OP, are you serious??? A vehicle can/does run without outside source of electricity, as long as the battery stays up.
OP, are you serious??? A vehicle can/does run without outside source of electricity, as long as the battery stays up.
Re-read what the OP is asking. Heâs asking can a car run without any electricity at allâŠeven itâs own internal electricity.
Wasnât there a TV program about that last year.
Without electricity, OP isnât even opening the doors in a modern car. This discussion really emphasizes how important electricity is from the pumps that pump gas into the car to the computer that manages it to ALL the controls and dials that monitor and control it. Electricity is more important then the gasoline as you canât even get the gasoline to the motor without it.
Though I know of no diesel in cars and trucks that donât use electricity, but to avoid EMP damage ( if there is anything to it to begin with) you could fabricate a diesel car with all mechanical and hydraulically operating components gauges and perhaps a compressor with air storage for a special stating motorâŠbut why ? You need a valid reason for such an exercise of which there is NONE NOW. Now, a steam carâŠthatâs a thought.
AhâŠthe EMP scenario.
I posted something similar after reading One Second After. I thought that âdead carsâ were unlikely after folks realized what happenedâŠtheyâd take magnetos off of lawn equipment, jury rigs carbs, and have poorly-running transportation for as long as the gas lasted.
Popular opinion was that it was moot; 99% of us would be dead before folks got to engine work.
Wow! Thanks for the ideas and conversation on this. Shadowfax, you are correct, but I am going to have to have to give the nervous system a pass so the main character can actually be born and live. Ken Green, you nailed it. It is not just about the battery and starting the car. I need a car that runs without any electricity, whether its from a battery or its self-generated.
So am I hearing everyone correct - the answer is an old diesel truck? Having someone start the car far enough away may work, but thatâs kind of a cheat. Is there any way to start it without electricity? How about a hand crank? Or is the crank actually generating electricity?
Have any favorite old diesel truck brands?
Thanks again all, Iâm blown away by the response.
Dan
Regarding diesels, electricity will be required to heat glow plugs and if you got around that issue a diesel engine would then need a manual fuel shutoff to stop it.
It would be pretty tough to hand crank a diesel considering the compression ratio of most of them.
You need to state, black and white, EXACTLY what you want to know.
âeverywhere the main character is, no electricity worksâ
I understand that as meaning that all of the power generating stations are off line and no homes/businesses have electricity . . . aka a remote island
But if the battery in the car is fully charged, the main character will be able to drive around
Do you mean to say the priniciple of electricity simply does not exist in the book?
Not everybody will read your post and understand it the way you meant it to be understood . . .
There are few diesel generators ( maybe a one lunger ) you can start with a crank so truks are out of the question. Arnold Swartz. we ainât. You would need to jury rig some kind of compressor tank filled while the motor runs to supply enough powerâŠand who makes a compressed air starter ? What is wrong with electricity ? Do we have some kind of adversity to it ?
Thanks db4690. What I am saying is that no electricity can be generated around the main character and no electrical device can work. So a car that needs electricity while it runs would not work in the presence of the main character. If an old diesel car does not use electricity while it runs, that would work. It seems like I cannot get around needing electricity to start the car, so the suggestion that it be started away from the main character is the only choice.
For those of you who want a little more about the book, the idea is that the main character is living in a parallel reality along side our reality. His reality is devoid of electricity. Itâs as if he is living in the 18th century within the 21st century. Along with this car research, I am brushing up on my quantum physicsâŠ
Dan
@DanCitizenâthere was an article in the April 1956 issue of Popular Electronics (a periodical that is now defunct) about contra-polar electrical energy. The contra-polar device caused the device plugged into it to do just the opposite of what it was supposed to do. For example, a desk lamp was plugged in and the area that would normally be lit was pitch black. A soldering iron plugged into the device produced icicles from the moisture in the air. The article was written in keeping with the first day of Aprilâit was entirely bogus. However, maybe contra-polar electricity is what you are looking for.
