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Showing posts from January, 2014

Classic Car and Older Muscle Car Engines With Flat Tappet Cams

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If you buy your motor oil at the local auto parts store or other stores such as Wal-Mart you could be headed for serous trouble and not know it. Or, perhaps, you're reading this after finding out you've got some serious engine damage that needs to be repaired. Either way, today's current oils sporting the API SN & ILSAC 5 specs are not good for your engine at all. The friction modifier added to motor oils to prevent wear is considered a source of pollution. Why? Because many feel it's harmful to the catalytic converter on modern cars. So despite these additives being used in these engines for years, the decision was made to remove or greatly reduce the zinc dialkyldithiophosphate (ZDDP) otherwise referred by most people as "zinc" and others as "phosphorus". Tree huggers don't want us to keep our older cars much longer do they? But what about new car engines? It's been decided that these engines will probably be OK since the worst of t...

304 Stainless Test Dry Cell Performance

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This is a 304 stainless dry cell that was run for more than 10,000 miles in my 67 VW Beetle. Really not very sophisticated, but cheap way to make hydrogen from water for improving fuel mileage. This video is about 4 years old or so, but I do plan to add videos of better units soon. Adding too much hydrogen to an engine can be counter-productive and even harmful due to the properties of hydrogen. Hydrogen, compared to gasoline, has a very fast flamepoint. If you were to run 100% hydrogen the correct timing would be approximately 9 degrees AFTER top dead center (ATDC) compared to gasoline which varies the timing advance from 10 degrees BEFORE top dead center (BTDC) to more than 32 degrees BTDC. Having excessive hydrogen in the mix can lead to peak pressure in the cylinder before the piston reaches the top of its stroke. Since hydrogen has more than 130 octane you won't hear a "ping" or rattle sound, but the engine will load up. This leads to stress on the engine ...