The Famous Drippy Car Project

[DanStokes]

Got some photos scanned this am. Wasn't too hard to accomplish. So where to start???
How about here, Dan? This is our engineering team for the 2-cylinder combined cycle, methanol-fueled POS research engine. Dan's second from right, I'm behind the camera (plausible deniability...). Dan, you're going to have to fill in the names, I'm having a senior moment and can't for the life of me remember their names..

Dave - Help me out here. I think the guy on the far right of the pic was Ron Something - dang if I can pull up a first name. Nice guy though (for an enginenerd).

[dave.g.in.gansevoort]

My assumption is it marked it's territory?

Yes unprecedented levels! Go to post Visitor Messages about midway through the diatribe where I wrote about proof of concept. And looking like a motomotorboat...

[dave.g.in.gansevoort]

Dave - Help me out here. I think the guy on the far right of the pic was Ron Something - dang if I can pull up a first name. Nice guy though (for an enginenerd).

Yup Ron something or other... and what's his name and the other guy...

I'm old, Dan's older yet! We may never know their real names.

[dave.g.in.gansevoort]

Another slippery event Jim M and I had also involved a mid level manager John A. We were going to run another experiment on the proof of concept car, that required changing some major components. We were disassembling the hydraulics from a servo-control valve, that directed high pressure oil to control motoring or absorbing. We had run the system early that day and had taken a break for a meeting. Bad karma...

So after the meeting, we returned to the test cell, and continued taking parts off. But, and this is on me, we forgot that when we went to the meeting, the next step was to discharge the accumulator. It was not fully charged, probably only at 1700-1800 psi. Yeah, still very dangerous!

About this time John A and Lee J walk in. Just as I pulled a line off. 1 inch diameter. Not much restrictive to flow out of the accumulator.

Now a good thing about fluid dynamics is that once the fluid has decompressed (and yes liquids do have some compressibility) that the residual pressure drops to ambient.

BUT, there was still pressure on the accumulator. And probably 6 to 8 gallons of DTE 24/ISO 32 oil! And it wants out and it wants out NOW! Fortunately nobody had any body parts in the path of the gush of oil. Which shot out of the open port, which was angled slightly up, hit the far wall of the test cell, was deflected up the wall mostly, hit the ceiling 15 feet up, and looked like a fountain, spraying oil across about half the room. I caught a little bit of it, Jim M caught quite a bit of it, but John A, who was wearing a brand new suit that day for the first time, was absolutely soaked. Oil was dripping off of him and the ceiling for what must have seemed an eternity. However it only took a minute give or take to bleed down.

So Jim M and I borrowed coveralls from a couple of the other technicians, and got changed and cleaned up enough to then clean up the test cell. Lee J got a fire blanket, lined the inside of his truck with it, and gave John A a ride home so he could shower and change. The suit needless to say was a throwaway!

The good news was that John A never stuck his nose into the test cell again! The bad news, I had to prepare documentation for safety procedures, for all aspects of the project ! And get every manager's approval on. BTW being a licensed engineer isn't required to be called an engineer working for the government. Because of this, there were only 2 or 3 engineers licensed as professional engineers. And I was one of them! Only time I ever stamped anything, and it was those documents. It was my way to protect myself from someone making a change and claiming that it was in the original documentation. That also caused me some heartburn, but it was worth it to see what the management would try to do to get a work around for whatever reason.

Another straw on the camel's back!

[DanStokes]

Yup Ron something or other... and what's his name and the other guy...

I'm old, Dan's older yet! We may never know their real names.

Hey, I pulled up that much! More may come later.

[DanStokes]

Dave - Help me out here. I think the guy on the far right of the pic was Ron Something - dang if I can pull up a first name. Nice guy though (for an enginenerd).

Wasn't the guy at the far left Jeff? That's coming to mind.......

[dave.g.in.gansevoort]

The plugs are starting to fire in Dan's brain. Me not so much! Dang if I can remember the people in the picture. That's why I threw it over to you...

[dave.g.in.gansevoort]

Another picture or two from our past...
This dyno test cell was rated 450 hp, and could handle around 1600 lb-ft of torque. Now it was a dc motoring dyno with a maximum rpm of 6000 rpm (correct me Dan if you remember the numbers better...). Dan set up a test program i this cell to perform some sort of certification verification. At that time I used it on occasion to run experimental projects like the one in the picture. Lots of weird plumbing there.

See that big canister attached to the insulated pipe off of the left side of the picture? That's a lean NOx catalyst system, being developed in conjunction with a catalyst manufacturer for diesel engines. It works so much better than the SCR systems hd guys got stuck with. But wrt the drippy car project, it also gave us data for the little 2 cylinder combined cycle engine in earlier pictures.

