Urban legend or not-high mileage carburetors

COW magnets? I have heard of using magnets on the fuel line (and lotsa other flaky places too) but what are 'COW' magnets?

 

There is one tricky lil thing that does work, the Fitch fuel catalyst, but more for keeping the fuel stable. Any increase in mpg or power would be fuel quality related. But it still goes to what Lux was sayin...BOOM vs Woosh. Right on. More uh, ENERGY.

 

Hey I have a carb that gets at least 60 mpg Of course thats just sitting in the bar, but I believe it
see the pics for yourself

 

Confucius say, "Carburetor nothing but partially controlled leak. Fool injection is way to go."

 

This post has served its purpose very well. Noone has ever ran a high mileage carburetor. I appreciate all the input so far; I've got an idea of how to make my OD work and also have more input on how horrible those Rochesters are. I've rebuilt mine several times and never changed a thing.

Thank you all.

 

City boy, eh? Well, cows is very lovable (but stupid) critters. They'll eat anything that gets mixed in with their food. Grass, corn hay, nuts, bolts, nails, screws, anything. Cows are also ruminants, or animals with multi-chambered stomachs. To keep the "hardware disease" from damaging the cow's tract, you shove a cow magnet or two down her throat. They're pretty strong, and attract any ferrous metal, keeping it in the first chamber of the stomach where it can do the least amount of damage. The magnets are smooth, like a giant Tylenol caplet, so they're easy to swallow. Back in the 70's they were reputed to increase gas mileage if you taped a couple of them around your fuel line. People bought so many of them that manufacturers couldn't keep up with the demand, prices skyrocketed, and we couldn't find any to give to the cows. Strangely enough, they're easy to find and cheap to buy again now. In the photo, I put a quarter between a couple of them just for size.

 

I remember the cow magnet craze. At least they did nothing--no good, but no harm either. Some of the high mileage gadgets actually hurt the engine.

 

They should make those in a size for nostrils for those of us who spend an inordinate amount of time wire wheeling rust...er, patina...off of things.

 

Yeah, Powerglides definitely weren't for the economy minded. A friend had a '70 Camaro 250 PG in the mid '70s, and 11-12mpg was the norm around town. I found a three speed car in a yard, and we used parts from it to convert his to a Saginaw four speed, keeping the 2.73 gears in the rear. Local mileage jumped from 11 to 17 with no other changes.

 

interesting about that camaro, my son has one just like it (although it's hugger orange), 250/pg/2.73, gets 19 mpg consistently in city/rural driving and maybe 20 on the highway.

I've never been able to get more than about 14 in the old trucks though.

 

I'm here to tell you that the 'high mileage' carburetor does exist!

I drove a Chev delivery van that had about a half million miles on its carburetor. It's high mileage, isn't it...

And yeah, I caught the irony here, too:

Now, if only I could find the guy who had those pills that would make water into something that you could run your car on...

-bill

 

That may have been the "variable venturi" carb that Ford used during that era, or should I say error. They were shipped away alright -- to the scrap yard.

Bob

 

Hmmm, and the olde Vapor injection? And Oldsmoblie Turbo-Fluid?
both were H2O.

 

Years ago i worked at a Ford dealer ship and took one of those damn propellers out of a intake valve on a fairly low mileage 68 T Bird with a 390 in it. Like to never figured out where in the hell it came from. Seems the owner had bought one of those devises at the state fair...
Wasnt funny to me as i didnt make much on the job at the time and them big o intakes weighted a ton with carb....

 

This is assuming that you never buy fuel for the $25000 rig. IF the new truck got even 24 mpg (and that would be a small truck with conservative driving) you can DOUBLE your figures! Now also take into account the expense of maintaining that computer-controlled beast, the additional insurance, finance charges, etc.....

"You can't beat a good old ride"

Cool points, style points, wrenching it yourself, fun-factor, funk-factor, and using them up before throwing them away.

I used this formula to talk my father-in-law out of a damn prius. That, and I threatened to bring his daughter back for a refund...

 

Not to stray too far from the carb question, but a friend of mine has been experimenting with hydrogen electolysis/injection and had some decent results -- 4x less emissions and double the mileage. The test vehicles he's installed this stuff I'm sure are smaller CID econoshitboxes, but the idea is to give the motor the ability to burn the fuel more efficiently. This spring I'm hoping to have the same setup installed on my Galaxie w/ 390 which has seen 20+mpg on the highway to see if I can get it closer to the 30mpg range.

 

I have a friend that put one on his civic. In town it doesn't do shit, but on the highway, he pulls 70 MPG with it! For $400, it isn't a bad deal if you do lots of highway driving....but it rusts out your exhaust if you run it around town a lot.

My '65 Galaxie got 20-21 on the highway...stock 352 4bbl Autolite 4100. Four speed (3+OD) toploader, 3.00 gears. I dumped the 4100 for a Holley, Better performance, but best I can get now is 17-18 MPG.

My '57 Lincoln got as high as 17 MPG on the Hunnert road trip in Oct. Stock motor, stock 4bbl carb and all 3 tons of car.

 

520kms per 30 litres ! dont pay for plans or dodgy barnum .look up searcy press.com .find , vaccume pressure fuel cell.build it yourself and stop bench racing .

