Comments on: Smokey Yunick’s Hot Vapor Fiero; 51 mpg and 0-60 in less than 6 Seconds! See and hear it run in our exclusive VIDEO!

By: Eric

Eric — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 04:12:34 +0000

Back in 1972 my father bought one of these, Pratt & Whitney army truck that ran really fast for the size of the truck. My brother & I installed it into an army jeep we had on the farm, the jeep would go over 100 mph. & was getting around 55 mpg.. We had a ball with this set up for over 6 years, then sold it to a guy with a logging truck. He said it was the best engine he had ever had in one of his trucks.

By: Olmon

Olmon — Sat, 06 Aug 2011 17:20:27 +0000

Smokey’s work isn’t the only work in the area of increasing HP & MPG the is kept from the public. Back in the late 70s, Pratt & Whitney developed a twin rotor, turbo-charged & stratified charge, multi fuel motor, approx physical size comparable to a SBC, for the military that would, according to the R&D reports I read, produce 700HP on pump gas & 35MPG when installed in a 2Ton Military truck cruising @ 60MPH. I saw the R&D reports when I was working for a company that did exclusively prototype work back at that time, but have NEVER seen any reference to it online or anywhere else. (& I’ve looked) Can you imagine the performance & economy that would produce in a typical passenger vehicle??

By: Mike Pelly

Mike Pelly — Sat, 06 Aug 2011 06:05:57 +0000

The key words here are, adiabatic and homogeneous. Smokey (and Pogue) engines reuse exhaust heat to pre-heat the vaporized and homogenize the solution of incoming air and vaporized gasoline. Gasoline will not burn well unless it is surrounded with an adequate amount of oxygen. Hence the homogenization. Brilliant how Smokey devised a way of doing this task.
Yes there is an optimal proportion of air/fuel mixture everyone knows and speaks of, When this mixture is homogeneously mixed as completely as Smokey managed to do, than such engines no longer require catalytic converters except on starting and warming up, Possibly also to tackle NOx, but not for hydrocarbons. If todays state of the art engines did actually burn this thoroughly and completely, we likely would not need to equip engines with catalytic converters, Cats only burn un-burnt fuel on a conventional gasoline SI engines. Adiabatic engines use this extra energy to increase MPGs.
Think about how the only few similarities between the first cars over 100 years ago and new ones built today are. Both examples have round wheels and pistons and both vehicles introduce their gasoline as a liquid. Vaporized gasoline is an innovation that deserves the light of day.
Smokey did R&D testing for GM so I’m sure they knew what he had and just chose to ignore it.

By: Gene Climer

Gene Climer — Fri, 05 Aug 2011 05:45:51 +0000

Yes, exactly. Of course the homoginizer is a turbo. It’s function is to act like a reed valve, a one way valve to keep the expanding intake charge from backfiring. It has to generate enough boost at low RPMs to offset the intake manifold pressure. It also acts more like an ordinary turbo when the intake charge is moving too fast for the thermal transfer to actually expand the intake charge. I really don’t think Smokey was a BS’r. When he said something, he meant it. When he did something, he did it. When he gave up on Nascar and especially on Indy to work on this motor, I have to think it was for a reason and not some kind of BS scam. You can dismiss it if you want.

By: brad

brad — Fri, 05 Aug 2011 01:09:54 +0000

ahh ya well i know it shows a turbo but its refered to as a homoginizer so im assuming that it was meant to not boost at all but i believe that it would be to what extent i dont know though. interesting way to build a motor none the less and over doubling the output at that.

By: Gene Climer

Gene Climer — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 23:30:53 +0000

Brad, if you looked at the invention disclosure, you’d see the turbo. So, no problem there. The idea of this motor is not to get more HP, although he did that. The idea was to make it more efficient. In doing that, he made both more HP and used less fuel. Less energy in and more usable HP and you have it in a nutshell. The engine is a closer approximation to an Adiabatic engine then the typical TBI, EFI or DI gasoline engine. A closed loop wideband EFI system could be retofitted and bring Smoky’s engine into the 21st century. That and a couple more innovations I have in mind ought to make it almost bullet proof to boot. Gene

By: brad

brad — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 12:02:41 +0000

i dont buy it. i love fieros but i wanna see the dyno numbers. that and this is a turboed motor theres no way it cannot be, the one big difference is that instead of pushing air thru the carb its pulling it thru. and turboed dukes are not unheard of rare but not nonexsistant. this basicly utilizes a warm air intake on an equvilant tbi engine today. only theres no computer to regulate fuel consuption and this does it by vaporizing it before its sucked into the engine whereas a tbi would read the airflow and inject accordingly. also to add 4.9 v8;s from the cadillacs have thier fuel injected ontop of the valves thus accomplishing the same thing more effectivly and they get around 30 mpg with nice torqe and hp. and to add even further the 4 cyl fieros were already rated at 40mpg by gm which i do find a little high for the time but not out of the question so 10 mpg gain isnt that impressive and would easly be obtianed by a cam, tire and cold air intake change. as for the claimed horsepower i say agian show me dyno sheets or a video would be more convincing and ill buy it but untill then im thinking this is a little out there.

