Date: Sat, 22 Oct 2005 13:12:20 -0500
Reply-To: Inua <inua@CHARTER.NET>
Sender: Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From: Inua <inua@CHARTER.NET>
Subject: REQ - Dead Idle Stabilizer Control Unit Donation
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
I've a couple of sharp electronics buds here, and with them, I want to
pursue development of a digital replacement for that little box that
causes so much trouble. Actually, I will probably be more like a
sidewalk superintendent than a pioneering engineer. My buds will pursue
this with my direction and encouragement.
If anyone has a dead one they wouldn't mind donating, please let me know.
Sometimes it's amazing what can be done when we set out heads to it.
Witness Darryl Boehlers DigiTool. Or Ken Lewis' little O2 sensor
monitor. And there are others.
I live and work in the world of potters and ceramics. Firing kilns with
low oxygen and high temperatures is a common practice to get certain
things to happen to glazes. A fellow potter got tired of paying 600
bucks a pop everytime his Ox meter/pyrometer for his kiln would burn
out. The probes on them fail often and they are platinum with a
zirconim pellet embedded in the tip. Ionized free oxygen at those
temperatures causes a curent to flow in the tip which in turn is sent to
a digital meter. Pricey set up. But my clay buddy came up with an idea.
He did some testing, and voila!!! He now collects - at $5 a pop at the
junk yards - auto O2 sensors to use as his probe into the kiln
atmosphere, and a Fluke (I think it's a Fluke) digital voltmeter to get
his voltage reading. With a little chart, negative voltages indicate he
has a reduction, and positive voltages indicate an Oxidation atmosphere
in the kiln. How much the voltage is either way tells him the degree of
oxidation or reduction taking place. Turns out that the automotive O2
sensors have very similar construction as the Zircon tipped platinum
probes sold by the big ceramic houses. After figuring out what he could
do, the trick was to place the O2 sensor in the exhaust stream
immediately after it was exhausted from the kiln, instead of through
the kiln wall in the way the commercial probes. Worked like a charm.
I've a friend who is working on a high-volume hydrogen generator to
produce a clean alternative fuel for combustion engines from water. .
It's amazing how much head way he has made. It is not a fuel cell. You
have a fuel tank full of water, it gets processed, the hydrogen and
oxygen are separated, moved to a place of advantage (combustion chanber)
burned, and out comes steam from the exhaust. That would have to be
cooled, but that's just a detail. This is the same guy that built an 80
mpg carburetor back in the '70's using Pasche airbrush parts and some
other stuff, and hung it on an Audi engine in an old Omni. Sad tale
about the final outcome of that, but he has moved on to other projects.
This is the same guy who figured out how to filter flour gold out of
glacial river water using an aquarium pump.
So, it can be done. Just need an old dead box to start the project.
Can't use the one it my van since my van is my daily driver.
Thanks,
John Rodgers
88 GL Driver
| 
