Greetings y'all --
My name is Dennis McQuerry. I'm a retired research scientist who worked at the Pacific Northwest National Lab since 1980 -- initially at their Marine Sciences Lab in Sequim, WA, then at the main facility here in Richland, WA for the past 30 years. I grew up in Palo Alto, CA and moved to the Olympic Peninsula with my wife after a brief trip to Vietnam (72-73) and a bit of grad school.
I'm a complete newbie when it comes to speed racing. I was directed to this site by my friend, MiltonP, of Oxcart Racing. And to be entirely honest, my interest in speed racing is probably a bit different from most of you. I'm producing a documentary on the gasification of biomass. As a demonstration of the technology -- and in an attempt to keep the film moderately interesting -- I'm hoping to set a new land speed record for a gasifier-fueled vehicle. In order to fund that effort, I'm resorting to Kickstarter.com in the hope that we can raise $26K to cover production costs and vehicle upgrades. If you're curious about the project, I'd encourage you to take a look at the short video on the Kickstarter link at the bottom of this post.
As you're aware, there are currently no official classes for gasifier-fueled vehicles. But I've been told I can run in the 130 class at WOS, and get a few timing slips to prove I've done it. So nothing "official", but that's the current state of gasifier-fueled records, unless I want to pay the nice folks at Guinness $5K to be present. The current (unofficial) record for a gasifier-fueled vehicle is 73 MPH, set a couple years ago by Wayne Keith of Alabama.
The vehicle my team and I will be using is a 4-cyl Ford Ranger pickup, which in it's current naturally aspirated state will go a walloping 48 MPH. The wood gas produced in the gasifier reactor is a low BTU gaseous fuel, so this is pretty typical performance for a small displacement engine. In order to improve performance, the vehicle is being modified for us by a team of students and their talented and generous instructor (Nolan Koreski) at the Lake Washington Institute of Technology in Seattle. He's had a group of students in his Vehicle Performance class install a pair of super-chargers and replace the gasifier throttle body with a spacer to accommodate fuel injectors. Typically, gasifier fueled vehicles such as this are started on gasoline then switched to wood gas, once the gasifier reactor is up to operating temperature. So there are some interesting challenges associated with controlling the injectors, installing bypass valves for the super chargers when running on gasoline, etc. The students are very enthusiastic, and learning a lot in the process of working on this project.
I'll just mention that we're a bit anxious about getting this effort funded on Kickstarter, since it's an all-or-nothing crowd-funding service. That means that if we don't get pledges to cover the entire $26K, we'll get nothing. So any ideas any of you may have for ways in which we can raise more $$ for this effort would be most welcome. And for that matter, I'd urge you all to take a look at our Kickstarter page see what you think -- and maybe back us for a few bucks. Thanks! McQ
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1988320247/green-dragon-setting-a-carbon-neutral-land-speed-r