Air powered Motorbike

reply to post by LightSpeedDriver


LoL..

Thanks for the bump '___'!!

A bike would be cool also....

Why not put a compressor on the bike/car that is powered by the wheel of the vehicle?

It could compress as you go and blow off the excess....

reply to post by baddmove

I gotta be honest, I thought those (father and son?) French designers were fabulous. No you wouldn't win The Grand Prix in it, yes it would serve a lot of people well for everyday travel needs. "Down with gasoline!"

reply to post by Krusty the Klown


You get the point of it exactly. It is an alternative way of storing energy that if turns out to be more efficient and less costly than batteries it would be great.

It seems like a clumsy way of storing energy though...

reply to post by Krusty the Klown


In about 1977 I think it was, I had a friend take me to a mans house in the Modesto, California area. He wanted me to see a car that ran on air and the inventor and original patent holder.

He was past retirement age then I think. He was more than happy to show me both his motorcycle and a little car he had built that ran on compressed air. He showed me an article they ran in Popular Science about him when he was younger and first got the patent. According to the article Ford Motor Company had purchased his patent for $50,000 and then shelved it.

The engine he was building at that moment looked very much like a Wankel inside with a rotary set up. It worked very much the same. He was getting around 75 horsepower out of this small engine for the motorcycle.

He had a car also with a larger version in it. It was some kind of Sub-Compact as they were called then. He had that engine up to around 125 hp. Since VW's had engines at around 75 hp then it was also a practical idea. The engine design he borrowed was developed in the late 1890's if I recall correctly.

The motorcycle had very limited range, but the car with the trunk converted into a compressed air tank could go about 30 miles give or take. He was in the process of mounting a small Briggs and Stratton Compressor in the trunk with a small one gallon tank that he figured would take his range to more like 90 miles by running it intermittently while driving.

Not much new under the sun it seems.

I can't help but wonder if this person ran into an old article about that man and based this on his already proven design?

Originally posted by Blaine91555
reply to post by Krusty the Klown

 

In about 1977 I think it was, I had a friend take me to a mans house in the Modesto, California area. He wanted me to see a car that ran on air and the inventor and original patent holder.

The motorcycle had very limited range, but the car with the trunk converted into a compressed air tank could go about 30 miles give or take. He was in the process of mounting a small Briggs and Stratton Compressor in the trunk with a small one gallon tank that he figured would take his range to more like 90 miles by running it intermittently while driving.

Not much new under the sun it seems.

I can't help but wonder if this person ran into an old article about that man and based this on his already proven design?

Thanks for the input Blaine, it could well be the same patent.

From what you say about the car with the small compressor mounted inside I reckon it may get better fuel efficiency than anything out today on 1 gallon, although I'm not familiar with gallon v miles, as we work with Km/L here in Australia.

reply to post by Blaine91555


As you say, not much new under the sun! Although, for the guy who crashes into the back of that car will poo his pants at the trunk-airbag going off!
I'd say safety is the number one concern with compressed air tanks, possibly why they never move much further than the garage they originated in.

reply to post by Krusty the Klown


UCLA developed a V8 in the early 1970's that got a lot of local coverage. As I recall they had developed a new carburetor that netted them around 60 mpg (miles per gallon) from a V8 engine in a large car.

To help with the conversion, 40 mpg is a very fuel efficient car right now. Usually only very small light cars with 4 cylinder engines attain that level. In this case 60 mpg in a 1970 full size (big heavy car in the USA then) was remarkable.

This was well know all over the country. The practice by car companies was to buy the patents and then bury them.

The excuse why these were never implemented was they were incompatible with smog control equipment if I remember right.

Of course you can't compare that to know where 4 cylinder engines are putting out horsepower and torque that used to require a V8 engine. Apples and Oranges.

reply to post by Qumulys


That makes sense to me. In the case I cited, he had gotten it licensed and it had passed California's inspection. He took me for a ride in fact. Of course standards were far different then as to safety.

Compressed air is most certainly a powerful thing.