With the price of fuel being what it is and what it will be, I've taken some steps to help ease the pain. Here in Panama, fuel costs seem to run about 30 to 40 cents a gallon more. Diesel is cheaper here and runs around $3.88 a gallon as of this writing. Some of you know that I have been experimenting blending used vegetable oil with kerosene and gasoline. This works pretty well and I have two vehicles running on the stuff right now. My 2002 Hyundai Galloper runs solely on the blend. No loss of power or other side effects observed. That's over 50,000 kilometers or about 30,000 miles more or less. My Nissan Frontier 3.0 liter turbo diesel likes the blend mixed with diesel at about a 50-50 mix.

The latest thing is a Brown's gas booster. Briefly the booster is nothing more than electrolysis in water. This breaks water down to hydrogen, oxygen, a little steam. The hydrogen and oxygen get channeled into the intake manifold and aid in combustion. I've done this on the Galloper already and have seen some pretty impressive results.

I did two runs and checked the mileage on the Galloper. Saturday from the house to Chupampa, a distance of 258.5 km or 172.81 miles, the Galloper took 5.93 gallons. This figures out to 43.591906 km to the gallon or 29.141653 miles to the gallon. No tweaking involved on the smack's (Brown's Gas) booster. (Note: when I took the Galloper to Gorgona to visit John Bennett, I got 39.5 km to the gallon with just blend.)

Today I drove from the house to David, no a/c on the way down. Ac was turned on after lunch across the street from Panamotor at Pollos a la leña. All in all typical stop and go in David and regular motion on the Pan American. For a measured distance of 100.8 km or 67.21 miles, the Galloper took 1.46 gallons. This figures out to 69.0410196 km per gallon or 46.041096 miles per gallon. I tweaked the electrolyte solution with a little more lye. Temp of the generator went up. I estimate about 130 degrees F. Current draw was set at about 7 amps cold. Current draw at fill up was about 10 to 12 amps.

So Virginia, the Brown's gas deal really works.

Without further ado, some pictures.

The blue topped thing is a water filter with some spaced stainless steel plates connected to the two screws with wing nuts. One positive & one negative. Notice the clear case of the filter. No gas is being produced in this photo. The clear tube running under the radiator hose goes into the intake manifold. the clear plastic box to the right of the filter/booster is a bubbler which scrubs the gas coming from the booster before it gets to the intake manifold. The bubbler prevents a backfire from blowing up the booster. One more thing, the round blue piece of plastic that has clear hose coming out and going into the bubbler is a one way check valve.

View of top of the filter/booster. The elbow on top of the booster allows distilled water to be added as needed. To the right of the booster is the bubbler. The black box with the tie straps is a pulse width DC motor control which allows the current to be adjusted flowing through the booster. We mix a little lye (potassium hydroxide or sodium hydroxide) in distilled water and that covers the plates in the booster. When current is passed through the booster, Hydrogen & Oxygen make their way through the bubbler and into the intake manifold. The conductivity of the booster is affected by the amount of lye in the distilled water. Too much and this baby will cook. Too little and not so much gain in fuel economy.

This picture shows the contents of the booster with gas being produced. Notice how the water looks milky. Actually it's tiny gas bubbles. That is a result of electrolysis breaking down the water into hydrogen & oxygen.