History The elusive "POGUE CARBURETOR"

Not really Pogue related but - Canadian Pontiacs from 55 and up that came with the 261 had a 3/4" carb spacer on them that the 235 Chevies don't. Old timers here used to put them on their Chevy 235's and they swore that it was good for 2 more mpg. I followed the lead and every time a Pontiac showed up at the local junkyard, I would grab the carbs and spacers. I still have a few stashed away, and have put the spacers on every six banger Chevy I ever owned. Between the spacer and my mechanic buddy being a carb wizard, I have gotten 3-4 mpg more out of a 235, consistently.

 

To quote Robert Heinlein's condensation of the laws of physics in his book The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, "There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch, or TANSNAFL." High mileage comes at a cost. So do 1320 foot-long burnouts. And sadly, they are mutually exclusive. But we can all dream, and that isn't a bad thing.

 

I really can't figure out why this m***ive load of garbage hasn't been deleted. Threads containing useful information get deleted regularly because they're deemed off topic for the HAMB, and that's 100% legitimate to keep the site from gradually becoming polluted with everything from 4x4's to fart can and wing installation on imports.

But this magic carburetor **** needs to go back to where it came from as well because it makes the HAMB look stupid. This junk lives in the fringes of the web where their looney tune participants ignore physics, chemistry, thermodynamics, and any other form of proven science as they blubber on in a cloud of stupidity about brown's gas and 200mpg carburetors and oil company conspiracies and every other form of perpetual motion gimmick or something-for-nothing device ever dreamed up to enable some con-man to fleece the pockets of the ignorant.

The HAMB is a great site with a focused base of knowledge that can't be found anywhere else on the web. But this hocus pocus magic vapor stuff has nothing to do with knowledge and everything to do with ignorance of even the most basic operating principles of internal combustion engines. There's plenty of sites where the true believers can promote this junk science to their heart's content, but the HAMB's mods shouldn't let this site become one of them.

 

VERY interesting reading. Thanks for starting this thread.

 

There is no reason to entirely discount higher fuel efficiency ideas. The fact of the matter is there are hundreds of patents for these types of things and frankly there has to be some merit in the ideas or else the effort wouldn't have been expended to patent them.

 

Nobody is discounting fuel efficiency, just the notion that a V8 is going to get 200 mpg because the gasoline is vaporized first.

The ****ing math was hashed out long before many of is were born. It's just frustrating to see the same BS peddled. There is only so much energy in a gallon of gasoline. That modern vehicles go as far as they do now, is astonishing.

 

I had an old F body that I wanted the best MPG from. I found this ignition system that promised a 28% increase in fuel mileage and a 12% increase in power. Then I got a set of multi-ground spark plugs that promised a 25% increase in mileage and better throttle response. Then I found a carburetor and intake combo that bragged up to 50% better fuel economy and "snappy throttle response". Once I put all of it on the car the damn gas tank overflowed!!!





I've told this story before, have fun...

 

You could a got one of them thair water vapor carbs that the only emissions it puts out is steam (H2O). Then piped it back to the vapor chamber and run it closed loop for a totally free system. But then, nobody would believe ya anyway... LOL

Now that would be OT. OK, back to our experiences with the Pogue. Thanks

 

Well boys there you have it. Charles Pogue and Smokey Yunick were bums, and it is impossible to improve a stock Detroit car especially by changing the carburetor. I'm sure this happy news will save us all a lot of wasted time and money.

 

I was at a guys shop in Willow Alaska 25 years ago and he had an interesting carb, can't remember the name now, but the fuel was sprayed/atomized through the unique throttle ****erfly. That was where I firs heard Pogue but it was something else.
Since I was a kid, I had an idea to atomize fuel into vapor by building a chamber with multiple tubes sticking out and the bottoms immersed in the fuel. The engine intake would pull the vapors off the top. It never got off the ground because I couldn't come up with a way to keep the whole dam thing from blowing up if there was ever a lean misfire, which was very likely.

