Today I Told My Mom About Our Hydrogen Hybrid

Hello again.

My journey into hybridism continues. I know that I have been telling you guys about my little hydrogen hybrid experiment, but I have been keeping it pretty much “mum” from everyone else.

You see, I am a university educated woman with a well paying professional career and I just didn’t want people to think that I had gone a little wacky. I didn’t want people to think that I had lost my mind and been hoodwinked by someone on the internet into spending my hard-earned money on some internet wacko’s hydrogen plans on a whim…

…so I kept it to myself.

Until today. Now that we have some solid numbers to quote…45 miles per gallon highway (or 6.5 litres/ 100kms)…and a comparison to make…my Aztec uses gas like a Vibe…I’m ready to tell people about it.

Now you don’t know my mother, but let’s just say that she’s a bit of a naysayer and to call her judgemental would be an understatement. Basically, I don’t tell her anything unless it is backed by fact, experts and years of reasearch. She is quick to say, “Now, why would you do that..?” etc..you get the picture.

Today, on Father’s Day, we were talking about our floundering economy and we got onto the topic of gas prices and inevitabley about my lengthy commute and large vehicle. I hesitated for a second before I told her, then, I looked at my husband, he gave me the nod, and I blurted it out:

‘Well actually, the Aztec is a hybrid now!”

“What?” replied my mother as if i were out of my mind.

“It’s a hybrid now, we made a generator, we put it in, I did the tests and now…we drive a hybrid. It gets the gas mileage of a Vibe!” said I without breathing.

“And it is cleaner for the environment and lengthens the life of your engine,” my husband piped in.

Suddenly mom was sitting forward. We went on to explain about the trials we had done, how we had made it, a basic discussion of how it works, and then she remarked,

“So I guess you are mainly driving the Aztec now.”

I couldn’t believe it!!! No,” kaycee, you’re an idiot!” No, “Are you out of your mind?” Just a simple comment, no judgement attached and we moved on.

I know she didn’t ask us to put one in her car, I know that she didn’t start talking about how we should start to sell them to all of her friends and I am quite positive she would never try to convince my dad to put one in his car, but at the very least, she didn’t call me a wack job, piss me off and leave me fuming. This is a good thing.

So, maybe I am a wack job, maybe I am a bit crazy but, I’ll tell you this much, I’m a wack job with a car that is way more fuel efficient is saving me oodles of money yearly (we figure about $1000) and I’m a crazy person who is releasing less crap into our atmosphere and reducing her carbon footprint. If this makes me a crazy wack job, then sign me up, I’ll wear the moniker with pride!!

Any other wack jobs out there who want to join the hydrogen revolution? Click here to learn more.  LOTS MORE!

Better Gas Mileage Trial Day Two-Hydrogen Generator Installed

Allow me to catch you up…a few weeks ago my husband and I decided that the gas prices were going to a high that was far too rich for our blood, so he ended up buying plans at the water 4 gas webstie and building his own hydrogen generator.

He has installed it into our 2002 Pontiac Aztec and i have been driving it back and forth to work (76 kms round trip- about 48 miles) to see if we noticed any changes. Yesterday I filled the tank as full as I could and drove to work, then straight back to the gas station where I did the same thing again. I used just under 5 litres of gas. This in itself is VERY exciting, but probably even more exciting is the fact that I did it again today WITHOUT the generator hooked up. I had to put a bit more gas in on today’s trip! Today I had to put in 8 litres of gas if you can believe it! I saved about three litres of gas on the trip!! This is incredible when you think about it because I only used 8!!! Therefore, I increased my gas mileage by about 40% by using the hydrogen generator!!

We did a little more math to figure out what this meant financially and came up with some pretty impressive numbers there too!! In one year, if we only drove the Aztec to and from work, we would save over $700 a year!! Of course, we drive it for much more than just work. It is our favourite vehicle and we thought that we would have to get rid of it!!

Not anymore! Now we have a hydrogen hybrid that is getting about the same mileage as a Ford Escape Hybrid at a fraction of the cost. I have always wanted a hybrid, but I never thought that I would have the opportunity to purchase one.

