Most of us don’t have oil wells in our backyard, but trees are abundant. With a little work, it’s possible to run an internal combustion engine on wood gas and turn your backyard into a gas station. youtuber JP Pratt Projects Showed how it’s done with a video of his father’s squarebody Chevrolet pickup, which hasn’t used a drop of gasoline in more than 100,000 kilometers (62,000 mi). And it’s fast too.
We covered this truck in a previous post, but since then, JP Pratt Projects has posted a second video of it running a mile while standing on a closed airport runway. The truck achieved a top speed of 125 kilometers per hour (77.6 mph), which J.P. Pratt Projects claims is a record for a wood-powered vehicle. This seems plausible, if only because there isn’t much competition for the fastest wood-fired car in the standing-mile and land-speed racing communities.
The truck itself is a 1983 Chevy powered by a 350-cubic-inch V8 that’s actually from 1972. It is powered by wood gas made by burning wood chips in a large metal cylinder behind the cab. This releases carbon monoxide, which combines with hydrogen in a device called a gasifier, which is also located behind the cab. A filter prevents soot and ash from entering the gasifier, and a ball valve in the middle regulates the flow.
To reach the airport one had to drive 211 kilometers (131 mi). Average fuel economy over the entire round trip and standing-mile run was 80.5 pounds of wood per 60 miles. According to the video, the wood-gas system is about 15% more energy intensive than burning gasoline, but that’s not a big difference if you’ve got easy access to firewood. The host says burning wood is also close to carbon neutral, because trees absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and release it as they die and decompose.
New Standing Mile Speed Record on Wood – V8 Wood Gas Chevrolet Fleetside
The downside is that a wood-gas vehicle takes a little longer to run. Filters needed to be cleaned before things burned, and like the steam engines that used to cross the country burning wood, ash and soot needed to be emptied from a pan beneath the appliance. You will also need to light a rolled up piece of newspaper at the bottom of the gasifier to get the fire going. It takes about five to 10 minutes to go. However, the engine does not require any modifications or any secondary fuel to start, as some alternative-fuel powertrains do.
Wood chips also take up more space than liquid fuel. The bags of wood chips needed for the long-distance trip would normally reside in the bed of this truck; for the speed-record attempt they were transported on a trailer pulled by a support vehicle to keep the pickup as light as possible for its steep-mile runs. Using all of your vehicle’s cargo space for fuel is obviously not something that’s going to work for most people, but it’s still cool to see an old technology repurposed in this way.
