I'm new here, nice to find a site dedicated to this.

I have a '94 V6 and I'm thinking about adding this homemade mod called Water4Gas.
If you've never heard of it, it's basically a mason jar filled with water with electrodes connected to the battery and hoses running to the air intake and manifold.
The electrodes inside separate the water into hydrogen and oxygen and it's vacuum fed into the engine from there.
I'm a bit of a chemistry buff and it seems like the hydrogen would raise the octane and the extra oxygen would make for better combustion, leading to better gas mileage and maybe even a boost in power (?). I have no doubt that it will work on SOME cars but I'm not sure about this one.

One question I have is about the MAF sensor (or lack thereof, I'm not sure what was used on the '94). I'm thinking I'll have to make a chip to make the mixture a little more lean to get the gas mileage benefits that I want.

The car has almost 140,000 miles on it and is running awesome for that.

It will take a LOOOOOOOONG time to generate enough hydrogen to use. A mason jar you would be lucky got get 5 miles after letting it run for a week. The benefits would be minimal at best. I would get a good tune for the car, a full tune up, and go with full synthetic oils in everything.

Please post in the New Members Forum and intorduce yourself. Also, please fill in a little more info on you 94 in your tech tool tray so we can help a little more.

Matt

Thanks for telling me about the new members section and I added all the info to my tech tray.
If I do anything else wrong let me know, haha.


That's what I thought when I looked at it but once I read up on it I figured out how great it is.

The car wouldn't actually RUN on the hydrogen if I made you think that. It just adds it to the mixture that is already present. The website actually claims that the higher octane can stop knocking and even clean out older engines.

I actually took a jar full of water (with baking powder added to make it conduct electricity) and hooked it up to a car battery charger. I cut a hole in the top of the jar and sealed a hose in it with goop. If you let it run for a few minutes to push all the air out of the empty part of the jar it's amazing. I stuck the hose in some soapy water and took a lighter to the bubbles and they exploded, loudly. You'd be amazed by how fast it works. You can actually feel the oxyhydrogen (that's what the gas it makes is actually called) coming out of the hose. And you can run the car for months without having to add water. If you wanna check it out go here http://www.water4gas.com/2books.htm
The guy who invented this thing has six jars hooked up in series and along with several other mods to his engine gets 61MPG consistently.

I KNOW this works because I've seen cars that have them in it. But I also know that it doesn't work for all engines.
BTW, I just did an oil change, all synthetic. I think it's time to replace the transmission fluid as well.

The main thing I'd be worried about if you do do this is the engine coming apart at the seams since it is a higher mileage engine and you don't know how it was driven or taken care of really before you got it.

Also with changing the tranny fluid, just be warned, that if the fluid hasn't been changed regularly that you might encoutner problems since the "sludge" from the old fluid might be hiding leaks or other issues with the tranny that will show up once the new fluid is in there and all the "sludge" is broken loose.

Hmm, now I'm worried about changing the tranny fluid.. haha.

I do think I'm gonna try this mod though. The hydroxy gas isn't strong enough to actually damage the engine by combustion. Not anymore than gasoline is anyway. The engine seems to have been taken excellent care of considering it runs perfectly and is almost 15 years old with a bunch of miles. The only thing I did when I got it was change the spark plugs and wires and change the oil and it was in perfect shape.

I followed your link and read up on it. Seems to be legit and a really good idea. His prices on the other hand.... It all makes sense and I am eager to see what I can do with it. It seems simple enough.

Matt

Yea, HIS prices are ridiculous but there are better ways.

I found his instructional books for free just to look into whether I thought it would work.
If you search 'water4gas' on eBay you can usually buy them fully assembled on there for less than 50 bucks.
I think it would pay for itself pretty quickly though.

The Discovery Channel's Mythbusters tried it with not very much success. My father-in-law got the free instructions from the web(a darn novel!) and has had little success either.

Almost sounds like one of those too good to be true ideas right now...

I knew it. That mythbusters show is really informative, I've heard of some myths that I didn't even know existed. I need to see that show myself. yeah right water and all that, don't you think something like that would have gone mainstream.