By: Fastjeff

Fastjeff — Wed, 01 Jun 2011 16:12:12 +0000

Smokey explained his “trick” that prevents detonation in HVC engines in his book. He said that gasoline–any gasoline–has a wide range of octane numbers for its various constituents: about 30 octant numbers. (In other words, ‘these’ molecules right here are 80 octane, where those over there are 103.) The concept he used was to RAPIDLY vaporize the gas BEFORE the lower octane constituents could cause trouble–it’s all there in his book.

Fastjeff

By: Insane gas mileage!!! - S-10 Forum

Insane gas mileage!!! - S-10 Forum — Tue, 03 May 2011 11:08:17 +0000

[...] Insane gas mileage!!! Ol' Smokey's Hot Vapor Iron Duke got 51 MPG.. http://www.legendarycollectorcars.co…clusive-video/ From just reading the link, and accompanying articles, you can gain some insight. There is an [...]

By: Brian

Brian — Wed, 27 Apr 2011 18:19:58 +0000

Most people miss one of the primary reasons the “Hot Vapor Engine” get the milage it does. It is the exact same reason a diesel engine gets better mileage then a conventional spark ignition engine, but not the only reason. While most focus on the thermal effency of combustion, which the H.V.E. is considerably better at, the other aspect is missed (not by Smokey). And the aspect is that the vacuum in the intake is reduced or eliminated.
When a conventional (read not diesel) is driven at crusing speed the engine generates a fair amount of vacum that is constently leaked to the atmostphere thru the throttle plates. This vacuum is not free, but must be created by the pistons sucking the air out of the intake. It is wasted by just filling it in thru the throttle. In the H.V.E. most of the vacuum is eliminated by heating the air in the intake and expanding it, in fact the air is expanded so much Smokey wisely put a check valve on the intake to hold it in. (see page 28 of the Hot air engine report) And this of course is the turbo. As he states the Turbo is small because it does not have to do much but keep the air from going back out after it is heated.

By: James

James — Fri, 22 Apr 2011 18:18:32 +0000

This all reminds me of my step dad’s tinkering with alcohol vapor fed into a re-calibrated propane conversion kit for a 6cyl Ford Econoline. He had the exhaust vaporizing alcohol but never got the expansion of the vapor managed – the van got t-boned and the project stalled.

The van got 80 mph on a cruise at static speeds but once there was a demand more fuel, raw alcohol ran right through the vaporizer and flooded the engine.

All you back yard engineers need to be locked in the same room for while.

By: mike

mike — Thu, 14 Apr 2011 19:51:47 +0000

Do we need to see these engines on the Big 3 showroom floors before we turn Smokey’s innovation into reality? Have we become that adapted to group thinking? There have been many products and innovations that never made it to the market place because of the threat these innovations pose to the ‘Powers That Be’, (read oil companies and car companies). The Fish carburetor, Tucker car are two right off the top of my head. Smokey’s technology will never make it into new cars if folks working in their shops don’t lead the way and Build them first! Lets shame the car companies into using this technology. Smokey did R&D work for GM and he was not even able to get GM to use his design. We’ll likely see this technology incorporated by some hungry car manufacturer in China or India before GM gets their head out of their asses. We are living in a world facing Global Climate Change. Decreasing supplies of oil and other natural resources are causing wars and conflicts and much pain and suffering to people around the world. Right now we’re witnessing an unprecedented Nuclear Meltdown in Japan. If the time is not now for thinking outside the box, than we surely are doomed for our short sighted thinking and fodder for extinction. Tinkerers and shade tree engineers lets bring this technology Smokey Yunick, Charles Pogue and others have developed and let it see the light of day in the 21st century.