 

The way I see it, the very fact that motor vehicle fuel efficiency is a non-trivial problem at all is a huge indictment of the prevailing mobility regime (which is at bottom a structured transaction-cost regime - the relative cost of doing things in way A as opposed to way B benefits some parties at the cost of others - but let's not get into that.)

Motor vehicle fuel efficiency has a completely different sort of importance to, say, hot-air balloon fuel efficiency. In the former case there is a percentage in squeezing out another 2-3%; in the latter it's just as long as the fuel cost doesn't preclude going ballooning at all, it's hunky-dory. But then, there is a structural dependency around motor vehicles, but not around hot-air balloons. A lot of people enjoy hot-air balloons but hardly anyone needs one. And so there aren't environmentalists sneering at balloonists for having the temerity to express the mere desire to fly a hot-air balloon. Nor, might I add, has the balloon manufacturing industry grown more powerful than most governments, being able to foist whatever obscurant sorcery on us ever more securely to entrench its position.

Ought motoring not to be more like ballooning? If it were I can't imagine anyone having much interest in a "200mpg" carburettor.

 

You might be surprised. My view is such people be issued a loincloth and a pointy stick, and left to fend for themselves in a Canadian wilderness for a few weeks. In January. I would hope, that their at***ude would have improved somewhat.

 

That sounds like a Fish carb with the atomizer in the ****erfly. There is quite a bit of info out there on the Fish. Although not a vapor carb, it was very simple and quite efficient. They were built in Daytona Beach, FL., also the home of Smokey Yunick. I wonder if he was involved in the Fish in any way?

 

Also, not a carb but a true 100mpg vehicle, I read about maybe 10 years ago, simple to build, no voodoo. Builder took some small British car, 1200#. Used a small diesel from a Thermoking, ran it through a Comet style clutch, and kept the 5 speed. 75 mpg city and about 110 highway in a drive-able car. Pretty simple theory, use an engine of the torque requirements at cruise speed and compound the torque with the comet clutch and also keep the engine always at or near the rpm for best output.

I believe you are correct, Fish seems to ring a bell.

 

willowbilly3,
Here is a site for the Fish carbs that you might like.
http://www.boni.com/fish/

Three Fish Carburetors on a Ford Flathead Engine, equipped with an "Ardun" overhead valve conversion kit. At Exhibition Park in Toronto, Ontario, Canada in the early 1950s.

 

I believe that is what the latest ZF 6/8/9 speeds and DSG/DTC 450s are built to do. They claim low percentage increases in MPG but more importantly LOWER emissions. Hence they are good to go with the governing bodies.....

ECU is programmed to keep the RPM/torque/mixture at its best to meet Gov requirement. Anyone heard of the VAG cheater software??????

 

NO. Thank you.

 

hey watch it buddy, I LIVE in the Canadian wilderness...well, North Surrey, close enough...

 

Amazing what a combined misunderstanding of physics and chemistry can lead you to believe possible.

 

It makes for great stories, like buying WWII jeeps for $25 and warehouses full of brand new surplus wartime Harley-Davidson motorcycles in a government warehouse somewhere.

Until fairly recently (I haven't checked lately) the government was still purchasing Mohair (there was some kind of subsidy, whatever the hell a Mohair farmer raises) and vacuum tubes as recently as the 90s. Cost plus 15% is a hell of a deal.

If someone could have invented a 100 mpg carb there would have been no way of stopping it. No way.

 

There are plenty of 100 mpg carbs....on mopeds....

 

There are plenty of 100mpg, buts it's either up to 10mpg or it's the huge "air pumpe" you put under it that doesn't permit as good as the carb LOL

Despite it being a snake-oil idea, dos the carb do absolutely nothing or does it make the car perform slightly better then a stock updraft carb from a model T?
What is the deal here?

 

This whole thread reminds me of that one guy.....There's always that one guy; who has a BS story about how he had a Ford truck in the 70's that got **X miles to the gallon, and the government confi****ed his carburetor when his truck was in for work at the dealership, and the MPG was less than half when he got it back.........This is also the same guy who says "a cop pulled me over just to look at my hot rod!!!" followed by "I know where theres a 53 Corvette in a barn with 12 miles on it!"