Actually, I believe the Mythbusters used a hydrogen fuel cell, which is extremely different than Water4gas which is actually a 'hydrogen on demand' system. Fuel cells involve storing hydrogen for use later. Water4gas uses electricity to separate hydrogen and oxygen in water and then delivers it to the engine.

This technology has been around for a very long time. Even before splitting water into it's part people would inject water vapor into the engine to keep it cool and therefore make it run more efficiently.

Once again, I have no doubt of this technology working. In fact there have been cars converted to run ENTIRELY on this gas. You can just look at the chemical formulas and see it for yourself. (H2O is water, H2 is hydrogen, O2 is oxygen)

Electrolysis = 2H2O(l) + energy (electricity) → 2H2(g) + O2(g)
Combustion = 2H2(g) + O2(g) → 2H2O(g) +energy (heat and pressure of expansion)

Lots of people think it's a scam because it seems too good to be true or because big oil companies haven't promoted it.

Well, the first case is right. Compared to what gas mileage we all get now, it is too good to be true.
Or at least that's what oil companies would like us to believe. Why would oil companies who report earnings of billions of dollars every quarter (that's BILLIONS, in a space of 3 MONTHS) want us to get better gas mileage? That would be like Microsoft telling us to use Apple's computers because they're better.

My point? I think everyone should try it. The possibility of actually harming your engine is almost zero if you have experience with engines, and the possibility of saving on gas, well what could be better?

BTW, I hooked up a mock-up of the device to my car yesterday. Engine immediately smoothed out. I didn't test actually driving it because it was just a test model, but I'm definitely doing a full scale version now.

Guess I'm just not smart enough or driven enough to pursue the idea, but I'm glad you and others are! Sorry 'bout the mis-quote on the TV thing too, but somehow or another that just seemed familiar to me.

Anyway, if you believe, go for it and make yourself a chunk of that billion dollar profit. That is just my thing... if it is so good please just SOMEONE do it.

I am definitely going to work on this when I get back into my house and make my bio-diesel for the truck. Have to stick it to the man ( or the oil companies. $12 million a quarter... profit!)

Matt

Awesome, I hope everybody tries it

Didn't mean to insult anyone with that last post btw But like Matt said, we are obligated to 'stick it to the man'. The more the better!

If anyone does try this post the results so we can all see how it does.

So did you ever try it or what?

There is just one problem...it takes more energy used in electricity to split H2O into two parts oxygen and one part hydrogen (the hydrogen is what is used) than it returns in energy that can be used in the form of hydrogen to power the engine. It's not an energy efficient way to produce energy. That is also what is holding up the use of hydrogen to power cars.

It's the same problem with a hydrogen fuel cell. Add hydrogen, and the fuel cell converts the hydrogen into water and electricity for the motor. Problem is, still have to make hydrogen. Better to just charge a battery with electricity and run the car off of that, or get a hybrid with a gasoline/diesel engine that charges its own batteries . The problem with that is the gasoline/diesel engine still uses gas/diesel.

Same thing with ethanol. Generally blended gasoline is 85% gasoline and 15% ethanol. The ethanol costs more than plain old gasoline, and has less mass per volume. What that means is that it also has less bang for the buck. The avg engine will lose from 7.%% to 10% power and less gas mileage to boot. My Civic got 45 mpg on the hwy at about 65 mph avg with 100% gasoline, but lost 7 mpg when all it could run was blended gasoline and there was a lack of power. So again, blending ethanol with gasoline is not energy efficient.

ok im new to THIS forum but not new to hho cells infact i have built a few and run my 05 cavalier with one for like 6 months and will tell you DONT waste your time or money. it dose work i had mine making 1 liter per min and even had a module to lean out my gas but it was enuf of a strain on the alternator to pritty much just even out i saw no mpg gains and its a pain in the ###### to maintain. o and if you dont know what your doing and try using the wrong kinds of electrolight you can realy do damage to your motor. i will say it was fun to expierement with but after a while it just gets old