“Water & Gasoline”
Hybrid Car
Non-Fiction
By: Spud Martin aka Harry Eckert
5-4-2008
Seeing this gasoline situation unfolding into prices that are killing us brings to mind a hybrid car I seen years ago powered with two separate fuel systems. A regular gasoline tank that came with the car and a water & alcohol tank with accessories mounted in the trunk.
The car was around a 1954 Chevrolet sedan with a standard six-cylinder engine except for the copper tubes from each cylinder to the trunk. The tubes appeared to function as injectors.
It’s owner who I only knew only on a first name basis owned a country farm, about forty miles south of Buffalo, New York. His daily trips to work and back averaged about eighty miles per day. He occasionally stopped at my dad’s full-service station for gas.
When I first checked his oil I asked him about the copper tubes leading from each cylinder to the trunk. He said the car runs on water but he never told me how it worked or allowed me to see what was in his trunk.
He told me the performance wasn’t too great for city driving so he used gasoline for city driving and would switched to water for country driving.
The car had a manual transmission (stick shift) and for country driving he had to increase the Rpm’s between shifts to the last gear where it performed reasonably well with the water system.
I asked him what he planned to do with his car and he said, “nothing that it was for his own use”.
Even with its shortcomings in performance his car was really unique and awesome. Being a former auto mechanic and collaborating with my other mechanic friends couldn’t come up with what he had.
Marriage and career changes took me into new directions and through the years I’ve often wondered whatever happened to him and his car?
I suspect with today’s R&D technology’s this mystery can be cracked.
Footnote:
One uneducated guess without anything to back this up is that he may have added something to the water such as alcohol that was common as a radiator anti-freeze back in those days. That type of anti-freeze was very combustible even when mixed with water. It had to be discontinued due to the many engine fires due to cooling system leaks.
Tags: Hybrid Car Gasoline And Water Alternative Fuel Water Powered Car