 

My '40 Ford and '56 Nomad are both hybrids. They burn gas AND rubber!

 

There's plenty of government conspiracies. Hell, they aren't even conspiracies really, they are right out in the open and notorious. Except, 100 mile per gallon V8 carburetors isn't one of them. During the numerous wars to end war we've periodically been subject to, fuel became a critical commodity. The US government rationed gasoline (and tires of course, was the reason why) and ins***uted a national 35 mph speed limit. Aviation gasoline, high octane in particular was in high demand though. All sorts of things were tried, including water injection. German and Japanese and British and Russian and American scientists were all working on the problem of manufacturing synthetic fuels, rearranging molecules, different refining techniques to get more gasoline out of a barrel - and they did.

All of that would have been unnecessary if fuel mileage could have been extended 5 or 6 times. Even without knowing anything about BTUs or physics, it just stands to reason if it were possible, one of the warring national governments would have discovered the mechanism or techniques independently and would have not hesitated to deploy it.

And if some crackpot here in America or anywhere else had invented a 100 mph carb in his garage, he'd have been a hero, and probably rich beyond his dreams if he played his cards right.

 

Many people that I have come across in real life, and many on this board treat science as if it is some sort of dark and mysterious art, wholly inaccessible to all but a select few well-controlled individuals.

If you are one of those folks, I hate to be the one to break the news to you, science is none of those things.

Scientists and engineers walk a**** you, daily, and post to this board, daily. You can step right up and ask us anything, free-of-charge. Nobody is blackmailing us to hide information.

If one man had developed something, then another man can develop it too. If a team of men can develop something, then another team can, too.

Science is all about proof, via repeating the same tests, over and over, with the same results.

If the 100MPG carburetor were possible, someone else would have already developed it, and someone else would have duplicated it. The same goes for all of these other pieces of mythical technology.

Now think about that the next time that you, a non-scientist, postulate some wild-*** hypothesis that would require thousands, tens-of-thousands, millions, or even tens-of-millions of people keep their mouths successfully and perfectly shut, either via financial compensation or threats of violence.

 

Charles Pogue did experiment with heat vaporizing of fuel in Winnipeg in the 1930s, and did get some encouraging results although he never claimed 200MPG. That was all newspaper ******** cooked up by reporters looking for a sensational story.

He did an interview with Cars magazine in 1954 in which he said this, and also said his carburetor wouldn't work with the new gas. I believe he was referring to the heavily leaded gas used in the high compression engines of the fifties. In the vaporizer carburetor the lead additives would have stayed behind in the vaporizer, plugging it up, and would never have reached the cylinders.

Smokey Yunick got some interesting results with his Adiabatic engines. They also used heat to vaporize the fuel. He claimed 51MPG and 250HP out of what was a 35MPG 90HP Fiero.
http://www.hotrod.com/how-to/engine/hrdp-1009-what-ever-happened-to-smokeys-hot-vapor-engine/

 

I love reading this... Back in the 50's in Magazines like Mechanics Illistrated would show show some guy running his engine on some kind of animal **** methane. I loved it. The real reason is none of the "inventions" we're practical for the m***es. Tinkerers yes, normal folks no, that's why steam never made. I could just see my wife stoking a boiler fire in the Albertsons parking lot trying to get home before my ice cream melted.

 

You're not doing it right. The steam engine powers the ice cream maker and make it back at rancho H.A.M.B. Albertson's is a distant memory, every six months, strictly for those things you can't grow yourself or make yourself - sugar, coffee, salt, flour, cocoa, etc. Maybe a licorice whip for the youngens. Got lots of eggs to trade, and 'backy.

 

found this article on the pogue carb i built something on his theory back in the early 80s after reading on this carb while working in the oil fields . put the unit on a early 70s cadillac could get it working up to 50 miles per hour then would shut off i always thought i was getting close though oil boom left no more money - lost interest