the compression way up, and strangle back the cam timing [using a roller cam with short duration ]
Restrictor plate engines use compression to overcome the poor breathing but in this case you want to create the restriction with valve timing

Go EFI if you can get your head around it. [ get it to shut of the fuel injectors on overrun until it gets back to idle ]

Try and get your gasoline engine to behave like a diesel engine.

Weight is the enemy , the more work is required to overcome more weight [requiring more fuel] put your car on a diet.

Don’t get fooled by all the hype of “HHO” [Browns gas generators] or “Pogue 200mpg carburettor conspiracy theories”

An internal combustion engine is 30% efficient so if your engine gets 20mpg now and through some sort of magic wizardry you managed to get your engine to 100% efficient.
This would only equate to 66.6 mpg.

This is way off the 200mpg that Pogue was claiming.
[ it you search the US patent office, the patent on the Pogue carburettor was never ***igned to anybody, he never sold it because it never did what he claimed ]

 

Efficiency is a tricky business. Mechanical conversion of heat is only going to get ~ 30% - 50% efficient with a piston engine, from available BTU's in the fuel.

But -

not all of the BTU's chemically available in the fuel gets put into the engine; a large portion of those go out the tailpipe as un-burned hydrocarbon emissions, or burning exhaust flames, and heat up the exhaust (or ****olytic converter).

So, if 50% of the fuel is burned where we need it (in the cylinder bore), and 50% of the fuel goes out the exhaust valves and down the drain (tailpipe), we only get 30%-50% of that half of the fuel's chemical energy.

Make the engine so that we burn 75% (or better) of the fuel in the cylinder, and we will see the difference show up as power and/or economy, as

30% (mechanical conversion) of 75% (useable combustion)
is more than
30% (mechanical) of 50% (useable combustion).

Chemically, there is enough BTU's in a gallon of gas to take a light car ~ 300 miles, on flat ground IF THERE IS 100% CONVERSION EFFICIENCY.

33% of that would still be ~ 100 mpg. I think we are seeing real world use of about 10% of the fuel's chemical BTU's.

Smokey Yunick was seeing approximately double the power & economy, both. An outfit in florida is doing testing with modern direct fuel injection, while preheating the fuel to a supercritical state (~ 800 degs F), and is also getting approximately double the usual power/economy on dyno tests. The fish carburetor is supposed to net an increase of ~ 30% in either power or economy (dependent on tuning), as well.

I'm not trying to work miracles, just use more of what's there.

And, for comparison, what sort of eficiency do we get with a gaseous fuel (CNG, Propane), which have less BTU's to begin with, but might only take a hit on the MPG of ~ 1-2 mpg, much less than the 1/3rd we might expect? I'd have to have some numbers to crunch, but I don't think the fuels chemical BTU's translate directly into exact ratios of MPG's.

Just some thoughts ...

Oh, and the Pouge carburetor patent was ***igned. To charles nelson pouge. Just because a patent exists doesn't mean that a prototype has to have been built, and certainly not required to ever go into production. Patents are only a legal protection for copy-cat manufactureres, for a limited time, so that the original inventor/developer can get thier feet under them. There are gazillions of carburetor/fuel induction patents. search the patent office, if you want - you'd be supprised. www.uspto.gov , I think. And just because something wasn't/isn't made comercially available, doesn't necessarily mean that it doesn't work, either.

 

As for stroking the 221 (besides finding the 5 bolt transmission - part of the reason I was wanting to start with the 255 was for readily available transmissions (using the 'modern' 6 bolt bell-housing pattern)

you'd get

231 cubes w/ a 302 or 255 crank & rods

and

270 cubes w/ a machined 351 or aftermarket 3.5" crank, asuming block clearance for counterweights and such.

 

Aren't there companies out there that make custom adapter plates?

 

Not necessarily. There are plenty of 400lb motorcycles that get less mileage than a tear-drop shaped subcompact car at highway speeds because a person sitting on a bike catches wind like a sail.

