i have flame throwers on my 55 pontiac, but i need to know how to get the flames going, and keep them burning for a long time. right now, i can get some nice big fireballs if i pump the throttle, and pull the choke. i've seen guys keep the flames going for what seems like 30 seconds to a minute. these are not propane injection set ups either. is it a hand / foot coordination thing that takes practice ? working the throttle, pulling the choke and pushing the flame ****on? i know that pulling the choke is not necessary for shooting flames, but i like the fireball effect that it gives. a guy told me that if you add a little 2 cycle oil in the gas, it will make the flames carry further and hang in the air because the oil will burn longer than the gasoline. has anyone ever heard that before ? i've been kicked out of a few cruise nights for shooting flames...lol.
lol....yeah, it's great to pull into a night time cruise night, and shoot off a buncha flames. the guys with the high $$ billet laden street rods get pissed, because flames coiming out of my ratty 55, pulls the crowd away from their cars....yep, they are the same guys that kick me out every time....lol i did make up a propane injection set up, but i'm not sure if i want to put it on. i made it out of an ether injection solenoid used on semi trucks. it's a solenoid that fills with 6cc's of propane, and it will inject it into the exhaust. the propane ignites from the gasoline flames. i've bench tested it and 6 cc's of proane makes a huge fireball.
I've played with flamethrowers for about 15 years and my advice is to stay away from the injected ****. That gets a little too serious and dangerous. Not only for you but for the kids that can't seem to get close enough. They're hard to see behind you and if all at once you throw a huge ball of fire............. To roll out a flame, keep your foot to the floor, the choke pulled all the way out, and then just keep bumping the ignition enough to keep the engine barely running. When your not injected, if the motor stalls, the fire goes out but if your injected???????? Just remember, practice, practice, practice. Then go to the Ducktail this fall and have some fun shooting, but it's like a drug. Once you start it's hard to stop. From one of the original "Keeper's of the Flame".
beetle hey would you explain your set up? Im lookin to set some up on my 53 customline ive got a 215 thanks? its funny ive done alot of research on the hamb and other places and there seems to be about 5 different ways to do it but i dont want to go and blow a bunch of money and then have it shoot small flames. someone should do a good tech article on this and show how to get a good set up!!!
There have been millions of posts on this. How-to, and the like. Try searching it I'm sure you'll come up with all the info you need and then some.
i got my "kit" from e-bay, but it's made by auto loc. i paid $9.99 for it, brand new in the box. all it is, is a box that simulates the pulses of a distributor. you hook a wire to the pos. side of the dist (splicing the wire into the pos. wire). that wire runs through a relay, to the box that's mounted inside the car. wires from the box, run to 2 12 volt ingnition coils mounted in the trunk. rev the motor, and push the ****on to activate the flames. this takes power away from the dist., and sends it to the box (it's an interrupt ****on basically). the box sends pulses of power to the coils, which makes the plugs in the exhaust tips spark multiple times. since you're taking power away from the dist, the engine quits running while you have the ****on pushed. you rev the motor high, push the ****on, hols the throttle to the floor, and pull the choke. let go of the ****on before the motor winds down, and it will start running again. it's actually a very simple process, and the autoloc kit was simple as hell to install. the hardest part was getting the plugs in the exhaust tips. you should use long reach plugs in the pipes. some kits come with bungs (lol that's a silly word) to weld into the tips. but, an easier way is to drill the tips for the plugs to fit,. and then get 2 spark plug anti-foulers from autozone. cut the anti-foul end off (the end that covers the spark plug electrode) and then use the remaining end as a nut to hold the plugs into the exhaust tips.
yeah, that's why i never hooked up the injection set up...it's kind of hokey, and not very traditional in my opinion. the injection set up that i made works, and it's very safe (it won't flash back, and it will only burn the 6cc's of propane that gets loaded into the solenoid). you can not shoot a constant stream of propane with it, no matter what you do. since this was originally an ether injection set up for a diesel engine, they have it made so it will not inject too much ether into the intake manifold. it just so happenes that a small can of propane for a burnz-o-matic torch screws right onto the solenoid in place of the ether canister. don't worry, i'm not going to install this on my car.
