what is your opinion of conversion kits for using water for gas? Hoax???
total hoax
Scam, scam, Scam
You can fumigate your intake air with a water spray and get just a little more energy out of your gasoline under most driving conditions. Probably not enough to make up for the economy loss associated with carrying the extra weight of the water around with you.
The systems that use electricity from your charging system to dissociate the water in to hydrogen and oxygen and then burn the hydrogen and oxygen in the car are just silly. Even if you ignore the fact that any appreciable amount of hydrogen and oxygen would confuse your engine control system, you get exactly the same amount of energy from recombining (burning) the H2 and O2 that it took to dissociate it (remember high school physics?). If you use a 25% thermally efficient gasoline engine to turn the alternator to make the needed electricity, then you use an extra 4 Joules of gasoline energy to make 1 Joule of electrical energy. That 1 Joule of electrical energy makes something close to 1 Joule of chemical energy when it dissociates the water. When you put that 1 Joule of chemical energy into the engine (burn it) you get (at best) one of the four Joules of fuel energy that you spent to make the electricity.
I once suggested that the scam artists who sell these things should sell windmills to put on top of hybrid cars. Since they can sell technology that is unencumbered by the laws of physics, surely they could make a windmill that would turn at highway speed, charging the hybrid car battery as you drive. A perpetual motion machine!!! The energy crisis and global warming are solved!! I am waiting to see ads for this.
global warming is a scam as well
“Global warming is a scam as well.”
Not completely. Sorry to pirate this thread, but I am an environmental engineer, and I have been studying greenhouse gases for 20 years. I can make persuasive arguments for both sides if this debate, but in the end, I am concerned about the effects of the carbon we are digging out of the ground and putting into the atmosphere.
That being said, I live in California where the California Air Resources Board’s #1 priority is drafting regulations to solve “the climate crisis”. #2 is eliminating the mostly-imaginary health risks posed by diesel engines.
I monitor all of CARB’s workshops and rule development, and I am convinced that the only thing these people are going to cool is the economy.
I agree with bscar about global warming being a scam. It’s a political issue being cultivated by a bunch of hucksters who are using it to cash in on. There’s countless billions of dollars at stake.
Some may have noticed how this “global warming” issue is becoming a “climate change” issue. Ever wonder why? It’s because the facts are not backing up the “warming” part of that phrase so the’re trying to replace it with a generic term (climate change) that means nothing.
Climate change? Of course the climate changes. It has for 4.5 billion years so why stop now.
As I’ve mentioned before, my son is a climatologist (working with the greenhouse gas issue at the moment) and I source my info (dumbed down to my level) from him. Other sources of non-political climate info can be found at realclimate.org or icecap.org.
A number of years ago a ‘water 4 gas’ scam involved actually appearing to run a car on water. The scamster put calcium carbide in the gas tank. When he put water in atop it, it generated acetylene gas, which is highly flammable–but also highly corrosive & makes lots of nasty black smoke. The car appeared to be ‘running on water,’ and a lot of idiots actually bought stock in the ‘company’ the guy formed to make cars run on water.
U R right - a TOTAL SCAM! But a dern good way to get grant money if you’re clever enough to write up a proposal to study and combat “global warming”, but too shy to go on outright welfare. We were all supposed to be freezing to death all over the planet by now according to the newspapers of the 60’s. One expert of those times was quoted as saying that man will not go out with a bang but a whimper because of the ice age, which would be in full swing by the end of the 20th century. He didn’t say anything about women being affected by it, though. HMMMM. GLOBAL WARMING - SCAM-A-LAM-A-DINGDONG!
A hoax that has cycles,comes and goes with gas prices,and some people cannot be convinced that they are scams.The marketing efforts are getting very sophisticated and persistant. We here at Car Talk are slammed every day with supposedly genuine inquiries about these products,when the OP’s are looking for a free way to suck more people in