By: Al Bore

Al Bore — Thu, 14 Apr 2011 16:56:26 +0000

Most US engines until the elimination of lead additives did not have removable hardened valve seats and until the car makers started using better materials in their cylinder heads did this problem exist.
There used to be in Sunoco 260 leaded gas at the time advertised as the highest Octane pump gas you could buy, 6 Grams of tetra-ethyl lead in every gallon, so after a while you had pumped quite a few pounds of lead thru your motor and out into the air, Chlorine and Bromine were added also to the leaded gas to act as “scavengers” to keep the crankcase cleaner but they mixed with water vapor and became acids that dissolved away the exhaust system. have any of you ever seen a swimming pool cleaner guys truck bead? that’s why that lead poison was banned from gasoline.
The lead acted as a shock absorber between the valve and the seat to prevent early head failure on those old lead burning junk motors.
Cheap gasoline motors converted to Natural and Propane gas fueled motors sometimes experienced exhaust valve recessing where the valve would pound itself further and further into the head material. the seats were just cut into the the cast iron of the head.
Back in the 60′s I used only Amoco super premium “White Gas” Unleaded gasoline in my cars and after 195,000 miles my 69 Opel Cadette Rallye 1.9 litre motor was still running great with no loss of performance. and it still had all of it original exhaust system intact.
Some motors then were just plain cheap junk and some were much better. I did not have any exotics to find out.

By: olmon

olmon — Wed, 13 Apr 2011 07:53:07 +0000

One of the problems with running a motor in those temperature ranges is valve life. Back in the 50s there was a carb that would give fantastic fuel economy on any vehicle. It worked using heat to vaporize the fuel and it DID work, however, valve life (from what I have heard) was in the 5/6k range. I know that there are materials now that can withstand the heat and still function, but those materials aren’t cheap. I rather suspect that is part of the reason for this not going into production.

By: Doug O

Doug O — Wed, 06 Apr 2011 18:47:31 +0000

Wanted to add that I’m making special spark plugs, modifying some now that will enable spark plugs to last longer due to the plasma’s endothermic heating.

6-8k is the normal lifespan of a Modified Champion solid core plug. And with the fuel savings it’s still worth changing them out and paying the labor if your vehicles plugs arent over an hour to change.

The average is a third in fuel savings.

I am working on several designs that throw plasma into the cylinder using Lorentz force.

Thank you for the inspiration, I don’t think I never woulda known who Smokey was unless I found this site awhile back.

It’s one of the reasons why Im starting this business. Everyone deserves this and cheap.
Big oil HAS TO GO DOWN.

By: Doug O

Doug O — Wed, 06 Apr 2011 18:38:41 +0000

Has Ralph or anyone else experimented with these yet?
Plasa ignition modules?

Cheapest horsepower you can buy IMO. Yes I drag raced and learned from spending what power you can get at what price, this is it.

Please do check this out.

I have posted here before, this box when turned on brings your rpms up 50-125 with the flip of the switch(draws less than 3 amps on).

Over 30 percent increases in fuel mileage,power,almost NO emissions or none at all(depends on engines condition pre install). Pretty amazing stuff;)

Doug

By: Gene Climer

Gene Climer — Wed, 06 Apr 2011 15:42:40 +0000

Ralph does not waste his time chatting up wanna-bee garage mechanics about Hot Vapor Engines. Ralph tends to avoid such people like the plague. First, he has to think you have something between your ears. Then you have to pass some test of which I have not made is past yet. Of course, I am not sure I have made it past the first test.

If I lived near Ralph, it would sure be an honor and a priveledge to work under him and with him and to learn some small percentage of what he knows.
Gene Climer

Gene

By: Al Bore

Al Bore — Wed, 06 Apr 2011 06:48:07 +0000

Ralph Johnson is still around with some of what smokey knew in his head.
Does Ralph participate in these forums?

By: Steve

Steve — Tue, 05 Apr 2011 23:24:04 +0000

Surely patent rights cannot be an impediment any longer. Those patents would long since have expired. And the Chinese would steal the idea regardless.

So why won’t anyone build this?

By: Gene Climer

Gene Climer — Sun, 03 Apr 2011 06:27:09 +0000

Yes, when I said atomization, I meant vaporization. Sorry about my slang terms I am slinging around here. The turbo does not do the boosting, it does the homoginizing. It also acts as like a one way check valve to hold the pressure (Boost) generated by the expanding constituents of gasoline. This is where the pressure increase in the intake comes from, which is the work being done by the thermal efficiency increase. The waste exhaust heat performs work on the intake, and the cooling effect of gthe vaporization (Like and AC system) cools off the exhaust. It is not just about thermal efficiency, though the thermal heat/cool exchange is critical, it is the sum of all these things simultaneously. What do you buy to increase the octane of gas? Toluene. Toluene is already there in the gasoline and it expands at a different temperature than the other parts. You have to look at the chemical process going on here to see the whole masterful puzzle that he solved. Toluene is the key. Gene