 

Going 'smaller' on everything isn't always the answer. Think efficient. Build for torque.
I've got a friend that built a 406hp (at the rear wheels) SBC that got over 21 mpg in a 4500 lb. pickup, loaded with an 80 gal SpeedAire compressor. I wouldn't have believed it but I was riding with him when he did it. It still moved like it was empty going down the highway.
r

 

Take a look at the Ford 2.3 Lima 4 cylinder that came in Ford Pinto's, Mustang's, and Ranger PU's, I get 27 mpg out of one without a turbo, and it's still peppy in a 3200lb PU. See the link in my signature.

 

A realistic plan.
The difference will be in the execution of the tune.
A wide ratio AF gauge will be helpful
We want the lowest BSFC at pat throttle.
Most efficient head/chamber P heads put the plug closer to the middle of the chamber.
The rod package is probably not worth the expense.

Explorer 97 Up 302 with GT40P heads
289 crank or 302 I'd go 302 cheaper, too little difference for expense
Eagle SIR 4340 5.4 rods
4" Hypereutectic 1.3625 Compression Height 1.300 w 302 1/16-1/16-1/8 rings
(Note with a 302 crank 4 inch stroker 351 pistons work)
8.2 deck
Felpro FEL-11562 .039 gasket






Hydraulic Roller - Roller Rockers



Manfold
Edelbrock Performer 289

Carb Find a 1.06/1.08 Autolite 4100 and have Pony Carb set it up
tell them what you are attempting

Factory Air Cleaner Housing with hot air tube
so you can jet for 100 degree air

You want to run as lean on the primaries as it will take, most vacuum advance

Summit Blueprinted HEI Disttributor E3 plugs
34 total

Shorty Headers for P heads - H pipe

T5 light flywheel-Aod

 

The Melling OEM hydraulic roller would be pretty good too.



The key will be to keep the car in the 2200-2500 range running max advance and A/F around 16-1.

 

Pogue actually built and sold about 200 carburetors and intakes for Ford flathead V8s. In an interview in the fifties he said some interesting things, like he didn't like talking to reporters because they always exaggerated, made things up and left him looking like a fool in the papers. Also, that he had encouraging results in the 30s but the same carburetor wouldn't work on the new engines of the fifties.

If you look at Pogue's patents he was using heat to completely vaporize the fuel. In this system additives like lead would be left behind in the carburetor and never reach the engine. They would just clog up the carburetor.

This did not matter in the 30s when you could buy "straight run" gasoline with no additivies and cars had low compression of 6:1 or less.

But the high compression engines of the fifties had to have leaded gas and the Pogue carburetor wouldn't vaporize leaded gas.

With today's unleaded you might stand a chance. I think Yunick's engine was getting at the same idea but heating the intake air even more thoroughly.

In an interview he said his adiabatic engine vaporized the fuel so thoroughly, if he drew off a sample of the intake mixture it took 20 minutes for the fuel to separate out from the air. With a conventional carb, it separated out immediately.

 

In the fifties other experimenters got encouraging results of higher horsepower and higher mileage, by using very high compression ratio and controlling detonation with water injection.

Then there were Bruce Crower's experiments in the 80s, also using very high compression, but controlling cylinder pressure at low RPM by using a camshaft with a radical intake and mild exhaust, so some of the mixture would blow back from the cylinder into the intake at low to mid RPMS.

Both these approaches were good for a 20% or 25% increase in mileage along with more power.

 

Rusty many hybrids use the high compression, late intake closing as a orm of "Atkinson Cycle".

They run 12.5 compression to get the 12.5 Expansion cycle.

It works for the hybrids because the loss of torque is offset by the electric ***ist.

They also have Variable Valve Timing, nothing we can practically apply to this hypothetical project.

I think it is out of the scope of the home experimenter.

Hoop

 

"radical intake" is somewhat misleading. He used a combination of somewhat longer intake duration with a VERY wide lsa to delay the intake closing point without a corresponding increase in overlap. The wide lsa is the key to making this work. I have been doing the same thing but to a less extreme degree (mid 11 compression ratio with flat tops, small chambers and tight piston/head, 240ish cams on a 114 lsa) for a couple decades now. Its really just following chevys lead, except they did it with big domes and a ****ty chamber shape. Makes for an engine that pulls harder at the top of the power band, idles smoothly with high intake vacuum, gets decent part throttle fuel economy, but gives up some mid-range torque.

 

A stock 289 will get 20 mpg, mine does.