@DanCitizen - I can think of no way to get around the âhas to have somebody else start the truckâ issue. As has been said both a starter and glow plugs are required to start any diesel big enough to power a truck or car. But like I said, folks keep diesels running for days at a time, thatâs not an issue.
An old Benz stick shift Diesel, a D-240 something like that, could be always parked on a hill and bump-startedâŠ
Not without glow plugs, if itâs cold, I would think. Especially an old Benz with less than great compression.
The Cummins ISB engine has no glow plugs, it uses a grid to heat the intake air but is unnecessary in warm weather. The 1989-1997 Dodge/Cummins pickups use a mechanical fuel lift pump, later years are electric. The fuel-cut solenoid will have to be operated manually. You will need a hill to get it started (with manual transmission).
It may be possible to start old diesel cars with inoperative glow plugs with a shot of a flammable spray like carburetor cleaner.
I had assumed you were writing about a modern-day wizard and was going to point you at the Harry Dresden series for how driving cars has been dealt with by authors in the past. Then I saw the parallel universe idea. Youâre at a big disadvantage - - fantasy writers are under no obligation to ground their stories in physical reality. Sci-fi writers are burdened with figuring out how their imaginary contrivances work 
Iâm afraid that as you brush up on quantum physics, youâre going to discover that electrical charges are, quite literally, the basis for all matter in the universe. Without electrical charges, atoms would not exist.
What Iâm getting at is that if youâre going for a bubble of alternate reality within our universe that is so completely alien to our universe, AND you want it to be scientifically accurate, it will either have an electricity analog that does the same thing as electricity so that its atom analogs can exist, or it will have absolutely nothing in it whatsoever - a completely dead reality with no recognizable matter at all including your protagonist. Were he to enter this parallel reality, he would immediately disintegrate as his body flew apart at the atomic level. His electrically-charged protons and electrons, which only stay together because of their opposite electrical charges, would fly apart at astonishing speeds (blasting his neutrons along with them like pool balls in the break).
âno electricity can be generatedâ
Gotta have spark for a gasoline powered engine
Gotta have battery voltage for the glow plugs on a diesel engine
Iâd say internal combustion engines are not a possibility in this book
Check out these bad boys
http://www.ingersollrandproducts.com/am-en/products/air-starters
Electricity canât be separated out from a whole range of related physical phenomena. The world would fall apart quite dramatically without electrical and magnetic forces. Your car (which wouldnât work) wohldnât matter since youâd be dead, the world would be pelted ith cosmic rays, the weather would be all screwed up, and a billion other hard-to-predict effects. But youâd be dead. Someone elseâs problem. But theyâd be dead, too.
Gee, think you can get a diesel to start, sans glow plugs, with ether or other high-centane fuel. Not at -20F,maybe, but enough of the time. Also, there are means of introducing heat to an engineâŠchase threads in a chunk of copper, stick it the hole the glow plugs came out of, hit it with a torch? (Although the spark of flint on steel IS electricity, technically.)
Static electricity opens another can of worms. Is the protagonist immune to lightning? If so, are others aware of this, and how does it affect how they treat him?
Might I suggest you read Jack Chalkerâs âWell Worldâ series? In that series there are âhigh techâ, âlow techâ, and âno techâ areas (arranged on the surface of a planet in hexagons) as well as magic and no magic areas) In high tech areas, our familiar world operates. In low tech, only steam and mechanical items work. In no tech, only muscle power works. Youâll have to read the series for more details, but a decent read overall if you like sci-fi.
If electricity completely stopped working, so would the universe itself in actuality, but assuming it just wouldnât flow in the means weâre used to, or couldnât be generated or stored, youâd be stuck with steam power or primitive diesels. A magneto would not work. I think the whole concept has been pretty much done to death in the âSteampunkâ genre.
Rudolph Dieselâs engines had no glow plugs and were started manually. I can imagine many generations of diesels were built before electric start and/or glow plugs came into play.
Is this book going to be grounded in reality or fiction.