[joe_a_buaiz]

It seems that the oil companies have a choke-hold on almost everything. A friend of mine was working on the water powered engine in the late 70s (he thought that he was the first to think of it), and he told me that his life was threatened. He was going about his experiments quite publicly, on radio shows, local news, and all that sort of thing. He told me that someone in a suit and tie, with big sunglasses (Secret Service type garb), told him that if he continued with his experiments, he would "be wearing cement boots."

America does need to free itself of its dependency on foreign oil. That's for damn sure. It would do the ecomony quite a lot of good, actually.

I haven't got anything to report on the carb-building front. I'm somewhere in between toying with the idea, and actually planning how I will go about building the thing. I haven't yet even decided what to make it out of. I've decided not to try the water thing just yet, so for now I'm going to concern myself with the Pogue. If you studied the link to the Pogue patent (and I hope that you did), you would have noticed that almost the whole thing can be made of sheet metal. I'd like to use copper, because it's strong, and doesn't rust, but I'm afraid it might corrode over time, and go bad. On the other hand, I could use aluminum, but it is very weak, and is expensive to solder ($100 for a coil of aluminum solder last time I bought some).

I was trying to figure out what kind of mileage I might get with one of these carbs. In the 1936 letters (which I linked to), T.G. Breen wrote: "I made a test today of the Pogue Carburetor installed on a Ford eight-cylinder coupe.... I drove the car 26.2 miles on one pint of gasoline.... The performance of the car was 100% in every way.... It performed equal to, if not better than, any car with a standard carburetor."
26.2 miles per pint = 209.6 miles per gallon.
That's with an early to mid 30s eight cylinder Ford. I drive a 1980 Oldsmobile Omega. Front wheel drive, four cylinder engine, ALUMINUM BUMPERS!!! I'm thinking 350 to 400 MPG. But, of course, I won't know until I try, will I?

I'll post updates as things start to happen, and pictures when I see something cool.

---Joe