That engine ran air fuel ratios anywhere from 200:1 to 6:1 (rich for methanol, stoichiometry is 6.7:1 for methanol). So typical 3 way catalyst systems like spark ignition (Otto cycle) engines use, were not going to work. To eliminate NOx modern electronically controlled engines dither the air fuel ratio n either side of stoichiometry, so lean-rich-lean-rich etc constantly to make that little chemistry plant work. Rich to reduce NOx, lean to oxidize CO and unburned HC.

The combined cycle engine used hot surface ignition, glow plugs, to keep the fire lit. And we replaced a lot of them, as they kept burning up, well until I had some end caps made from a very high temperature, high strength material I knew of from previous experience at the research firm I worked for prior to that position. The Big B wasn't really sure that he wanted to spend a lot of money to get a handful of the end caps, but let us get them. Fortunately they worked!

So a little more about the engine. It was originally a diesel, so no inlet restriction. Like a true diesel this reduces pumping losses, increasing efficiency. Power and speed were controlled purely by fueling rate and injection timing. But methanol won't compression ignite. At least not at the compression ratios we experimented with. Hence the constant glow plugs.

And the real pain in the ass part was the fuel pump. It was designed for diesel fuel, which is slippery. Methanol not so much. So we had to add a lubricant to the fuel, which kept gumming up the pump. But it was what the firm that did the initial development of the engine said to use, and it was a German company. Don't argue with a German, you'll lose! So I didn't. I had our guy that was taking care of purchasing for us by then, Joe H, get some Red Line methanol fuel injection lubricant like we used with Hilborns. And guess what? Problem solved! Well One anyway. There were others. Mainly electronic, which eventually led to getting a Motec engine management system that was about $12k vs the $200k system that kept Paul Dan and me busy for the better part of a year. That purchase was snuck thru by another engineer who came into the fold, Peter C, so the Big B didn't know what I was scheming. But that's another story for another day...

Okay so only 1 picture today. Sue me, I'm doing this with a migraine to keep my mind occupied and distracted from the pain.

[DanStokes]

That fires about half a brain cell. Let me think on it a bit before I comment. BTW, guys - this is what REAL engineering looks like.

[dave.g.in.gansevoort]

That fires about half a brain cell. Let me think on it a bit before I comment. BTW, guys - this is what REAL engineering looks like.

I got an excuse! I used to partake of the libations . And being that I believe that alcohol kills brain cells, and I also believe in Darwin's theory that the strong survive, I figure I've killed off all but 2 brain cells. But they're strong suckers!

[Deaf Bob]

I got an excuse! I used to partake of the libations . And being that I believe that alcohol kills brain cells, and I also believe in Darwin's theory that the strong survive, I figure I've killed off all but 2 brain cells. But they're strong suckers!

[dave.g.in.gansevoort]

Now I bet that people are wondering what became of that project. Well as we all know, hybrid electric vehicles are mainstream these days, and full electric vehicles are gaining in popularity. There was a small fleet of hybrid hydraulic UPS delivery trucks somewhere in the country. I don't know if any other test fleets ever got developed. And then the Big B retired.

Funding went away, staff retired or moved to other projects. I bet that the 3 test bed vehicles are gone by now. I sure wish that I could have gotten a hold of one of the quick change rears.

What was always intriguing to me, Volvo had developed a similar drivetrain for city buses. It had the energy recovery and storage similar to what we were doing. The only real difference was they used a current technology diesel engine with sophisticated controls that gave the buses an approximately 30% increase in fuel economy, and a commensurate reduction in pollutants, with the exception of NOx and PM. They had a larger reduction in those 2 pollutants as they programmed the vehicle to do its acceleration entirety by the hydraulic system. This meant that the diesel engine wasn't spinning up to speed under load, when they tend to be dirtiest, and instead allowed the engine to spin up essentially unloaded, which is a clean operational mode for a diesel.

Those of you who are/were truckers in the early days of regulation may remember diesels having devices on the fuel rack that slowed the rate of acceleration to keep them from smoking, large dashpots. And removing the dashpots because drivability was horrendous. Volvo's system eliminated that. Of course it added $200,000 to the cost of a city bus at that time, but hey who's counting? I was because Big B wanted us to try to get one of those systems for reverse engineering. We never did...

[dave.g.in.gansevoort]

And now you know what is wrong with me...

[DanStokes]

Aw c'mon! You were warped when you came to us! All those years of breaking stuff and getting paid to do it.

[dave.g.in.gansevoort]

Bent, not broken from the research firm! Like reeds in the wind. Or Weebles. Weebles wobble, but as Dan will tell you, you can't flush them down! Another story about Dan that he's told elsewhere...