My 1990 Ford F

My 1990 Ford F-250 fuel injected 5.0L

My truck in the Lincoln Journal Star

My truck is a dual fuel truck. I can run on wood or gasoline. I am now working on a hybrid mode, I purchased a chip and chip burner from moates.net and am using Paul Booths ECC Editor to work with my fuel injection and spark tables to allow me to meter in some gasoline for better acceleration and to make up for any varying woodgas production conditions. Many thanks are due to Paul Booth for not only writing the ECC Editor program but for the time he personally put in making a definition file for my trucks ECC. The process of running in a hybrid mode is still in the development stages, I have met with some success. This page will be updated as things progress.

Update 5/8/08

Ran my truck for the last couple of days on elm. Runs great, I also have upgraded my chip for my truck, the new one has five memory banks. The hybrid mode works very well, I can change between the memory banks on the fly, this is very handy because I can switch between different woodgas/gasoline blends. By using my O2 sensor gauge, I can really tell the difference between each setting. I also made a 12v starter blower out of and old truck heater blower, it pulls enough suction to start my gassifer. I have previously been using a 110v blower for running tests flares and for starting. Using the 12v blower, I can start my truck on wood anywhere.

Update 5/19/08

I had a few minor difficulties with my new chip, mainly due to not taking the time to read the documentation carefully enough. I finally figured out how to program position zero, I keep accidentally going to this memory slot, and it had no data, the truck would not run period. I also had not figured out how to program all 16 memory banks as my switch came set to default of 5 slots plus the zero slot. Anyway a call to Craig Moates got me straightened out pretty quick. I now have the zero slot set and know how to get out of it. I also enabled 13 total slots and have programmed them, 1 gasoline plus 12 woodgas (and the extra zero slot is set for stock gasoline). I found the lower limit of my fuel injectors while using the 5 slots previously. Now I have three fuel hybrid modes set up, with 4 different spark advance settings. The fuel modes are set at 29 to 1, 34 to 1 and 40 to 1. The spark is set to an initial advance of 8 degrees and then incremented by 5 more degrees in each respective set. The last set has a spark advance of 23 more degrees than the gasoline table. This will allow me to test out what spark advance runs best under a given fuel situation.

I desperately need to add more filtration to my system. Thank goodness I bought the high quality air filter, it was black on one side and white on the other. It really did a good job of catching the soot but $10 filters are a lot more expensive than more hay. I figure I need to add at least 70 more gallons of hay filter, two 35 gallon drums. I think I will take out the back fuel tank and put them in it's place but I need to find a cheep source for open top 35 gallon drums.

Update 5/22/08

Spark advance progress!!! GOD I love this EFI computer, I have found a sweat spot, enough initial advance that the trucks computer advances the timing perfectly for straight woodgas, but not too much so it retards the timing when running hybrid. The advance is about 13 degrees of additional advance (not including the 10 degrees of stock advance). I say 'about' because, I have yet to put a timing light on the truck to verify my stock advance setting is still at 10 degrees. The distributor was rotated by hand before I had my chip to advance the timing, so it is bound to be off a few degrees.

I put about 70 miles on my truck yesterday, just testing different settings and taking some people for rides, including my daughter who loves to just go cruising around on wood with her dad. I actually ran my truck completely out of wood, so I have to restock my charcoal bed in the morning.

My local newspaper got wind of my project and came out the day before yesterday and did an interview. I think it went pretty well, I'll put up a link to the story when it hits the press.

Update 5/23/08

Had a doctors appointment in Lincoln today. I drove mostly on wood but did run hybrid mode on the highway, the leanest setting though. I did find that my truck runs a little better on strait wood with an additional 5 degrees of timing advance, 17 degrees of additional advance, but it was too much advance to run decent in hybrid mode. I had to retard the timing to 13 degrees of additional advance to get the full benefit of metering in some gasoline. After my doctors appointment, it only took couple of minutes or so with the 12v fan to get the gassifer stoked back up. I stopped at Kmart and had an even faster startup time when I came back to the truck. I was in Kmart a lot less time though. I almost always start my drive in hybrid mode, this allows me to get moving while the gassifer is still on the lower end of the woodgas production, needs to be tar free gas though. It is pretty interesting how well my truck runs on a hybrid mode. The ECC computer automatically leans out the gasoline as I enrich the woodgas mixture, only to a certain point though but I just move the data bank to the next leaner setting and then when I am cruising decent I shut off the fuel pump and enrich the last bit with woodgas. It works pretty slick really. The next setting on my switch is the extra 5 degrees of advance so once I am cruising on wood I can add the extra 5 degrees. One click back and I am ready for the lowest hybrid mode again.

I checked my new air filter before leaving it is already sooty, I need to add more filtration. I wish I could locate some 35 gallon open top drums locally. They would fit nicely under my truck where the extra gasoline tank is now. Doubt I am going to be needing two gasoline tanks anymore.