2008-01-14

The ferry arrived 8 a clock in the morning in Gothenburg. I drove off the ferry, through the control point and out on the roads. It felt good to be home in Sweden with the car. I was really tired, because the heating stopped working in my cabin, leaving me awake freezing the whole night.

On my way in to the city, my father’s friend, Christer Eklöf, who is a dentist in Gothenburg called me from work and offered me some wood. He gave me the keys to he’s house and I went there and started converting the car back to wood gas by removing the carburettor and putting back the gas mixer. Later, Christer came and helped me out with the wood processing. We cut two big bags of wood and filled the producer.

It seemed to be a lot of moist in the producer and it took quite long time to get flammable gas and the system running. The engine stopped several times and I had to restart it. I discovered that it stopped as soon as I stood still with the car so I had to be in motion all the time. Something had definitely happened since the last time I had it running in Britain.

I said good-bye to Christer and hurried out of Gothenburg. The time was 6 a clock and my plan was to go to Werner in Dimbo and stay there over the night. It’s a 150 km trip.
I stopped at a gas station in Lerum and hurried to buy a map while the engine was running outside. It had stopped when I came out and the battery was too week to get it started. I changed batteries to a reserve battery I brought with me. But this battery wasn’t loaded. Martin - a guy that works in the gas station, brought his car and helped me to start mine with jumper cables.

I hurried out on the road again trying to not stop and keeping it rolling all the time. It became most complicated to read the map when I couldn’t stop. I got lost and discovered that I had driven in a circle for 1½ hour and was close to Lerum again.

I tried to find the right way again and the car ran really bad now. Because of the low speed, I had to stay out off the highways, choosing small roads with less traffic. Finally the car stopped in the middle of nowhere. It was really dark and cold and the wind was wining in the threes. I went out and opened the bottom hatch of the producer. There wasn’t much left of the charcoal, so I added some more and put the hatch back. The gasket broke when I removed the hatch, but there wasn’t much I could do about it, but tighten it as hard as I could.

I went through the whole system and I found a leak between the gas mixer and engine. I used tape and a peace of wire to seal it. Now the most exciting part started – too see if the battery was good enough to power the starting fan and make the engine start.

The power in the battery was just enough to make the engine start. The clock was 10 and I decided to convert the car back to petrol as soon as I came to the next city where I could get some lights. There were three reasons: I didn’t have enough wood to go all the way to Dimbo, I was awfully tired and I didn’t want to risk getting stuck in the middle of nowhere.
I let the carburettor sit directly on the gas mixer this time, which saved me a lot of time and worked as well as putting it directly on the throttle valve.

I arrived to Dimbo 1 a clock in the night and fell a sleep immediately.

/Johan