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Wood burning truck?

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Bet he also distills spirits out back in the woods...hehehehe.....yep, was a big deal around WWII time - especially in the UK if I remember correctly.
 
There was a movie many years ago, (the name escapes me) about WWII and a group of school refuges in the Philippines that featured a school bus run on wood. It was fun to watch it go down the road with smoke coming out the stack and the kips stoking the fire.
 
tony barnhill said:
Bet he also distills spirits out back in the woods...hehehehe.....yep, was a big deal around WWII time - especially in the UK if I remember correctly.
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I don't know about the UK but the French used them. There was an article in Classic & SportsCar about a restored one a few years ago
 
aerog said:
tony barnhill said:
Bet he also distills spirits out back in the woods...hehehehe.....yep, was a big deal around WWII time - especially in the UK if I remember correctly.
Click to expand...

I don't know about the UK but the French used them. There was an article in Classic & SportsCar about a restored one a few years ago
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The French term was "gasogene".

-Wm.
 
A fellow I know, that was stationed in Japan after the end of WWII, once showed me a picture of a wood powered truck he had seen there.

Regards John
 
It's properly called a wood-gas generator. they were popular in WWII in areas where gasoline was scarce. they can be built fairly easily. A while back I was planning to build one, but after a lot of research I found the idea to not be very practical. If there was a gas shortage, maybe. But just for the sake of trying it ... nah.
The concept is to burn wood without enough oxygen thus generating combustable gasses that can then be piped into an internal combustion engine. It works, but is time consuming, inefficent, and dangerous (carbon monoxide and explosions are a threat)Not to mention that the unit tends to be huge!
Still, how cool would it be to tell people your car runs on wood!
here's a page with plans..
the Gengas page.
 
The Germans were forced into this during the closing months of the war. My father told me stories of watching as the soldiers would jump out of the back of their truck in order to push it up a hill. Apparently the wood gas did not produce enough power to get a troop truck up a hill with passengers let alone on its own.
 
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