2007-10-26 - 28

Being a 65 years old war veteran and doing a long trip around Sweden is good job for a gas producer. It finally had enough when I executed a couple of fuel tests running on bark. The car stopped and I saw that the sheet metal was all read of heat on the outside of the producer. I guessed that this was the end for this reduction zone.

I went to a friend and borrowed his lift to get the inner mantle out of the producer. It was exactly what I had expected. The hearth had cracked and the reduction zone got bent. Probably by getting over heated.

A couple of days later, they called from the Swedish National Television, and asked if we could participate in a show with the car. They show was about a race with environmental friendly cars. It sounded really fun so I accepted the challenge. This also meant that I really had to hurry, to repair the producer. Also the clutch was still not replaced and it was time for the every year inspection of the car.

I called my friend Sven in Mora. Sven has a wood gas truck and he also happened to have a spare cone for the producer. I went to Sven as fast as I could and the cone looked good but had a too large restriction hole. There are not too many spare parts for producers from WWII any more so I bought the cone for a good prise and headed for home.

I started to remove the old cone. My workshop has a limited set of tools, so the angel grinder has to do most of the job when cutting is necessary. The metal was about 10 mm thick and it took quite long time to get throw. Making it round made it even more difficult.

Then it was time for cutting the new cone to make it fit in the producer. This one was even thicker and I make that poor angel-grinder suffer for 1½ hour. I have started to buy expensive high quality discs for the angel grinder, and this has proven to be a good investment. I can use about 2½ regular disks on a high quality disk.

The cone is made of some kind of cast iron, which makes it more difficult to weld. To stop the peaces from cracking when welding, they should be heated up and slowly cooled down. I didn’t have a torch, big enough, so I had to make my own. I used a vacuum cleaner and put the housing on the blowing side. I then built a furnace with a big pipe sticking out. The vacuum cleaner was connected to the furnace to support the fire with air. I loaded the furnace with wood and lit it. There was a good flame coming out, producing lots of heat.

I tack-welded the pieces together and put them on the flame. As the pieces got hot I welded them together and let them slowly cool down.

The next problem to solve was the too large restriction hole. A too large restriction makes the process too cold and that lets tar through the system, which can damage the engine. I went up to a friend of mine, who has a lath. He made a ring for me that shrank the restriction hole from 115 mm to 88 mm. The old cone had a 90 mm restriction.

Micke came up from Stockholm to help me lift the mantle with the new cone into the producer. We replaced the asbestos seals with mounting paste for exhaust pipes. It looked really good and we were very exited to see if it would work. But first we had to replace the clutch and the failing brake. We went to the automobile-repairer to get some help because of the lack of time. This was on a Saturday. By Thursday, the car should be repaired, inspected and driven a far distance to the south of Sweden where the race was to be held.

We succeeded with the repairs and took a small test run. The car ran extremely well and it was such a relief.

/Johan