Hmm… I also have an EF 5spd. And enough tools to make a (very crude) vaporising fuel system. And enough long pointless highways to pull some good numbers out of.

Place bets on what I achieve anyone? (how about whether or not I actually do it?)

cya
Ben

Fair comment. Although it needs to be kept in mind that at 13kW, the engine is essentially at part load. Spark Ignition engines aren’t efficient at part load, thus your efficiency figure of 18% is possible.

One can use a “hot air intake” to increase throttle openings at part load, to reduce pumping losses, or you could use a smaller turbocharged engine which will produce the 13kW more efficiently.

Cheers!
Sami

If we need 13kw to drive this car @ 105km/hr, we need 44397 BTU/hr. Using wikepedia’s figure (regular US unleaded) of 34.8MJ/L, or 32,984 BTU/L, we then figure that we only need to burn 1.35L/hr to make our 13kw. And so only need 1.35L to do 100km, or 1.29L for 100km.

Or we can travel 77.5km on 1L of fuel. Which beats the 14.3km/l (7 L/100km) that the car is currently getting. For those imperially minded that means that the best possible economy is 181.8 MPG, as opposed to 33.6.

Of course this is never going to happen, as it assumes that we pointed fuel at the wheels and they converted all to movement with no losses whatsoever. But we are still only getting use of roughly 18% of the energy in the fuel. What happened to the 30% or so our engines are supposed to get? And what are they actually capable of?

Just a (long, complicated) thought.

cya
Ben