As an added bonus, we have also decreased our carbon footprint! The hydrogen generator allows us to burn our gas much more cleanly!

The water 4 gas plans are absolutely worth the money that you spend!! The instructions are so easy that I think our 5 year old could have built one!

If you would like to know more about the hydrogen generator and how to build your own, check out the best resource on the internet for more information.

Click Here to build your own hydrogen generator and join us in our journey to save money and the environment!!

I Drive a Hydrogen Hybrid Now…

I’m a cool kid now. I drive a hydrogen hybrid. And…I have even put my kids in the car with it! We put it in the car yesterday, but I drove it to work and back today. (That’s about a 1 hour round trip) Okay, so I didn’t really put it in the car, my husband did, but I drove it. Funny that, he builds it, he installs it and I am the guinea pig! I called him a lot on that first drive. I stopped once to check the gizmo and I was pleasantly surprised. It wasn’t at all hot to the touch when I opened the hood, and there was condensation in the right tube and it wasn’t in the tube where it wasn’t supposed to be. In a nutshell, the thing ran pretty smoothly.

Did my car run better like they claimed it would? I like to think so. It may have been psychological, but I certainly THINK it ran better. My husband drove it after me and had the same thoughts. It did seem quieter though, that is for sure. We both felt that. There is one thing for certain though, it didn’t LOSE any power. Its performance was still as good if not better. I rate the hydrogen hybrid performance an A+.

It’s a little too early to say whether the gas mileage is better with it in the car, but that is tomorrow’s tester. I will take the same trip twice, and tank up before I go, then, at the other end, then again when I get back. One way I will use the HHO, the other way, I will not. Then I will get at the very least a small idea as to what is better.

Oops, I just realised that this won’t work because we live at the top of a hill…the way down will be slightly more fuel efficient one would suppose! So, it will be a two day trial. Expect to see me back here on Friday night with the answer to everyone’s question…DOES THIS THING ACTUALLY WORK?

Probably the biggest hurdle and the only negative comments I’ve heard about the HHO generator has to do with the oxygen sensor. Cars that are older are much, much easier to convert with a lot more ovbious results since they weren’t built to be so fuel efficient. Basically, there’s more room for improvement. Newer vehicles, with their O2 sensors, which are sensing the amount of oxygen in the exhaust, will sense higher levels of oxygen in the exhaust and will signal for an increased amount of gasoline to burn in order to compensate. As you can well imagine, this is very counter productive to the idea of saving gas and it actually spends MORE gas.

Not to worry though, there are very wise people out there who have figured this out and have told all of us hybrid car wannabes how to fix it. There are a couple of ways. There is the “set it and forget it” way which is to cover the O2 sensor with something metalic, which allows it to heat up a bit more than it would normally, and it then, somehow (I’m a writer, not a mechanic!!!) this tricks the O2 sensor into leaning out the gas mixture-essentially, less gas is being sent to be burnt at any given time. This can be done with special bolts that some people are maufacturing, or, you can go utlra low tech which is what we have done and that is to wrap it in tin foil! We are actually waiting for our bolts to be made, and then we will switch out the foil for bolts.

The other way is to manually lean out your gas mixture with an electronic device they call an EFFIE device. This is a little box that is hooked up to the MAP and is wired through the firewall and onto your dashboard…it has a couple of dials on it and you can then lean out or richen your own gas mixture. We figure that this will actually increase fuel economy even further, but my husband can’t seem to “get at” the MAP in our car, so he hasn’t been able to hook it up yet, but it is in the works.

So, you now know all that I know about hydrogen hybrids. Let’s hope that this works, then, you can all go ahead and buy the plans, build your own and stick it to those stinkin’ oil companies..

Stay tuned for Friday’s installment on our hydrogen hybrid and the gas savings that we all hope I see!

Be well and good night!

K.C.

P.S. Need more info? Check this out.

How do you convert water to gas?