 

Man this is old ain't it?

 

I once went 13 miles at 70mph on no fuel, with the engine off. I've patented the method, so I can tell you about it.

Here is what you need:

1. A road with a 12% downgrade on a 13 mile hill.
2. A vehicle with a 'neutral' setting in the transmission.
3. A vehicle with some sort of 'power switch' or 'key'.

I hope this helps.

 

my Dad was an engineer and he thought like an engineer, he was looking at all the adds to "improve" your mileage, he said if he bought all of them and used them at the same time, every mile he would have to stop and drain a gallon of gas out of the tank so it wouldn't overflow. he was a little nutty that way...I miss that

 

I used to collect some of this stuff. There were things too you plugged into your coil that made a huge difference so they said. All bunk.
During my appenticeship (just after Noah got off the Ark) I got to work with my Uncle. he was a autoelectriciamn wiz and taught me a lot about gas milelage. We used to do proper Gass mileage trsts with amachine he had at the shop. He told me most poor mileage is ignition related. The carb get balmed becasuse it is delievering the fuel but ignition can kill mileage big time. With the Chevy six I beleive and have for years believed the distributor is reasponsible for many of the ills these engines and its cousins 194 230 and 250 have. A quick fix would be to obtain a later HEI distributor and pop it in to see what the doifference was. i would expect amajor increase once the settings were sorted out. not because the HEI has more whallop but because the advance curve is much better and more controlled. After that start playing with jetting, easing back on strength till the sweet spot is found. This alone should help big time. A slant six is always excellant on fuel so the V8 vrs 6 desnt wash. Probably old cam designs didnt lend themselves to good mileage either. I have done a 250 for street use for a friend. Even with twin carbs and slit manifold hewas singing its praises on long cruises. He was the only rod to drive to a far away show and back without buying gas. He has it in a 39 Chev coupe. A did rework the distributor as well and we did use a HEI unit.
BTW there are many reasons why newer cars get better mileage. Much of it has little to do with the fuel system believe it or not.

Don

 

You already answered your own question that the carb is causing the 12 mpg. Remember that the stock 292 was jetted to pull. Gas mileage was secondary.

Rejetting the rochester may move in the right direction. 16-20 sounds pretty good for your truck with a 292. Economaster's may be hard to scare up, but I would think that a run of the mill holley like an 1850 600cfm jetted properly would be close. We had good luck running those on a variety of trucks.

 

No not an urban legend i got one of those carbs
22mm bing gets wery god milage
I dont think i can have anything to do with
its on a 150cc motorcycle thats wheight 75 kilo (about 160 lbs)



and offcause i wear a streamlined tinfoilhat when i drive it

 

I was given one of those plate things with the propellers on it, like tommy's picture showed. The secret was a small reed valve on the back side that sucked in air. Did it work? I have no idea. At the time I didn't have anything it would fit on and I gave it to the scrap yard with a bunch of old stuff. However I figured it was only good for a source of vacuum leaks.

 

lots of high mileage stuff suffers from driveability problems lean is not always mean

but i did it on a 307 chev years ago and got 20 mpg but had driveability concerns, but runit that way until totaled, used 55 chev jets and cluster in carb

next time i had newer big carb on chev 307 and opened up plug gaps to give the lean mixture a better burn result better driveability another 20 MPG car impala body 1971 4 door

got a 355 now and hei and got a lean edelbrock on 53 chev that pulls 16mpg and its got good driveability

a lot of carb and ign tuning can sure change the torque curve and mileage power valves are another thing on hollys and the step up rod springs on edelbrocks
I just cant understand why more dont tinker and tune this stuff, but it takes time and parts sometimes you may experiment 3 days to get some of this stuff right, but learn the secrets and it willwork on anything

I had to learn a lot on tuning race car engine with powerglides took 3 days to get it out the door last time burned rubber all the way out never give up it can be done

I still love tuning this stuff and to see how much change can be had by changing dist advance and getting total timeing where it should be

 

I spent considerable messing around with a Fish on a turbocharged Pinto 2.0 and it truly is a different kind of cat.

Mr. Fish never made any spectacular claims about fuel mileage, simply that it wasted less fuel and would deliver better performance while consuming less gasoline that other carbs. I think that possibly when compared to the carburetors of the day, it did quite well.

But it has a couple of downsides that make it unfit for use as a carb for the masses. The early models had no provision (choke) for cold running and it was the best carb in the world for icing up. Fish lived in Florida and probably did not aprreciate the carbs weaknesses. For a while he was trying to market the carb to Henry Ford and several were sent to Detroit for evaluation. I bet the Ford people were ready to shoot Fish on sight after trying to drive in Detroit winter weather in a car equiped with one of his carbs. Mine was a PIA in cool weather, cannot imagine driving with one is sub zero weather.

Bill

 

i remember seeing an article in hot rod about 25 years ago about a guy that had a carb that got 65 mpg.
about a year later hot rod reported his shop blew up with him in it.

 

Those magnets on the fuel line are great, but to get 100mpg, you need to put one of those tornado thingys in the air inlet to cyclone the air and ram it through the carb faster...

 

Nobody has seen the MythBusters episode were they scientifically disprove these abortions?