By: Al Bore

Al Bore — Sun, 03 Apr 2011 04:39:17 +0000

Remember this system does not work on “Atomization” but is rather a heated fuel “Vaporizer” and air/fuel vapor “Homogenization” delivery system thereby mixing all of the different constituents of the gasoline compound blend thoroughly.
I may be wrong about the positive manifold pressure being the reason for no pre-ignition.
After reading the hot rod article above again, it became obvious that the answer is that the complete vaporization and homogenization of all fuel present is what stops the knock which is caused by uneven fuel conditions in the combustion chamber leading to chaotic flame propagation or “Knock”.
The details about the reliability issues were interesting and understandable what with the junk late 1970′s low buck engine that smokey was using and adapting to his apparatus. I am sorry that crane was not able to pull all the problems together to offer some kind of kit to the public.
the engine management principles detailed in the 2010 Hot Rod article above will make this concept come to pass but only if skin flint Detroit does not have to pay license fees to use them. I hope I am wrong.
I also hope that the Yunick family is still somehow able to capitalize on Ralph and Smokey’s efforts.
My background is one of having grown up in and around my Fathers Propane gas business in the Tampa Florida area where all of the company vehicles were propane fueled and conversions were sold and made to customers equipment. that provided me an early knowledge of heated fuel vaporization techniques and the advantages of that system over Atomization as in non heated systems like carburetors and fuel injection.
an example is that the engine lubricants never got dirty or diluted with condensed unburned fuel caused from ring blow by.

By: Gene Climer

Gene Climer — Sat, 02 Apr 2011 06:30:47 +0000

That is the secret. If you knew that answer, you’d understand what Smokey did. It has to do with the composition of gasoline. You need to know the parts that make up gasoline and what they do when you heat them up enough to atomize them. Trust me, CNG does not behave the same as these various constituent parts of gasoline as you heat it up. Therein lies the secret mystery that Smokey would not talk about. Gene

By: Al Bore

Al Bore — Sat, 02 Apr 2011 04:19:24 +0000

I wrote most of this back in 2009 and updated this for your questions. you may find some answers here.

Al Bore says:
August 7, 2009 at 7:43 pm

Smokey was the master of common sense and looking at what others WONT SEE! Smokey has seen about every kind of fuel delivery system there is and he simply and elegantly used his gift of observation to whip the problems that he overcame. This system does not depend on ATOMIZATION! But instead employs VAPORIZATION, bypassing the change of a Liquid into tiny unevenly sized fuel droplets(Atomizatation) By Vaporization of the air fuel blend Smokeys Hot Vapor Engine is an adaptation of the system used on PROPANE Fuel engines where the unvaporized liquid propane is vaporized with the engines hot cooling system . Smokey increased the Thermal Efficency of the Gasoline engine by utilizing the wasted heat from the exaust and coolant to EXPAND, Vaporize and Homoginize the air fuel Mixture. the articles that I have read show that the increased heat utilization allowed a radiator of a much smaller area than original.
This is what keeps the hot Vapor from auto igniting: The turbo also pressurizes the mixture thereby increasing the temp of autoignition and preventing it from backing out of the intake as the engine reaches operating temperture .
An article in Pop Mechanics in the eighties also showed photos not seen elsewhere of some trick heads that Smokey crafted with extremely angled Intake valves to promote some kind of wild swirl action in the Combustion Chamber possibly leading to NO Pre-ignition. also the lack of worries about pre-ignition allowed the compression ratio to be raised considerably and resulted in great increases in HP and Torque per cubic inch.
The Big Car Co.s have spent billions to curcumvent other inventors patents and thats why Smokeys patents have not been used because his patents are unable to be defeated or copied around his patents to be utilized.
after all, the last thing that Big Oil and Car co’s want is a car that does not wear out as fast, is less complicated and uses less fuel products.
Smokey did not wait for the Detroit crew to make it happen.
HE DID !!!!

By: Steve

Steve — Fri, 01 Apr 2011 16:02:01 +0000

One question has been bothering me for some time: If the idea is complete atomization of the fuel, then why don’t natural gas-powered vehicle have more power? I know natural gas has less energy content than gasoline, but the air/fuel mixture is perfectly atomized with CNG. Why the huge difference between that approach and Smokey’s??

And why won’t some car MFR adopt this technique with gasoline back to $4+ per gallon? Are there safety issues?

By: Turbo Iron Duke? - Page 3 - S-10 Forum

Turbo Iron Duke? - Page 3 - S-10 Forum — Sat, 19 Feb 2011 05:50:22 +0000

[...] Re: Turbo Iron Duke? Call Smokey Yunick, he did it in a Fiero….. With a Carb, imagine what you could do with SFI? http://www.legendarycollectorcars.co…clusive-video/ [...]