Re: Crazy gas saving scheme, will it work?
You might want to talk to somebody about how your little gizmo is going to affect all your emissions control components such as O2 sensors and catalytic converter.
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Stan
Well that's why I was here asking about it... but so far I've mostly gotten assinine answers such as "it takes more energy to run the alternator." As if my vehicle didn't ALREADY run the alternator whever it's running and somehow magically teleported itself from one location to another. Others seem to think I'm trying to completely eliminate gas consumption as if it was some sort of free energy generator... apparantly they can't grasp the not at all new concept of reclamation (otherwise known as improving efficiency). These are of course the same people who thought the airplane on a treadmill wouldn't take off, or if it did, it was only due to propwash over the wings.
Thank you TerryMSU for your response as you actually attempted to address some of the issues. Now I'll address some of the points you bring up. The alternator on this vehicle is belt-driven and therefore always turns if the engine is running, and of course it spins faster with the higher RPM's of the engine when I'm driving down the interstate. I multimetered it out at 800 and 2000rpm's and it's giving me 15.3 amps at 800rpm's and 18 amps at 2000rpm's which is what the bulk of my commute amounts to as I spend about an hour on the interstate doing 70. Which is my response to QC's assumption that I will drive differently... it's pretty hard to drive differently if you're doing 70 on the interstate either way... and that's how I'm going to test it, is by doing 70 on the interstate for about 1 hour with each method (without, then with), and refilling the tank at the same pump between each to calculate exact MPG's. Back to answering Terry's concern over the alternator, although I can not be 100% certain, I am about 90% certain that there's no way the jeep is using all 18 amps. I could be wrong on that, and if I am, then it will surely either not work at all, or not work well enough to say it worked at all.
As far as Terry's 2nd concern, I do expect the electrodes to wear out fairly quickly as I am just using copper for this experiment. But it's only an experiment, I'm not making it to last. A few of the so called "professionally made" devices use platnum, while others use stainless steel... but none of those would make much sense to purchase, as they all cost more than what I think could possibly be recovered from the small gain in fuel economy.
As far as automakers having to do anything to meet CAFE standards, they already meet the CAFE standards for the next 15 years with every car and light truck that's already at the dealerships. The CAFE standards are a joke. They are only asking for 1mpg increase over the next 15 years from their minimum standards today (which all those vehicles in the dealerships already beat today's standards by more than 1mpg). They might whine and complain and say we need you to gimme more taxpayer money to keep us afloat because this is just too harsh... but it's not. I do however, wonder why honda, etc, haven't done this... either it's because it doesn't work, or it could be that it damages the engine or exhaust systems somehow, which why I asked the question to begin with.
Thank you to the few of you who have actually addressed reality, to the rest of you, please either start paying attention, start using your brains, or just hit your head on the desk in front of you instead of posting ridiculous things.
SgtMaj