i have video of my 55 shooting flames posted at youtube, but i can't post the link right now. i'm at work, and they have that site blocked. but, if anyone wants to go look, my name at youtube is peteydog55...i think you can search the videos by the username. i also have video of my friends 53 chebby belching some serious flames out the exhaust on there. his set up is made out of an hei distributor, and a blower motor mounted in the trunk. same concept as my set up, but he used a distributor in place of the "hotbox"
I bought a kit called www.flamekits.com and it works great, sounds about the same as the autoloc kit. I have it on my 65 belair 230 I6 with split exhaust. It shoots flames about 3 ft long and blue and sounds like a jet afterburner. It will set trash or gr*** on fire in no time, whoops.
i can get good 3-4 foot flames with no problem. pull the choke tho...and it'll belch a 3-4 foot diameter fireball. i think these kits are basically the same ****, just different names on them. try pulling the choke on yours (if you have a choke, and if it's manual) it's pretty cool to see the fireballs roll out. my car has dual exhaust, but both pipes come out the back on the p*** side. they look like shotgun pipes with 4" diameter stainless steel megaphone tips.
trying something here. this should be video of my 55 shooting flames. now remember, i'm still a novice at flame throwing...but i'm getting the hang of it. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9E2DnVS37E http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAf7DhR9Vzw
Couldnt you hook the box up to a normal 12 volt source, yank the choke and flip the switch and get the same results without killing the engine or having to rev the hell out of it?
Here is my daughter's car, the vid is a few years old http://home.comcast.net/~aintthata*****/pontflame.mpg
no, because you have to send raw fuel out the exhaust. by killing the engines ignition raw fuel is pushed out the exhaust. if the engine remained running, there would be no raw fuel to burn at the exhaust tips. of corse, you could add a secondary fuel source, but i wouldn't recomend it.
yeah, autoloc still sells the kit...it's like $125.00 through them, and you don't get a complete kit (no coils, no spark plugs, no plug wires, and no wiring harness). all you get is the control box, a relay, and a push ****on. i got lucky, and found mine on e-bay for $9.99 and it was brand new in the box. there are several places that make these flame thrower kits, but i don't know what their prices are. if you want to buy one...make sure it's a legit kit, with the box that will act as a distributor (makes the spark at the plugs pulse like a distributor would). there are guys out there (especially on e-bay) trying to sell stuff that doesn't work for ****.
that's cool as hell. i'm trying to accomplish something like that...guess i gotta play around a little more.
there really is no name...the box just says "autoloc flame thrower" on it. here's a link to their site. oh yeah, they claim that you can shoot up to 20 feet of flames. i'm sure you could with this kit, but you would definitly need a secondary fuel source to get 20 feet of flames. http://www.thehoffmangroup.com/Autoloc/Products/Products_Flame.l***o
i just noticed that their site says that it comes with a wiring harness. i posted that you don't get a harness. it does have all the wiring that comes out of the box, to go to the relay. but, you have to make up the wires to run to the coils.
i'm planning on building my own system. i already built the controll box for the coils. i'm going to try and use fuel injectors to get a little more fuel into the exhaust.
yeah !!!! now that would be cool. i know a guy who used a windshield washer pump with fan nozzles on the ends, and it literally dumped raw fuel into the fire...it was dangerous because there was very little pressure pushing the fuel out. fuel injectors will atomize the fuel and it would be under more pressure. i've seen nitrous solenoids & spray nozzles used to for the same effect. they use a secondary electric fuel pump to pressurize the fuel. that shoudl make some pretty big flames.
also the fuel injectors have built in solenoid to shut them off when i'm done and i'll just be using a standard fuel pump. i also found some spark plugs that are used to light a propane heater that have a really long reach.
Throwing flames is super cool, but somehow hearing the starter for 45 continuous seconds eliminates any hint of coolness. JMO. Keep up the fireballs!
Umm, isn't this board about hot rods and KUSTOMS? I didn't know kustoms were about going fast. Always thought they were about looking kool. Guess ya learn something every day.
There were more than a few customs running serious engines back in the day, but it seems we're getting away from that. Beetlejuice's 55 Pontiac looks like a nice one. Seems it would be enough to show up in that and not have to resort to potentially dangerous stunts to gain attention.
And here we go again round 1,347,976 of Flame Throwers being untraditional and uncool. I'm staying out of this one, I think. Maybe. Not Sure. We'll see.
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