Same here. When I was working out of the gas fields in Colorado had a buddy that would get me a barrel of the condensate (drip gas) whenever I asked. Powered the SA200 welder on my truck for a couple of years that way. I used to add one quart of 10/40 per barrel and mix well. If you didn't it would be too lean. Made those old 4 cyl Continentals stand up and sing I tell ya.
Any of the alcohol type fuels are going to be way under powered, that fuel type dosnt have the thermal efficiency of gasoline or diesel, or those fuel types, unless you had storage tanks full of the stuff and a near endless supply of it, I wouldn't bother running it. That said, if you were to go that route, a flame eater type engine or any of the thermal rype engines would be more efficient then a strait fueled internal combustion engine, sort of old school gasification system! Diesel is going to yeald the most power per pound used, especially a pre heat type like a Wakashaue or Fairbanks-Morse, Colt Pulaski! Those can run on just about any thing from bunker to Jet-A and make tons of power! Best possable option is to find a mid 30s to late 50s Caterpillar D series crawler of at least the 2.5 ton class and set it up with a double ended P.T.O. and have all the power you would need to make, ether direct motive power or stationary power that can be moved as the job requires! Those old Cats are Bomb proof, stupid simple, and still super easy to get parts and accessories for! They start easy, run forever while sipping diesel type fuels, and make awesome power for any need! You can drive a big damn genny off of one and still have plenty of power to run a saw mill! I love my '38, best damn rig ever made, and still going strong! Wife can start it super easy, has no problems hooking it up to what ever is needed and it's super easy for her to drive!
Actually wood gas powered cars and trucks were quite common in Europe during WW II. Due to fuel shortages Germany even had tanks and other tracked tactical vehicles that ran on wood gasification. FEMA created plans for units that could power tractors, small cars and trucks that weren’t huge. A small unit needs frequent re-fueling but more significantly it can’t supply large quantities of gas for high power short durations, but that driving style is a luxury and a far more conservative style gets by with a smaller unit. The following link shows a number of versions. Wood gas vehicles: firewood in the fuel tank AT
Yes Duane now your talking, Drip gas, I recall older people talkin about that it is more or less what I am trying to learn about. A lot of these old engines could and were run on lower octane fuels. Model T fords, etc. Recall my Dad saying they ran coal oil/lamp oil in their old Model T during the depression. You started it on gasoline, switched to lamp oil and before shutting it off, switch to gasoline or it would be hard to start again. He said they also used coal oil in place of anti freeze in the radiator.
Only the big D model 6 cylinders had/have a pony motor, and even those can run on a lot of different types of fuel, and they have both electric and pull start!
You can score a decent rebuildable Cat crawler pretty cheap around here, plan on rebuilding the tracks, replacing all bearings, races and seals, and rebuilding the motor and re building the clutches! I paid $1000 for mine, took a week of tugging with three pickups and winches and a serious weed burner and lots of automatic trans fluid to get it loaded up. After that, took me 5 months and about $3400 in parts and I have a unbeatable crawler. Mine came with a serious pair of gang winches and a rear pto as well as a smaller winch on the front between the leaf springs. It also has the extra fuel tanks on both sides of the seat, it will literally run for a week in stationary power mode! Full load, it burns about 3 gallons of diesel per hour! Power is about 80 HP give or take! Nice thing is it will interchange with many Cat attachments really easy, I installed a full hydrolic set up including pump and hand controllers and a full articulated dozer blade on the front, that was probably the biggest performance gain of an already steller rig! Don't forget, you can score many different types of crawlers besides Cat, there are tons of IHC, and Massey Ferguson, Case, and Ford among the many, with John Deere, and IHC being two that are close to CAT for quality! For you eastern states Monkeys, TimberJack, and Tiger Cat made crawlers, as well as Euclid, and FMC/KMC! If I was to do it again, i would prolly see if I could score a Cummins powered KMC my self!
Don’t forget an Oliver Crawler... had one that I drove for Snow Resort Parking Lot clearing back in the Day... It was a sweat little rig with plenty of power...
Similar story here. Bout 25 years ago I was needing a dozer and a rancher I knew had one sitting out on the prairie that had been there since Moses wore short pants. Anyways, I went out and looked at it real good and talked him out of it for scrap price. He told me that the engine had just been rebuilt the year they parked it on that spot. Supposedly one of the hands either didn't add enough or check the antifreeze and it froze and cracked the block. I went out there and poured a jerry can of diesel over both the tracks and left. Bout a week later I came back and dumped an oil change's worth of used oil over the tracks. Three days later I came back with fresh gas and diesel. Two hours of cleaning and shining a bit and I got the pony motor fired up. Let it run for a bit, put 10 gals of fresh diesel in the tank, wrapped a gas soaked rag around the air intake and threw the lever. Took awhile but that diesel finally fired. The 'ol rancher was having a tizzyfit let me tell ya! Walked it around a bit, got the tracks broke good n loose and shut her down. Came back the next day with a borrowed lowboy and drove that D6 onto the trailer. Found a place out of Portland that parted out heavy equipment and bought everything needed to convert her from a cable rig to Hydraulics. Parts were from a 955 I think-can't remember for sure. Spent that winter changing things over and stripping the block down. Sure enough the 'ol rancher was telling the truth. That diesel looked brand new inside except for two cracks in between a couple of cylinders. I welded that block back up, smoothed the welds out where I needed and put it back together. Ran that ol girl clearing what I needed cleared and cutting fire breaks on the ranch for as long as I had the place. Far as I know she's still running.
Mine was an old Jippo logging outfit yarder cat, hence the winches! The Jippo went belly up and parked the cat out by the road and his wife planted flowers all around it! Sat for 20+ years collecting bird droppings! Soaked the tracks in trans fluid and cooked them good with the weed burner, got to where I was digging trenches with the Mack RDX, but she finally broke free and we were able to winch it up on the flat bed and tow it back to Colorado! While I was in Portland, stopped by the local Cat dealer and went through it with the shop forman and made a full list of parts, loaded up the pickups bed full of brand new 1930s to 1950s era parts and hauled ass before some one got wise! Couldn't believe my luck in scoring a 5 ton Cat for such a good price! Just passed on a smaller "Hobby" size 2.5 ton Cat, seller wanted 5k, (A steal) for it, totally restored and running, I could turn around and triple my money on it! But no place to store it, and no trailer to haul it for now! And don't need it! Lol
I am retired from CAT (38 yrs). I started off in the tool crib a @ fac 20, which was a non-current parts plant. One of my duties was to hand out parts prints. Boss showed that all the prints were dated to show when they were drawn. The oldest one I remember handing out was dated 1918. At one time CAT would make any part they ever made to keep old machines running.