I have no idea! Well, I mean I don’t under the science behind converting water to gas, but I do understand that it can be done. I watched my husband do it in our very own basement last night. He ran a current through some wire that was submerged in water (which I have to admit seems a wee bit counter-intuitive) and all of these bubbles started rising to the surface. He channelled these bubbles to come out a small hose submerged in even more water…then, he lit those bubbles. They made quite a “crack”.

“That’s hydrogen,” said hubby. ( I may have detected a bit of pride in that voice)

“Hmmm-it’s a little unremarkable,” said I. “But I will be very amazed if I can run my Aztec and buy gas as if it were a Vibe.”

“Prepare to be astounded,” replied hubby.

So, what’s the big idea about the hydrogen anyway? I had to do some more research. Apparently this is my role in this whole project, do the research, filter out the crap and come up with some idea how this supposed to be done. So, as it turns out, cars don’t actually burn all that much of the gas that we’ve been pumping into them for all these years. In fact, they probably only burn about 20-30% of it, the rest of it just leaves the car as unburned fuel via our exhaust. All newer vehicles have been equipped with a catalytic converter in order to help burn off some of this unused fuel before it reaches our atmosphere. But get this, the energy created by the catalytic converter is not actually used to help move our cars! The sole purpose of the converter is to burn up unused gas. So, in theory, if we could figure out how to get our cars to USE more of the gas that we’ve already bought, the car would be able to travel further on a tank of gas. Now I don’t know about you, but this is pretty much the bottom line for me.

Anyway, this is where hydrogen enters the picture.

If you can create hydrogen and mix it with the gasoline that you already have in your car, then the hydrogen will actually aid in the burning of fuel.

The key is; how do you create hydrogen? As you well know, water is made up of two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom. So the hydrogen source is easy enough to get a hold of, but the key is to separate the hydrogen from the oxygen. Enter electricity. When you run an electric current through stainless steel this will divide the atoms and leave you with a gas known as HHO or Brown’s gas. This is the stuff that will turbo charge your engine and help it to burn its fuel more effectively. And this, in a nutshell, is how you convert water to gas.

So my husband has been in the basement wrapping wire around plexi glass, and stuffing it into a pvc pipe filled with distilled water (apparently the purer the water, the better the hydrogen production) and baking soda (catalyst). He can, indeed convert water to gas. The next trick will be putting it in the car.

If you would like to know more about hydrogen generation, we got our info here.

A Hydrogen Hybrid????

Have you heard about hydrogen hybrids? I hadn’t until just a few days ago when I was driving my gas guzzling mini van to work as usual, I drove past the gas station and almost…I said…almost…passed out. Dollar signs with little wings were fluttering by my eyes…alas. I have to change something here and FAST!

I got on the internet as I am wont to do and started researching various gas saving options. As far as I can tell these are the ones I have:

-buy a bike (this would be fine except that I live a wee bit further away from work than a bike would allow)

-buy a bus pass (sorry, I live in a rural area)

-Get a Smart Car (I have visions of the arms and legs of my husband and two children hanging out the windows at various angles)

-Buy a Hybrid. (When I do the calculations, I will be paying more in car payments than I will in gas!!)

This leaves me with very few options save selling our cars, working from home and never, ever going on a road trip. This, of course is not an option right now.

Then, I stumbled upon one more wee little thing. A Hydrogen Hybrid!! As I read the literature I just can’t believe how good this seems. You just put this device in your car, hook it up to your intake manifold and the next thing you know, you’re saving gas, cleaning your engine and emitting lower levels of environment harming gasses. Why doesn’t everyone just have this? How is it that we’ve gotten to a point in our society where it’s okay to hide such fantastic technology just to make money off of people.

Whatever the case, my husband has bought the plans and wants to put one in the car. Soon, we will be one of the few hydrogen hybrids on the road. My husband claims that we’re trailblazers!! I feel so ahead of the trend! LOL.

And I thought I wanted a car that drives on fry oil!! Why go for fry oil when I can go for water?

After spending oodles and oodles of time reading, I found this website to be basic, yet informative and right on track with their ability to dumb things down to my layman’s level.

Be well and wish me luck with my hydrogen hybrid!

I promise to keep you posted. (and post photos)

Kaycee